RALEIGH—If someone claiming to be an employee of Legal Aid of North Carolina asks you to send them your financial information by email—don’t do it! A real Legal Aid employee will never ask you to send financial info by email.
Here are some things you can do to make sure you are talking with a real Legal Aid employee:
- Call them through our phone system: How do you know if the phone number someone gave you is a real Legal Aid number? Visit our Offices page to find the real phone numbers for all of our offices. If a person really works for Legal Aid, you can reach them though their office’s phone system.
- Ask them to email you from a Legal Aid address: All Legal Aid employees have an email address that ends in “legalaidnc.org.” Look closely! Scammers often use email addresses that look like real addresses but are slightly different. For example, “legalaidenc.org” looks like it’s from us, but the extra “e” in the address means it’s from someone else.
- Ask for a business card. All Legal Aid employees have business cards with their name, phone number, email address and the Legal Aid logo.
Still not sure? Call or email our director of public relations, Sean Driscoll, at 919-856-2132 or seand@legalaidnc.org to verify if someone really is a Legal Aid employee.
Visit the Protecting Consumers section of the N.C. Department of Justice website to learn how to protect yourself from fraud and scams, and how you can file an official complaint with the department.