Jeff James with Perry Forensic gives the opening remarks during a fraud prevention training program at the Wood County Resiliency Center Thursday night. (Photo by Amber Phipps)

PARKERSBURG — The first quarterly training session for financial fraud prevention was held at the recently opened Wood County Resiliency Center on Thursday night.

In partnership with the Wood County Sheriff’s Department, Perry Forensic hosted a training session to better inform local residents of the multitude of ways fraud can occur and how to avoid becoming a victim.

Sheriff Rick Woodyard began the session by speaking on a few points about the importance of understanding fraud and its impact on the community.

“I think knowledge is power and I think if we can educate people and get more people to understand how fraud works, I think we can eliminate some of the problems we’re having,” he said.

According to a press release from Perry Forensic, a resident in Wood County was swindled out of roughly $15,000 within the past week. Fraud is impacting the residents of the county, so the sheriff’s department and Perry Forensic are working with the goal to prevent any more fraud victims in the area.

Wood County Sheriff Rick Woodyard introduces Perry Forensic and the fraud prevention training session on Thursday night. (Photo by Amber Phipps)

“We think it’s really important to serve the community and help educate because there’s so much fraud going on,” said Jodey Altier, a member of Perry Forensic. “We started receiving a lot of calls about fraud and decided that we needed to serve our community.”

Altier stated that this is the first training session for fraud prevention at the Resiliency Center and they wanted to see how the community would respond to it. During the session on Thursday night, roughly 50 community members attended and engaged with the presentation.

Perry Forensic members Jeff James and Jeff Sandy gave presentations throughout the evening that discussed the statistics of fraud, how fraud happens, and how members in the audience could prevent it.

James displayed step-by-step instructions on what to do when a fraud is suspected. The victim is encouraged to go to the FBI page and report the crime by following the detailed instructions on the website.

“People are greedy and always looking for a way to take a dime out of your pocket and into their pocket and they don’t care who you are,” said James.

Jeff Sandy with Perry Forensic demonstrates to the audience how to use a wallet tracker. (Photo by Amber Phipps)

Sandy also engaged with the audience by showing a variety of ways in which criminals can scam unknowing people into giving them money. Attendees were encouraged to ask questions throughout the session to better understand all of the ways that fraud can happen.

He showed the audience different security items that could be purchased on Amazon that track personal belongings. Having a way to track keys, wallets, and phones is a great preventative tactic of fraud.

“It’s important that you or anyone else not become a victim,” said James. “So you need to be educated so that you don’t allow this to happen to you.”

There are expected to be quarterly fraud prevention sessions throughout the year. The members of Perry Forensic encouraged residents to listen closely, take notes, and pay attention to the information and apply it to their lives.

Amber Phipps can be reached at aphipps@newsandsentinel.com

Jeff James talks to the audience how to file a fraud claim to the FBI. (Photo by Amber Phipps)