Scammers contacted Sedgwick County residents this week claiming the consumers received government grants for “being good citizens and paying their bills on time,” according to Sedgwick County Consumer Protection Division scam reports.

The division also received 10 reports about IRS scams, six about jury duty scams, two about past debt collections scams and a report each for a Craigslist scam, pyramid scheme scam, secret shopper scam, lottery scam and computer service scam.

The overarching advice is not to pay money to receive money and not to give out personal information for calls and interactions you didn’t initiate.

Remember that scammers can manipulate caller ID to make calls appear with local area codes.

For the jury duty scam, the scammer claims that the individual needs to pay a fine in order to avoid arrest for missing jury duty. But the government does not typically contact people via phone, so hang up and call the agency back directly to check about jury duty.

The secret shopper scam instructs people to pay money to become a secret shopper, but the job does not exist.

Sharon Werner, chief attorney for the Sedgwick County Consumer Protection Division, suggests being wary of any callers with a dire sense of urgency to collect the money.

If you think you’ve been the victim of a scam, call the Sedgwick County Consumer Protection Division at 316-660-3653.