On Saturday July 15, 2017, the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office was advised of a fraud call that was received by a Cochise County resident.
The caller advised that he received a call from a man identifying himself as a technician from the Dish Network company who wanted to get information about the Dish receiver and personal information from the resident.
The suspect told the caller that he was paying too much money for their service due to Dish moving to a new satellite, then the caller requested the security code for the account and the address of the resident so Dish could send a technician to the home to fix the problem.
When the resident asked the caller where he was at he was told that the caller was in New Jersey, but the resident advised that he had a heavy accent, possibly Indian.
The caller identified himself as Rahul Sharma with a phone number of 832-819-3608, This number is a google number with a message advising that the individual is not available and to leave a name and number and someone will call you back.
The resident did not provide any of the information and called the Dish Network directly asking if he had been called. The fraud department of the Dish Network advised that they would not call any customer but would make contact via email or US mail.
The resident reported that some of his neighbors have had people come to their home in the past few weeks wanting to work on their Dish Network. One neighbor called the police and the other said “no” and later discovered that their cable had been cut and the actual dish was stolen.