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Planning director warns Buncombe County applicants about phishing and payment scams
Summary
Planning Director Nathan Pennington told the board the county has seen scams impersonating county staff and urged applicants not to wire money or pay with crypto or gift cards; staff will redact some personal data and monitor suspicious email domains.
At the start of the May meeting, Buncombe County Planning Director Nathan Pennington warned the public that scam operations have been scraping county development project pages and impersonating staff.
Pennington said scammers are using county symbols and bogus emails to contact applicants. "We will never ask you to wire money. We will never ask you to pay in cryptocurrency, and we will never ask you to pay in gift cards," he said, urging anyone who sees a suspicious email address such as one ending in ".usa" to contact county staff. Pennington said staff will begin redacting personal data on public project pages and checking email addresses more closely.
The advisory instructed applicants and the public to report suspicious contacts to county planning staff and to rely on official county email addresses (the planning director referenced the county address pattern "bunkum n c dot gov" when describing suspicious variants). The board accepted the announcement and thanked staff for the alert.
