County Warns Zoning Applicants: Those "Gilmer County" Payment Emails Are Fake

If you have a zoning or land-use application pending in Gilmer County, treat any email asking you to pay a fee as fake. Planning & Zoning has posted a scam alert warning that people listed on its upcoming meeting calendars are being contacted from email addresses built to look like official Gilmer County Government accounts, and the warning is still up on the county calendar alongside tonight's 5 p.m. Planning and Development / Board of Land Use Appeals public hearing at the Jury Assembly Room, 1 Broad Street in Ellijay.

That timing is the problem. The calendar is public, so anyone who gets added to it becomes findable. The county says the fraudulent messages may include invoices, attachments capable of infecting a computer with malware, and links requesting payment. Its instruction is blunt: do not click links, do not open attachments, do not send money.

The rule that makes this easy to spot

Planning & Zoning does not email payment links. Ever. According to the county's notice, fees are always paid in person, and they are paid before an applicant is placed on the meeting calendar. The office also says it will never come back asking for additional money from anyone already on that calendar.

So if you are on tonight's agenda, or September's, your money is already handled. An invoice arriving in your inbox after the fact is not a step you missed. It is someone fishing.

The Planning & Zoning office is at 1 Broad Street, Suite 002, in Ellijay, in the same building as the hearing room. The county's main number is 706-635-4361. Calling it, rather than replying to the email, is the whole defense.

This is a national scheme, and Gilmer is on the list

The FBI issued a public warning in March about criminals impersonating city and county planning officials to collect fake permit fees, with victims identified nationwide. The bureau's description matches what Gilmer County is seeing: the scammers pull publicly posted permit information to make the emails convincing.

The details in the FBI alert are worth knowing because they explain why these messages fool people who are usually careful.

Nothing in that list is expensive to fake. A letterhead, a seal, correct spelling and a real employee's name all cost the sender nothing, which is why the FBI says not to judge legitimacy on appearance. Check the sending domain. Then pick up the phone.

If you already paid

Anyone who sent money or opened an attachment should file a complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. The bureau asks for the sender's email address and the date, the date of your scheduled hearing, the amount on the fraudulent invoice, the payment method requested, and any bank account details the scammer provided. Contacting your bank or payment app quickly matters too, because wire and peer-to-peer transfers are hard to claw back after a day or two.

The Planning and Development / Board of Land Use Appeals hearing starts at 5 p.m. tonight at the Jury Assembly Room on Broad Street, with the next one set for Sept. 17 at the same time and place. Agendas for both are posted on the county events calendar, where the scam warning appears under each hearing listing. Anyone needing accommodations to attend can reach the county's ADA coordinator at 706-635-4361.

More Gilmer County news and alerts are at Ellijay Georgia Community Website. If a fake county email has landed in your inbox, tell your neighbors about it and join the conversation in our Community Forum. You can also read more crime and safety stories and keep up with local alerts.

Header photo: Thomsonmg2000 / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)