Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned that scammers are targeting people by taking advantage of the flooding disaster in the central part of that state, which has left more than 100 people dead.
“There are no words for how wrong it is that morally bankrupt people are trying to take advantage of Texans by using this tragedy to scam them,” he said in a consumer alert issued on Monday evening.
“The Office of the Attorney General would like to caution everyone in any area affected by storms and flooding to be extremely careful with people offering to help you rebuild or reconstruct,” Paxton’s office added.
Elaborating on the nature of the scams, Paxton’s office stated that in some instances, contractors are hired to perform work after a disaster but fail to do so.
“Flood victims are reminded to be wary of contractors from out of the area, don’t rush into signing a contract, ask for references, and check with the Better Business Bureau to ensure they’re working with a trustworthy business,” the consumer alert reads.
Kerrville City Manager Dalton Rice, whose city was hard-hit by the flooding late last week, told reporters on Monday that some victims’ families have been contacted by alleged scammers who have issued ransom threats.
They’ve been “saying that they have their kids, pay me money,” he said, referring to children who went missing during the floods. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s absolutely heartbreaking,” he added.
In Kerr County, home to youth camps in the Texas Hill Country, searchers have found the bodies of 84 people, including 28 children, Sheriff Larry Leitha said on Monday afternoon. Fatalities in nearby counties brought the total number of deaths as of Monday afternoon to at least 104.
Ten girls and a counselor were still unaccounted for at Camp Mystic, a Christian summer camp along the river.
Before the floods, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a flash-flood warning at 1:14 a.m. on July 4 to mobile phones and weather radios, more than three hours before the first reports of flooding at low-water crossings in Kerr County at 4:35 a.m. The warning was updated at 4:03 a.m. to a flash-flood emergency.
The warning included Hunt, the small town that’s home to Camp Mystic. Girls who were rescued from the camp have said they were woken up after midnight by strong storms that knocked out power. Bright flashes from lightning strikes showed the river rising rapidly.
Gov. Greg Abbott said on Sunday that 41 people were confirmed to be unaccounted for across the state, and more could be missing.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump signed a major disaster declaration for the area, while the administration authorized the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has defended the NWS response to the storm after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said this week that he wants a probe of the agency and how it delivered warnings ahead of the floods.
In a post on social media platform X, White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote that federal forecasters did their job before the floods.
But Schumer wrote a letter on Monday to the acting inspector general of the Department of Commerce, which oversees the National Weather Service (NWS), requesting an investigation into whether alleged staffing shortages at the local NWS office were a contributing factor.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.