Past president of Kentucky Fire Association, Billy Robbins wants the community to be aware of the latest phone scam that is circulating the community.

“The phone scam going around is the caller saying they are with the Kentucky Firefighters Association,” Robbins explains. “They are attempting to get donations. The Kentucky Firefighters Association does no solicitation over the phone for any reason.”

According to Robbins, the fire departments will raise their own money locally and won’t make phone calls to try to get money from the callers.

“Throughout the year, we’ll have maybe an auction or something,” he said. “That’s the way that we raise our money and everything.”

He explains the scam makes the association and the departments look bad.

“When we are asked where the money goes to, we can’t give them an answer because we don’t know where the money goes that they collect,” Robbins said. “If people give to these scams and then a department does something locally and we are need of that money, it actually hurts us.”

Robbins explained he has received several comments from people that he knows and even people he doesn’t know complaining about the amount of phone calls they are receiving.

“I’ve had calls from people saying they are aggravating them to death to donate to both fire and police and even different things,” Robbins said. “They’ve called me and I’ve asked what do you do for them and they’ll say ‘collect’ and then they knew they had someone that knew what they were up to.”

Robbins says it burns him up to know that there are people even when he was president of the association that would attempt to solicit money under the association’s name.

“It got to be such an aggravation because they start lying to people and that’s where they made their money,” he said. “There were some people that told me they gave $50 to $100, and I had to then tell them they weren’t giving it to our association.”

If you are experiencing these types of calls, hang up and do not give the caller any personal information. Contact your local authorities and report it to them.

Again, Robbins wants to reiterate that the Kentucky Fire Association does not solicit money over the phone.