A scam involving overpriced pine straw has resurfaced in multiple Georgia cities, targeting older residents with deceptive lawn care offers that balloon into bills totaling thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What We Know:<\/strong> The Jenkins County Sheriff’s Office issued a fresh warning about so-called \u201cpine straw travelers\u201d operating across Georgia. These scammers offer to lay pine straw for a low price\u2014around $5 per bale\u2014but then inflate the cost dramatically after the job is done. They often return with bale ties and claim hundreds of bales were used, charging unsuspecting residents exorbitant fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Victims have been reported in several locations in previous years. In Roswell, one elderly resident was charged $2,700. In Albany<\/a>, the cost jumped to $5,000. Officials say this pattern has shown up in areas from metro Atlanta to Albany<\/a> and is not isolated to any single region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What We Don\u2019t Know:<\/strong> It’s unclear how many people have fallen victim to this scam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Action:<\/strong> Officials urge residents to be wary of unsolicited lawn service offers and to only hire workers from reputable sources. In most parts of Georgia, anyone soliciting door-to-door must have a permit and be able to show it upon request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you or someone you know suspects a scam, contact your local police department.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A scam involving overpriced pine straw has resurfaced in multiple Georgia cities, targeting older residents with deceptive lawn care offers that balloon into bills totaling thousands of dollars. What We Know: The Jenkins County Sheriff’s Office issued a fresh warning about so-called \u201cpine straw travelers\u201d operating across Georgia. These scammers offer to lay pine straw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":948,"featured_media":32517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[17751,8787],"class_list":["post-220871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","tag-pine-straw","tag-scam","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=220871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=220871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=220871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=220871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}