Good morning.
I'm Wayne Mauser for Civic Media News.
Hot and human weather has arrived in northeast Wisconsin and it's sticking around until midweek.
A heat advisory is in effect from 11 a.m.
Monday until 9 p.m.
Tuesday for much of the area.
Hot and human weather continues through Wednesday with highs in the mid-90s.
The heat index values will range between 95 and 105.
Firefighters on Sunday towed and extinguished a boat engulfed in flames on Fox Lake.
The juvenile skipper and other passengers were
all able to abandon ship without injury.
The Dodge County Sheriff's Office reported receiving several 911 calls before 11 a.m.
about flames overtaking a boat on the waters of Fox Lake.
Callers said the boat occupants had jumped from the vessel and were recovered by other boaters.
The fire department was able to tow the boat to shore where the flames were put out and the vessel transferred to a tow company.
The Sheriff's Office states there's no indications of both occupants' actions or inactions at any causation with the fire.
The boat was purchased the previous day.
The Rippon area fire district has appointed Frederick Rick James as the new part-time fire chief.
Ellen Sorensen, president of the district's board of directors, says, quote, Rick brings more than three decades of experience, strong leadership, and a genuine dedication to public service, unquote.
James joins the Ripon area fire district with 32 years of experience in the fire service, including 30 years with the Appleton fire department.
While at Appleton he had a number of roles, including serving as a battalion chief for three years, he was also selected as Appleton's firefighter of the year.
Every year, the Rippin Area Vacation Bible School chooses a mission to donate proceeds to.
Bob Nelson has more for civic media news.
Now known as Rippin Area Kids Church Camp, the group has chosen Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nationwide non-profit that has its volunteers build beds so that children don't have to sleep on the floor.
Church Camp organizer Susan Mochler says Sleep in Heavenly Peace has a Fond du Lac County chapter.
The website indicates
that they've built over 1,400 beds, totaling 3,000 volunteer hours building beds.
And so we're going to take monetary donations to buy the wood and the frames and the mattresses, et cetera.
She says, in addition, they'll be collecting twin-size bedding.
By the way, those interested in registering for the church camp that runs July 27 through the 30th can do so at rippingvbs.org.
I'm Pop Nelson reporting for Civic Media News.
Nodged County Sheriff's officials tell us a 37-year-old Cedarburg man was seriously injured when his motorcycle struck a deer on State Highway 16 and 16-year Columbus Sunday morning.
The accident in the town of Elba occurred shortly before 8 a.m.
The man was heading east on the highway about a mile and a half east of the city of Columbus when his bike struck the deer.
He was ejected from the motorcycle during the crash.
He suffered serious injuries and was flown to UW
hospitals in Madison.
He wasn't wearing a helmet, which was a factor in the significance of his injuries.
The 21-year-old Rosendale Mann suspected of attacking a woman on the Mascotan Trail in the village last Monday while she was walking.
Her one-year-old child was arraigned in Fond du Lac County Court Friday.
Miles Jeffery Yeager entered not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, please.
A mental examination was ordered and a bond hearing is scheduled for this Friday.
He's currently being held on a $200,000 cash bond in the county jail.
Police in Fond du Lac arrested a 43-year-old Fond du Lac man following a standoff at a residence in the 100 block of Hamilton Place Friday morning.
About 1.30 a.m.
that morning police responded to the press box tavern on Forest Avenue for a domestic violence incident.
A 37-year-old Fond du Lac woman had been assaulted.
They learned from her the incident at the tavern
was home of numerous recent attacks on the woman.
The suspect had returned to the couple's home in the 100 block of Hamilton Place.
The suspect refused to exit the residence.
With the possibility of firearms at the residence, officers deployed an armored rescue vehicle.
Fond du Lac Police and Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office SWAT teams and negotiations teams were also brought in.
Neighboring residents were asked to leave to shelter in place.
Eventually, the suspect voluntarily surrendered.
I'm Wayne Mauser for Civic Media News.
Joining us today we have Michelle Reinen who is the administrator for the state's division of trade and consumer protection Thanks for joining us.
Every month we get together and we talk a little bit about some of the latest scams and I guess this is one that is it kind of comes up this time of year because we have school shopping going on boy a lot of people hate to hear that but yeah the school will be starting and
about a month and a half or so.
But there are some online scams that you wanted to tell us about, give us some advice about.
And the day after the 4th of July, certainly saw my first back to school ads and we know that more and more...
School shopping happens online now with the class schedules and class needs and everything posted.
And this gives scammers an opportunity to convince parents to make a purchase and then never send the promised product or deliver poor quality products.
And online shopping scams were the most reported scam on social media, according to the Federal Trade Commission in 2025.
And more than 40% of people who lost money
to a scam on social media said that it started when they ordered a product they saw in an online ad.
So we want to be sure that this is expanded to the conversation of back to school, if you're doing it online.
And there's different ways that consumers can avoid wasting their money and energy during the back to school season if they look for those...
those techniques scammers are using, and that's dishonest ads, copycat websites, poor quality products, and fake online reviews.
Okay, is any of this kind of unsolicited?
Do things get sent to you, email, text, that type of thing?
We see that these scammers send out posts.
Some of it's on social media.
Sometimes you're going to get a text or an email message if you're kind of tied to one of their email generation lists or connected in some way to the platform where they're posting that information.
So really pay attention.
Shoppers, you may receive that.
dishonest ad through the social media feed or that text message or in that email box and they're going to be promoting those more expensive items like bags and clothing and laptops that usually have limited supplies or are harder to find with good deals and the ads and links can lead to websites with this dishonest or outright scam.
aspect to them and when I say that I mean often it's going to be a copycat website leading you to a place that you normally trust, have familiarity with, things seem normal there but it will really be the scammer having posted that website and trying to trick you into using theirs rather than the legitimate website.
So should you use credit cards so you have a record of the purchase?
That's probably the most solid tip we have for people is plan to pay with a credit card, which offers that anti-fraud protection.
Other things you can do is really try to confirm the web address where you're at.
Type it in yourself if you're able to, but watch for the security aspect.
before transmitting different information.
Try and do your own research by using search words like scam and complaint and pay attention to reviews that you're reading.
Really go down to the lowest rated reviews, read through them and find the common thread across multiple bad reviews and pay attention to those so you can see if they're legitimate reviews or if they might be fake posted reviews.
Okay Now this next one kind of caught my interest because my sister Diane does a little bit of investing in gold and apparently There are government imposter scams out there that which are leading to losses and gold bars
This one's hard.
It's a recent complaint that we received here at Dad Cap where a consumer liquidated their entire life savings, purchased gold bars, and then gave them to a scammer who was impersonating a government agency and they lost 2.5 million dollars in total.
So really hard one for us in working with partners on it.
But what happened is that the scam
Sammer impersonated the Federal Trade Commission, our national consumer protection partner.
by what they thought the FTC, the consumer was.
This scammer convinced the consumer that their finances were caught up in a scheme involving criminal cartel and money laundering, and then they claimed that they could help them, but in order to help, they had to sign a fake non-disclosure agreement, and they pressured them to keep this an entire secret from friends and family and everything.
And then the scammer talked the consumer through the process of liquidating their life savings, transferring it to a bank, converting it to hundreds of gold bars.
And the last step of this was that a scammer arrived at the consumer's house to pick up the gold bars, drove away, and now the consumers never saw or heard from this scammer again.
Wow.
OK.
Next one has to do with student loans.
The safe plan is ending, which of course is an opportunity for scammers.
Also.
You said it right.
It's an opportunity for scammer anytime something changes in a normal process that we have our program ends.
And so.
Before July 1st, SAVE plan enrollees were notified that as of July 1st, they'd have 90 days to switch to another plan option or they'd be automatically placed into a plan.
And borrowers who are affected by these changes should immediately check their current repayment plan and status.
Find out what other plans are available to them and then take action to switch the plan that's best for them rather than having it switched.
But because of these changes and there being a time clock on it, scammers are going to try to steal borrowers personal and financial information.
They'll solicit fees for services that borrowers can do for themselves for free and try and take over borrowers accounts.
And so borrowers need to be sure that they
do not ever give out their FSA ID, that federal student aid identification number, and don't sign any third party authorizations or power of attorney forms because that will hand over the personal information that scammers need as well as give those legal rights to make decisions on borrower's behalf.
And remember that
If you're asked for a payment upfront for assistance, these fees are prohibited from legitimate loan service providers.
So that's a red flag to a scammer, as well as being told that there's a great offer, but there's this big limited time offer.
That's another red flag.
Pressure, right?
any promises about loan forgiveness or cancellation, independents can't do that.
So they can't make those promises, especially when they don't even know your circumstances.
You need to be sure that you just deal directly with your servicer or reach out to reliable resource information.
And one of those would be the Wisconsin Student Loan Helpline.
There's a hotline of 833.
589-0750 or the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt.
And you can find them at debtsmarts.org.
And all true information about what's happening is going to be owned out with the U.S.
Department of Education and that's studentaid.gov.
All good advice.
Michelle, if somebody wants to get a hold of DebtCAP, your office online.
Can you give us the phone number and the link, the website link?
All good stuff.
Michelle, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
We've been talking with Michelle Reinhardt.
Joining us today we have Michelle Reinen who is the administrator for the state's division of trade and consumer protection Thanks for joining us.
Every month we get together and we talk a little bit about some of the latest scams and I guess this is one that is it kind of comes up this time of year because we have school shopping going on boy a lot of people hate to hear that but yeah the school will be starting and
about a month and a half or so.
But there are some online scams that you wanted to tell us about, give us some advice about.
And the day after the 4th of July, certainly saw my first back to school ads and we know that more and more...
School shopping happens online now with the class schedules and class needs and everything posted.
And this gives scammers an opportunity to convince parents to make a purchase and then never send the promised product or deliver poor quality products.
And online shopping scams were the most reported scam on social media, according to the Federal Trade Commission in 2025.
And more than 40% of people who lost money
to a scam on social media said that it started when they ordered a product they saw in an online ad.
So we want to be sure that this is expanded to the conversation of back to school, if you're doing it online.
And there's different ways that consumers can avoid wasting their money and energy during the back to school season if they look for those...
those techniques scammers are using, and that's dishonest ads, copycat websites, poor quality products, and fake online reviews.
Okay, is any of this kind of unsolicited?
Do things get sent to you, email, text, that type of thing?
We see that these scammers send out posts.
Some of it's on social media.
Sometimes you're going to get a text or an email message if you're kind of tied to one of their email generation lists or connected in some way to the platform where they're posting that information.
So really pay attention.
Shoppers, you may receive that.
dishonest ad through the social media feed or that text message or in that email box and they're going to be promoting those more expensive items like bags and clothing and laptops that usually have limited supplies or are harder to find with good deals and the ads and links can lead to websites with this dishonest or outright scam.
aspect to them and when I say that I mean often it's going to be a copycat website leading you to a place that you normally trust, have familiarity with, things seem normal there but it will really be the scammer having posted that website and trying to trick you into using theirs rather than the legitimate website.
So should you use credit cards so you have a record of the purchase?
That's probably the most solid tip we have for people is plan to pay with a credit card, which offers that anti-fraud protection.
Other things you can do is really try to confirm the web address where you're at.
Type it in yourself if you're able to, but watch for the security aspect.
before transmitting different information.
Try and do your own research by using search words like scam and complaint and pay attention to reviews that you're reading.
Really go down to the lowest rated reviews, read through them and find the common thread across multiple bad reviews and pay attention to those so you can see if they're legitimate reviews or if they might be fake posted reviews.
Okay Now this next one kind of caught my interest because my sister Diane does a little bit of investing in gold and apparently There are government imposter scams out there that which are leading to losses and gold bars
This one's hard.
It's a recent complaint that we received here at Dad Cap where a consumer liquidated their entire life savings, purchased gold bars, and then gave them to a scammer who was impersonating a government agency and they lost 2.5 million dollars in total.
So really hard one for us in working with partners on it.
But what happened is that the scam
Sammer impersonated the Federal Trade Commission, our national consumer protection partner.
by what they thought the FTC, the consumer was.
This scammer convinced the consumer that their finances were caught up in a scheme involving criminal cartel and money laundering, and then they claimed that they could help them, but in order to help, they had to sign a fake non-disclosure agreement, and they pressured them to keep this an entire secret from friends and family and everything.
And then the scammer talked the consumer through the process of liquidating their life savings, transferring it to a bank, converting it to hundreds of gold bars.
And the last step of this was that a scammer arrived at the consumer's house to pick up the gold bars, drove away, and now the consumers never saw or heard from this scammer again.
Wow.
OK.
Next one has to do with student loans.
The safe plan is ending, which of course is an opportunity for scammers.
Also.
You said it right.
It's an opportunity for scammer anytime something changes in a normal process that we have our program ends.
And so.
Before July 1st, SAVE plan enrollees were notified that as of July 1st, they'd have 90 days to switch to another plan option or they'd be automatically placed into a plan.
And borrowers who are affected by these changes should immediately check their current repayment plan and status.
Find out what other plans are available to them and then take action to switch the plan that's best for them rather than having it switched.
But because of these changes and there being a time clock on it, scammers are going to try to steal borrowers personal and financial information.
They'll solicit fees for services that borrowers can do for themselves for free and try and take over borrowers accounts.
And so borrowers need to be sure that they
do not ever give out their FSA ID, that federal student aid identification number, and don't sign any third party authorizations or power of attorney forms because that will hand over the personal information that scammers need as well as give those legal rights to make decisions on borrower's behalf.
And remember that
If you're asked for a payment upfront for assistance, these fees are prohibited from legitimate loan service providers.
So that's a red flag to a scammer, as well as being told that there's a great offer, but there's this big limited time offer.
That's another red flag.
Pressure, right?
any promises about loan forgiveness or cancellation, independents can't do that.
So they can't make those promises, especially when they don't even know your circumstances.
You need to be sure that you just deal directly with your servicer or reach out to reliable resource information.
And one of those would be the Wisconsin Student Loan Helpline.
There's a hotline of 833.
589-0750 or the Wisconsin Coalition on Student Debt.
And you can find them at debtsmarts.org.
And all true information about what's happening is going to be owned out with the U.S.
Department of Education and that's studentaid.gov.
All good advice.
Michelle, if somebody wants to get a hold of DebtCAP, your office online.
Can you give us the phone number and the link, the website link?
All good stuff.
Michelle, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
We've been talking with Michelle Reinhardt.