The Fort Wright Police Department is hosting a free Scam & Fraud Awareness Class on Thursday, Nov. 12, open to the public.
The class runs from 2 to 4 p.m. ET at the Pivot Realty Building, 1717 Dixie Highway, in the lower-level auditorium, according to a city announcement. The session will cover the latest scams and ways residents can protect their finances.
The department also advertised a public scam-awareness session for May 26 at the Fort Wright City Building, according to a separate city posting.
The classes build on work by Detective Mike Gross, who created and taught the department's senior scam and cybercrime courses. The department's 2025 annual report noted Gross received a department citation for the program. Fort Wright Police Chief Colonel Jonathan Colwell wrote in the report that community engagement, including scam prevention classes, remained central to the department's work in 2025.
The timing tracks with a shift in how scammers operate. The NKY Tribune reported Oct. 27 that the classic grandparent scam has entered a new phase. Criminals can now clone a loved one's voice from a short audio clip scraped off social media and place a call that sounds like a grandchild begging for bail money, according to the report, which cited research from NordVPN.
That research found commercial voice-cloning listings on dark web forums and Telegram channels grew 7.4 times between January–July 2024 and January–July 2026.
Scam warnings are not new to the area. The Kenton County Attorney's office posted a scam alert on X in September 2025 warning that scammers were texting residents while posing as the DMV, claiming recipients owed money for overdue traffic tickets.
Fort Wright police logged four fraud cases and three identity theft cases in 2025, according to the annual report. The department handled 7,619 total calls for service that year.
The Nov. 12 class is free. Residents can visit the city's website or call the Fort Wright Police Department at 859-331-1700 for more information.
