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High Point issues warning of city inspection impostors

An official High Point city vehicle
Courtesy city of High Point
An official High Point city vehicle

High Point officials are warning residents and business owners that people may be impersonating city inspectors.

The impostors falsely claim to represent the city and demand payment for inspections.

City officials say inspectors will never request or accept remittance from business owners or tenants for those services.

Chris Whaley, High Point’s inspections services director, says city officials are getting the word out after a local restaurant was targeted.

“They scheduled it over the phone, so the guy never showed up on his scheduled date," he says. "He said at the very beginning that money was going to be required for him to come out and do an inspection. The business owner had dealt with us enough that he knew that it was not normal.”

Whaley says legitimate city inspectors will have an ID and will drive a vehicle with the city logo.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.