BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office is warning residents about a scam targeting local churches.

According to authorities, an area church got a call from a scammer who identified himself as being a technician with Entergy. The caller said the company was sending a crew to the church to disconnect their service due to lack of payment.

The caller provided the church representative with a 1-800 number to call so the payment could be made. When the representative called the number, an automatic answering service answered.

Authorities say, the representative was directed to a specific "payment processing center" which was a MoneyGram outlet facility. At that point, the person realized it was a scam.

Deputies say Entergy's website has specific instructions on how and where payments can be legitimately made.