Sorry, there's no stash of Obama utility cash

A New Jersey utility is trying to convince customers President Obama doesn't have a special account set up to pay their power bills. No word on how many people may have fallen for the scam and shared their Social Security numbers or other personal information hoping to get a piece of the action from a non-existent program.

Here's part of a PSE&G news release via PR Newswire:

NEWARK, N.J., June 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- PSE&G is telling its customers that they should not fall for the latest urban myth which claims that President Obama is directly paying their utility bills. The state's largest utility is reporting that customers are being duped into believing that their bills can be paid electronically using a Federal Reserve bank routing number. 

The myth, which has been spreading person to person via phone, Twitter and texting, started as a nationwide phony bill payment program that promised to credit or pay utility bills in exchange for personal information, including social security numbers. 

Customers are being led to believe that their utility bills will be paid on their behalf if they use a Federal Reserve bank routing number. While use of the routing number when making an online payment appears to result in a zero bill balance, the funds are not available from the federal government and the attempted payment will fail similar to a returned check. PSE&G is telling its customers that this is a scam, there are no payments being applied to their accounts, and their PSE&G account balances remain due.