It may sound like old news, but three county Sheriff’s in the area all warned of a rash of scam calls on their social media pages on Thursday, and that’s something new. Whether that speaks to the sheer volume of calls now going out, or a surge, the message from the Sheriffs is the same – don’t send money in response to a phone call.
Locally, the Sheriff Office Communications Center has received numerous reports of someone claiming to be a Sheboygan County Sheriff’s Sergeant or Lieutenant from the “Citations and Warrants Division”. We checked to be sure and, no, there isn’t one of those, and nobody will ever call you insisting that you missed a court date and need to pay up to avoid being arrested.
The Winnebago County Sheriff reports taking a call from an Oshkosh woman who received a text, purportedly from her “pastor” requesting a response. Upon calling the number given by the supposed “pastor” she was asked to buy Apple gift cards as a way to help a hospitalized cancer victim. The woman wisely verified that the number didn’t belong to her pastor, and thwarted the scam by not complying. But in other cases, that number can be faked to look right, and are many times not traceable.
That appears to be the case with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, which has been dealing with those receiving phone calls from an impersonator claiming to be an official warning them of a missed Jury Duty date, resulting in a $6,000 fine. The threat there is to either pay up using Bitcoin or be arrested. The Sheriff warns that spoofing technology is being used to make the number look genuine.
While the techniques vary, the response in all cases is the same…never send money requested via a phone call or text. Either just hang up, or as in the case in Oshkosh, verify the details with a call to the proper source. And remember, you will never be approached by legitimate law enforcement to pay for anything over the phone.
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