The Liberty County Sheriff’s Office is warning of a scam that attempts to gain money from local citizens by threatening of alleged outstanding federal warrants. The scam is a recycled effort that has been attempted in the past. In recent days, local citizens have reported the scam attempt to the sheriff’s office and those in neighboring counties in recent days.
The scam begins with a call from the scammer claiming to represent the sheriff’s office, and even uses names of past and present deputies to gain the trust of the victim. The scammer at first uses the legitimate phone number of the sheriff’s office and later provides a secondary phone number where the victim can arrange for a money transfer to have the alleged federal warrant recalled.
“The scam caller will also name some of our Liberty County judges, who allegedly issued the warrant, to further verify the authenticity of the so-called federal warrant,” said Capt. Ken DeFoor, a spokesperson for the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office.
“The public should be informed and fully aware that the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office nor any other law enforcement agency handles their warrant service in this manner. The scam suspects depend on two factors to force compliance from the victims. First is the fear of immediate arrest if they do not forward the requested money and second is the rush of a time frame to accomplish this money transfer, thus giving the victims little time to think through this fake phone call threat before responding,” DeFoor added.
While confirming these scam calls with other sheriff offices, one of the other agencies reported that in their respective county, the scam operation seems to now be targeting nurses and physician assistants as their primary targets. The public should, once again, be reminded of the fact that there are dozens of different types of scam operations out there, all with but one objective, and that is to relieve you of your money.
“The scam suspects will sometime change the story line and change the phone numbers on a daily, if not hourly, basis, but the objective is still the same and that is to frighten the victim and rush the victim into making an emotional decision rather than a well- thought-out decision to check for facts before doing anything,” DeFoor said.