The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office is warning residents to beware of phone scams happening across the county.
Cumberland County Investigator Bobby Moore said one scam involves residents receiving calls from spoofed phone numbers that appear to be from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. The callers claim the victim has missed grand jury duty or has an outstanding warrant and demand immediate payment to avoid arrest. Moore said the scammers typically request payment through cryptocurrency, gift cards, or wire transfers.
“Anybody that calls and says they’re a law enforcement officer and they are requesting some type of payment, either a wire transfer or Bitcoin machine or gift cards, to use gift cards, that’s going to be a scam,” Moore said.
Moore also said it is not a procedure for law enforcement agencies to call and tell someone they have a warrant for them. Moore said the best way to avoid the scam is to hang up and call the Sheriff’s office to confirm that it is truly them before entertaining the caller any further.
“If they ever see anything suspicious or they ever get contacted by someone saying they are from a fraud department or anything like that, don’t hesitate to call the Sheriff’s Office and speak with a deputy or an investigator so we can, as many of these things we’ve got coming up, we can kind of guide these people into knowing that they are about to be scammed before they give their hard-earned money away,” Moore said.
Moore said it is disappointing to see residents get scammed daily by people who are pretending to be law enforcement.
“It’s very frustrating because these people depend upon us, and especially here in our county with our sheriff,” Moore said. “The public really appreciates us, and they feel secure in us, you know, to help to serve and protect them. So that when they see our names, I’m sure that a lot of these people, especially the elderly community, they’re going to think that they’re actually talking to somebody from the sheriff’s office. And it’s a scare tactic. It’s a scare tactic to get them to go do this. And then a lot of times, after they do it, they realize that, hey, this is not how the sheriff’s office works. And then they’ll come to our office and we’ll, you know, regretfully inform them they’ve been, you know, in a scam.”
Moore said that it is very tough to stop these scams. Moore said in most cases, once the scammer gets the money, it is gone.
“What happens when you put your money into these Bitcoin machines, they will give a wallet address or a QR code to send it to,” Moore said. “It’s a really long wallet address. It’s very anonymous. They can send it to that wallet. They can then forward it and split that payment into multiple wallets. And a lot of times this money is going overseas, such as Nigeria, places like that. And it’s just, once that money hits those Bitcoin machines, it is pretty well gone. There’s no chance of recovering it. Myself and TBI and I work with here, we try our best to try to put holds on that money, but it’s so time sensitive. As soon as you put it in that machine, it’s going to be gone, and there’s no getting it back usually.”
