LCSO WARNS OF INCREASED SCAM CALLS

The general public should be aware that the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office as well as Harris County S.O, Hardin County S.O, Jefferson County S.O, and Chambers County S.O. has confirmed that during the last several days, a SCAM operation has been reported by numerous citizens where the citizen is threatened by arrest for some alleged outstanding federal warrant and they will be arrested shortly if a certain amount of money is not sent to the respective Sheriff’s Office immediately. Liberty County Sheriff’s Deputies are reporting the SCAM caller(s) will give the citizen the actual telephone number of the LCSO and even give the name or names of past or present deputies to contact and then give a secondary telephone number to those same deputies to arrange for the money transfer and re-call of the alleged federal warrant. The SCAM caller will also name some of our Liberty County Judges that allegedly issued the warrant to further verify the authenticity of the so called “federal warrant”.

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 secondly 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.  If anyone should receive such a SCAM call, they should call the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office at (936) 336-4500 and NOT the secondary number given to arrange for a money transfer and request to talk to a Sheriff’s Supervisor.

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. As always, as soon as you suspect it is a SCAM call, the victim should simply close out the telephone call and report the SCAM call to your local law enforcement agency.