Greg's Corner

Police impersonators threaten to take your children

By Greg Collier

Before we get started with today’s story, we wanted to bring you an article about the ongoing Zelle scam, which you can read here. The Zelle scam is so prolific that we just wanted to remind our readers about it.

However, our main story for the day is about police impersonation scams. This is when scammers call their victims posing as a law enforcement agency. The scammers will pose as anyone from your local police department all the way up to the FBI. These scams often have different tactics the scammers can use, but they typically have the same purpose. The scammers will threaten you with arrest over some infraction that you didn’t commit, so they can extort a payment out of you.

When scammers pose as local police, they may tell you that you missed jury duty, or you have a warrant out for your arrest. They’ll then tell you the matter can be cleared up with a payment done over the phone. On the federal level, we’ve seen scammers pose as the FBI, Homeland Security, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In these cases, the scammers will say you’re connected with a much more serious crime, such as drug trafficking or money laundering. Again, the scammers will threaten you with arrest if a payment isn’t made at that moment.

More recently, The U.S. Marshals have issued a warning that says scammers are posing as marshals and pulling the same impersonation scam. This time, however, the scammers are turning up the heat on their victims. The scammers are now threatening their victims not only with arrest by the U.S. Marshals, but also threatening them with losing their job and losing custody of their children. This is a scare tactic designed to keep the victim unnerved and on the phone.

Thankfully, this scam has an easy solution. Just hang up. No legitimate law enforcement agency in the United States will ever ask for money over the phone. Neither will they call you to threaten you with arrest.

Another way you can tell it’s a scam is if the caller asks you for payment in ways such as gift cards, pre-paid debit cards, money transfers, cryptocurrencies, or payment apps. These methods of payment are virtually untraceable and almost impossible to recover.