ANDERSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WATE) — Anderson County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) is warning residents of an ongoing phone scam.
Callers are claiming to be deputies with ACSO, and telling victims they have a warrant out for their arrest and that they must pay them to avoid being arrested.
Lieutenant Robert Mansfield with ACSO said they have seen an influx of scam callers impersonating deputies.
“Law enforcement agencies will never call you and ask you to pay them to get out of trouble or stay out of trouble,” Mansfield said. “Anderson County Sheriff’s Office will never call you and ask for money. We don’t collect fines, we don’t collect fees, that’s just not something our agency does.”
He said the easiest way to spot a scammer is the payment method they ask for.
“Is it with gift cards? Is it with bitcoin? Anything unusual like that is a pretty good indicator that it’s a fraud, you should hang up immediately, and please contact us and we will document your concern and investigate as much as we can,” he said.
Outside of the callers claiming there is a warrant out for the recipient of the call’s arrest, there are some other claims they may make.
“A lot of it involves their social security number being suspended, and they need to pay to have it unfrozen, some of it is related to tax things like that, it’s the ones that we’ve seen an uptick more lately that pretend to be law enforcement,” Mansfield said.
The sheriff’s office looks into the calls as much as they can, but the investigations often have to be passed on to larger agencies.
“Whenever we are able to trace a phone number or an IP address, it does often go outside our jurisdiction, so we let either interstate agencies know about it or federal agencies know about it,” Mansfield said.
Some scam callers have also been able to manipulate the called ID to make it appear as if the call is coming from ACSO.
Unsure if a call is a scam or not? Report it to local law enforcement.
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