Phone scammers intent on grabbing your hard-earned money and willing to do or say just about anything to do it are impersonating local police during phone sessions designed to separate us from our cash.
We have documented the antics of – mostly international – phone scammers here in the past, even showing the inner workings of a phone scam “boiler room,” but these calls keep coming and people keep paying and now they’re borrowing the names of local police in order to secure “fines.”
“We have received multiple reports of scam callers who are ‘spoofing’ the police department’s phone number,” wrote San Ramon Police Captain Denton Carlson. “Several community members received calls today in which the phone number displayed was our mainline number (925-973-2700). During the call, the male on the phone identified himself as Lt. Pratt, Chief Pratt, or Officer Carlson. The caller told the individual who answered the phone they had not responded to a subpoena and were in contempt of court. The caller continued and stated there was a $5,000 fine, which needed to be paid immediately to avoid jail time. Fortunately, none of our community members have fallen victim to this scam.”
Well, that last bit is a relief but it has certainly not always been the case, with some locals losing thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars to people often with nothing more than a bank of phones and spoofing programs available to them.
Remember, the San Ramon Police Department will NEVER contact you via telephone regarding any outstanding fines, or request payment for any services over the phone, EVER! Nor will any other police agency we’ve ever heard off.
They keep calling because we keep sending them money.
Such an obvious scam the real mystery is why people keep falling for it.