A San Antonio area man warns the community about a scam using fear of arrest to get victims to hand over money.
A KSAT viewer who almost got fooled by a scammer on the phone is sharing his story, hoping to save someone else from handing over money.
The viewer, who asked to remain anonymous, says he received a random call where an authoritative-sounding man gave him his name and a badge number, and told him he had received a summons to appear for jury duty.
“The whole setup took like half an hour, I mean I was on the phone with them for probably 50 minutes or an hour,” he said.
It wasn’t until the end of the phone call when a second person on the phone pushed him to hand over $3,000 that he realized it was a scam.
“I was pretty close, yeah. I was glad that my wife was there to listen in. And that was the thing, too. They were like, nobody else can listen to the phone call because of this gag order from the court,” he said.
After his wife pulled him out of that call, he did a quick online search and found this KSAT story from a year ago in which the scammers followed the same script. He also called the sheriff’s office and they confirmed it was a scam.
“I was pretty close to getting fooled, and like I said, I’m educated, I’m young, I am on the phone all the time. I felt like I should have been more aware that it was a scam, I suppose. So I guess just a warning to everybody else, don’t trust everything that everybody tells you on the phone,” he said.
Here’s the script that the thieves followed:
- Pretended to be with law enforcement and gave him a name and badge number.
- Used words like summon for jury duty or arrest; gave a real judge’s name; and used court verbiage like gag order or arrest warrant.
- The caller had the victim write down information, repeat it back and kept him on the phone for about 30 minutes before asking for money.
- Callers spoof phone numbers to appear to be official law enforcement offices.
- Victims were not allowed to talk to anyone else or an attorney.
- A second person got on the phone to scare him into paying thousands of dollars.
He hopes that by sharing his story, he can prevent others from falling prey.
Read more:BCSO warns of deceptive phone scams demanding money from citizens
