BOWLING GREEN, Ky.- Friday morning, Sheriff Brett Hightower traveled to Oakland Baptist Church to enjoy a lunch and talk about current crime trends, specifically phone and text message scams.

There was quite the crowd today for Hightower at Oakland Baptist, including his mother-in-law in attendance.

Hightower discussed several topics, such as the yearly budget in the city and some new additions to the sheriff’s department, including a new K-9. However, scam calls were the talk of this lunch.

He stated this is the number one scam they are currently seeing, and what’s so scary about them is how genuine they may seem.

“I’m telling you, these are so, so realistic because they start getting information from you and you don’t realize you’re giving it to them.” Hightower said. 

The people making these calls may tell a person that they have something like an unpaid traffic ticket, ran a red light or failed to appear in court, and they may have information on you already, such as your address and how long you’ve lived there, to make it seem real.

At that point, they will ask you to remain on the phone and drive to the station, where they will inform you that if you arrive at the station you will be arrested if you don’t come with money.

They will then send you to some sort of store, such as a Kroger, and that’s where the scam begins.

“A lot of times they will have you buy gift cards. And you can only put up to $500 on each gift card. So they may tell you you got to get, you know, six gift cards and put $500 on each one. And then you go out the parking lot and then you read off those numbers to them. And then as soon as they get those numbers, guess what? They swipe that money. That money’s gone,” Hightower explained. 

Scammers have been able to get numerous members of the community to fork over thousands of dollars from this very tactic. Not only is this done with phone calls but text messages as well.

Hightower urged those in attendance to stay away from these calls and messages and not to click on any link sent in any message they receive.

He stated this is not how law enforcement operates and if they start asking for anything monetary its a scam.

“If they’re asking you for money and asking you to send in gift cards or bitcoin or any type of monetary exchange like this, then you know, it’s a scam,” Hightower claimed. 

Like he said, they will not call you for any of those things. In fact, they will take a different approach if they are coming for you.

“If we’re gonna come tell you, we’re not gonna let you know we’re coming,” Hightower said.