JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A Jacksonville woman is issuing a warning to others after falling victim to an elaborate scam involving the Duval County jail system.<\/p>\n
Theresa Roushey says she was waiting outside the John E. Goode Pretrial Detention Facility in downtown Jacksonville to pick up a close friend she refers to as a brother, who was being released after months behind bars.<\/p>\n
While sitting outside the facility, Theresa received a call from someone identifying himself as Captain Richardson with the jail. <\/p>\n
The caller told her that nearly $1,800 would need to be paid before her friend could be released on an ankle monitor.<\/p>\n
What made him seem convincing was that he knew details that only someone on the inside would know, including the color of her shirt, her name and her friend\u2019s probation officer by name.<\/p>\n
Roushey made the payment. But the caller wasn\u2019t done.<\/p>\n
He then told her an additional $3,200 in court costs would need to be paid, and she paid that too, all through a Cash App account.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t until her friend\u2019s probation officer told them the whole thing was a scam that she realized what had happened. <\/p>\n
In total, Roushey lost more than $5,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brother didn\u2019t deserve that. And the people that helped contribute to that didn\u2019t deserve that. And anybody else that\u2019s been affected by it doesn\u2019t deserve that,\u201d Roushey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause no matter what happens to someone, for them to end up in jail, certain people, they don\u2019t deserve for things like that to happen to them. It\u2019s not fair.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Columbia County Sheriff\u2019s Office says it has recently dealt with the same problem, warning that scammers call shortly after a loved one is arrested, providing what they describe as \u201clegitimate sounding instructions\u201d on how to complete the release process.<\/p>\n
Investigators say the Cash App account the money was sent to has since been blocked and a complaint has been filed.<\/p>\n
Officials say legitimate jail and court officials will never ask for payment through Cash App, Zelle or any other peer-to-peer payment app.<\/p>\n
If you receive a suspicious call asking for money related to a jail release, hang up and contact the facility directly using a publicly listed phone number.<\/p>\n
If you believe you have been targeted by a similar scam, contact your local sheriff\u2019s office immediately.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 A Jacksonville woman is issuing a warning to others after falling victim to an elaborate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,1872],"class_list":["post-376993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}