{"id":112335,"date":"2026-02-12T20:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/112335\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T20:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T20:13:10","slug":"police-warn-of-bitcoin-scam-in-northampton-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/112335\/","title":{"rendered":"Police warn of bitcoin scam in Northampton County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Police in Northampton County are warning residents of a scam in which callers pretend to be county sheriffs and demand payment by bitcoin.<\/p>\n<p>Residents are getting calls from unknown callers claiming that there is a warrant for their arrest for failing to report for jury duty, according to a state police news release. The callers tell the victims to make payments through bitcoin for the warrants to be voided.<\/p>\n<p>This month, one person was scammed out of $16,500 before realizing it was a scam, police said. In December, another person was scammed out of $10,000.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone receiving these calls should hang up immediately. Law enforcement never asks for payment over the phone, and do not accept alternate payment such as bitcoin.<\/p>\n<p>Scammers have used the Northampton County Sheriff\u2019s Office to deceive residents out of money on multiple occasions. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2026\/01\/14\/scam-alert-about-payments\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Last month<\/a>, District Attorney Stephen Baratta said scammers appear to be outside of the United States and using encrypted communications platforms to contact people. They usually instruct people to make payments through bitcoin or other forms of cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police in Northampton County are warning residents of a scam in which callers pretend to be county sheriffs&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":112336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,202,182,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-112335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}