{"id":128599,"date":"2026-03-03T18:09:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/128599\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T18:09:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T18:09:12","slug":"bitcoin-fraud-lehigh-valley-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/128599\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin Fraud \u2013 Lehigh Valley Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Published March 03. 2026 11:43AM<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">The Pennsylvania State Police Troop M \u2013 Bethlehem and the Northampton County Sheriffs Department are urging residents not to fall victim to Bitcoin scams involving warrant payments, and to hang up the phone immediately if they suspect the call is a scam.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">Residents are receiving phone calls from unknown callers indicating they are \u201cNorthampton County Sheriffs\u201d and there is a warrant for their arrest for failing to report for jury duty. Callers advise the victim\u2019s payment via Bitcoin is needed for the warrants to be voided. Callers often tell victims that they have to stay on the phone for long periods of time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">Recent fraudulent incidents include:<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">\u2022 Dec. 20, 2025: Victim received phone call from a scammer indicating they were a Northampton County Sheriff and had (2) warrants for her arrest for failing to report for jury duty. Victim made (3) Bitcoin transactions which totaled $10,000<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">\u2022 Feb. 9, 2026: Victim received a phone call from a scammer indicating they were a Northampton County Sheriff and indicated there was a warrant for her arrest and she needed to make payments via Bitcoin. The victim deposited $4,000 in Bitcoin transactions prior to Troopers making a traffic stop indicting it was a scam.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">\u2022 Feb. 11, 2026: Victim received a phone call from a scammer indicating they were a Northampton County Sheriff and had (2) warrants for her arrest and needed to make payment via Bitcoin. The victim made (2) transactions totaling $16,500 before realizing it was a scam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published March 03. 2026 11:43AM The Pennsylvania State Police Troop M \u2013 Bethlehem and the Northampton County Sheriffs&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-128599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128599","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=128599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}