Scammers routinely have been calling victims<\/a> demanding money or payment over the phone.<\/p>\nThe callers impersonate deputy sheriffs and police officers \u2014 using the names of actual officers \u2014 telling victims that they missed jury duty or failed to appear for court.<\/p>\n
The scammers tell potential victims that they could be detained if they show up in person. To avoid that, they pressure the victims to send a payment via cryptocurrency such as bitcoin.<\/p>\n
Now, the scammers have taken it up a level, creating fake arrest warrants and documentation to entice payment to resolve the warrants, District Attorney John T. Adams said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scammers use numbers and names and documents that may seem authentic, but they are not and are part of the sophisticated efforts that the scammers use to try to exploit people,\u201d Adams said Monday.<\/p>\n
The documents, sent electronically to victims, include purported U.S. Department of Justice directions on how to make payments at kiosks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was another scam that was attempted last week,\u201d Adams said. \u201cWe also heard of a number of people who were contacted. The documents look authentic, but again, it\u2019s a scam and we cannot emphasize enough that local, state or federal authorities will never demand payment and especially through a ATM bitcoin kiosk.\u201d<\/p>\n
In February, Adams and Sheriff Mandy Miller pointed out that caller IDs can be spoofed to look like legitimate numbers. Officials advised not trusting the number that appears on your screen.<\/p>\n
If you receive a suspicious call, they advise never giving out any personal or financial information.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are contacted, just hang up,\u201d Adams said Monday.<\/p>\n
Adams previously urged residents to share information about the scams with relatives who may be vulnerable to these schemes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the latest wrinkle in scammers\u2019 attempts to get you to pay up, they are creating fake arrest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-164502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164502","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=164502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}