BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 A woman nearly lost thousands of dollars at a local Bitcoin machine after a scammer posing as a Northampton County Sheriff\u2019s deputy convinced her to pay up.<\/p>\n
The transaction was stopped when off-duty Bethlehem police officer Hunter Stom noticed something was wrong and stepped in.<\/p>\n
“She’s like, oh my gosh, how do I get this back? I was like, first off, hang up the phone. You’re done talking to these people,” Stom said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Stom, the woman had already lost around $2,000 to the scammers before he intervened and prevented her from sending more money.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem police say scams like this are common in the area.<\/p>\n
William Audelo, a Bethlehem police captain, said the department receives multiple calls each day involving scams.<\/p>\n
“We’re seeing it impact our community. We have multiple calls a day involving some kind of fraud or scam,” Audelo said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stom is urging the public to be cautious, especially when receiving calls from unknown numbers, and to always verify who they are speaking with before sending any money.<\/p>\n
“We’re never going to want Bitcoin or Apple pay cards. We’re never going to want that. That’s one of the biggest indicators that we try and tell folks. We’re never going to ask for any type of digital currency or gift card or anything like that,” Stom said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police remind residents that law enforcement agencies will never request payment through cryptocurrency, gift cards or other nontraditional methods, and anyone who receives such a call should report it immediately.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 A woman nearly lost thousands of dollars at a local Bitcoin machine after a scammer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":{"0":"post-167067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-bethlehem-area"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167067","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=167067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}