I can't believe I almost just fell for this.
Short Info Set: I'm a banker. I hear about these scams all the time and I still was going along with it until I heard a few BIG RED FLAGS. This is the first time in my life this has happened to me.
I received a call from someone pretending to be from my local police department. They said I had a warrant out for my arrest. Now, I haven't caused any single bit of trouble since I was a rather young person so this is surprising.
The 'officer' explains that because I'm obviously not a trouble maker based on my record, he had his Lieutenant approve an option for me to come down and clear it up without an arrest
(I'm proofreading for spelling and it occurs to me this was BS, too. If they had a warrant for me, they wouldn't give me a heads up, they'd come arrest me ASAP).
Next, I'm asked to come to the police station where I'll be able to post a $962 bail and be on my way. He said I would have a court date in the near future where the judge would likely dismiss my charges and the bail would be refunded because this warrant is obviously a mistake. The scammer said it seems like this all a system glitch creating a misunderstanding as he's had to call multiple other people to deal with this. He stated that I should have received certified mail asking to respond regarding this situation. My response of course is that I haven't received any certified mail. This was supposedly related to my cars registration - Red Flag #1 - Both our cars are registered and I should have heard this Red Flag immediately. All I was hearing was warrant and I'm going to get arrested (In banking it's very, very bad if we get arrested for a variety of reasons, think various licenses, etc.)
So I'm in my car on the way to the police department to figure this out and suddenly the guy says, - Red Flag #2 - "OK, I need you to go to the 7/11 just down the street from the Police Station where you can use our payment system there to post bail. You'll need to do this because we need to make sure your payment is guaranteed". Now, my BS detector is going off - There's no way they'd be letting me go to 7/11 rather than come straight to the police station if they were serious. I was still a little scared but my wheels were turning that I'm being scammed right now. I make it to the 7/11 and this 'payment system' doesn't exist. Now, I'm supposed to buy prepaid gift cards - Red Flag #3 - No one - And I MEAN NO ONE - Is going to demand payment in pre paid cards. I could explain more why this doesn't make sense but I won't since this is getting long.
At this point, I hung up the phone. The scammer called me back but I ignored that call and he hasn't tried calling again. Since I'm a paranoid person, I called the police department just to explain the call to an officer. I asked the police officer if she could please check to make sure there wasn't a warrant for my arrest. She laughed at me a little bit but she said she'd check. *SHOCKER* --- There's no warrant and she assured me I could head back home. Thanked her very much for her time.
TL;DR - The police are not going to call you and demand you pay bail in gift cards. They're going to surprise you and haul your butt to jail. If ANYONE calls you and says you need to purchase gift cards or anything like that to avoid some sort of trouble or controversy, IT'S A SCAM! I can't believe I even got in the car and went that far before I realized it was all BS. I should have noticed the first red flag about the registration on my car.
The reason I'm sharing this is because even as a banker who helps people with various scam scenarios at least a couple times a week, I was initially thinking "Oh crap, I better deal with this ASAP". This one had my going until I saw some very obvious red flags and terminated the call.
Anyway, I hope my almost really crappy evening both entertains and educates so no one falls victim to a scam like this. Hope you all have an awesome evening.
Submitted April 09, 2021 at 10:03PM by bankerII https://ift.tt/3t5vibf
