IONIA, Mich. - For the last several weeks, Ionia County residents have been subject to a telephone call scam in which the caller claims to be a police officer or deputy sheriff and instructs the recipient of the phone call to purchase pre-paid gift cards to pay off a bond on a warrant or that they will be arrested.
The sheriff's office has gotten wind of a new variation to this scam, where scammers are targeted residents on the Michigan Sex Offender Registry (SOR). Subjects of the scam calls are made to believe they have violated the terms of their SOR and subject to arrest. The scammers will take information off of the MI-SOR to target specific people in the community.
The sheriff's office says they've gotten reports that scammers are using realistic sounding court docket numbers and often tell subjects they need to provide a DNA-sample for their non-compliance. All of this leads the scammer to trick the person into providing money.
The scammers have also started using real names of Ionia County Sheriff’s Office members, specifically using the name of Detective Sgt. Phillip Hesche. Subjects are then directed to call a telephone number that is “spoofed” making it appear local, when in actuality the calls are originating overseas
No law enforcement agency will ever take bond money by phone by credit/debit card or via any sort of pre-paid gift card, iTunes gift card, Green-Dot, or Moneygram.
If you receive such a call, and suspect that call to be a scam, hang up and call your local police agency to verify that no call was placed by them.
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