We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
Blaine County Sheriff Glenn Heustis explained a new phone scam that recently came to light through the County Attorney’s Office. A local resident was called and told her nephew had missed a court appearance and the “Blaine County District Attorney” had issued a warrant for his arrest. The concerned relative was told to call a toll free number to find how to “cancel’ the warrant—it would require some amount of payment.
Deputy County Attorney reports the call
Jordan Salo, the Deputy County Attorney, took the call from the relative wondering what the call was all about. Salo said, “As soon as she started describing the legal terms used by the caller several red flags popped up. There is no District Attorney in any Montana county, though that is a county-level office in many states.” Another warning sign was the use of the term “cancel.” Salo explained, “The only way to ‘quash’ (the correct legal term) a warrant is to appear before a judge or through an attorney’s written motion, money is never accepted as a way to stop the process.”
Salo went to Sheriff Heustis to report the call and encouraged him to get the word out to locals that this latest scam was being run locally. Neither Heustis nor Salo were aware of any other Blaine County residents who were targeted in such a way.
Both Heustis and Salo also noted that it was not ethical for the county attorney’s office to contact someone with an outstanding warrant. Salo explained, “Ethically, our office cannot talk to the person with a warrant. We can talk to their attorney, if they are represented, but never directly to the defendant.” Heustis added, “If we have a warrant to be served, we just show up. We don’t call and we don’t warn someone they have an outstanding warrant to be served. A warning would not make sense since we want to find the person, serve the warrant and avoid possible flight before the warrant is served.”
Other red flags also indicated a scam. Salo said, “If our office contacts someone, we give out our local number, we don’t have a “1-800” number like was given with the message. The local person received the call on her house phone, but the caller left a message when she didn’t answer. Her brother and another relative also received similar messages, on their cell phones. That suggests the person running the scam had a good bit of information about the nephew and his family’s phone contacts.” The scammer identified himself as Derek James, working for the Blaine County District Attorney’s Office.
Some points to be learned
from this incident
Salo said, “You can’t just send money and quash a warrant, that requires some sort of action before a judge or initiated in a motion by a lawyer.” Heustis added, “If it sounds too good to be true, it’s likely not true. This is a new one for us, but if it’s happening here it’s likely been done successfully somewhere else. Never send money to an unknown caller and let someone in law enforcement know when an attempted scam is made.”
About this time last year the Internal Revenue Service issued a caution about callers posing as IRS agents and demanding money for unpaid taxes or some other tax-related problem. That scam resulted in nearly 290,000 reported fraudulent calls to con money from unsuspecting citizens. No doubt more attempts were made but never reported. The lesson from this latest incident: be cautious, never send money when requested over the phone and report any suspected scam attempt to law enforcement.
