WAYNE COUNTY, Mich. – The Wayne County Sheriff’s Office is warning people to be cautious of an aggressive phone scam in which callers impersonate sheriff’s deputies and claim that individuals are facing arrest for missing jury duty.
“The sheriff’s office would never, ever call anybody about missing jury duty or things like that,” Wayne County Sheriff Raphael Washington said on Wednesday. “That’s not what we do.”
The call starts with the scammer claiming to be a sheriff’s deputy, going so far as to use the names of actual deputies, and claims the scam target has either missed jury duty, failed to pay tolls or tickets, or has a pending arrest warrant.
Local 4 obtained audio of one of the calls.
It lasted more than 30 minutes, with the scammer pressing the victim to stay on the line and not contact his family, attorney, or anyone at the sheriff’s office directly.
The persistent fake deputy claims the man has “missed jury duty” and has a pending criminal case against him that can only go away if he pays a “bond.”
He does so while telling him not to get off the phone to contact an attorney or family.
“There’s no there’s no version of this that makes any sense to me, that I can’t talk to my representation,” Washington said.
“You realize that I am not allowed to let you off this line at all,” the fake deputy says on the call, suggesting that any attempt to contact authorities will land him in jail. “You can show up in the sheriff’s office, and you can tell them who you are and what’s going on, and they are going to most likely detain you. You’re going to have to sit in jail until that gets cleared,” he later says.
Washington says that while common sense would tell people this is immediately a scam, the callers are so persistent and give the names of actual deputies that it will confuse people.
“The people know that it doesn’t sound right, because they don’t remember it,” Washington said. “But they’re just they’re stringing them along, and it starts to make them think, ‘maybe I did do this?’”
Washington says the best way to handle calls like this is to use your intuition and end the call.
“Just hang up the phone,” he said. “If it’s legitimate, then they’re gonna call you back.”
Washington hopes that getting the word out will stop these calls and, hopefully, lead to the arrest of the scammers. It also angers him that anyone would use the Sheriff’s department to scam and deceive people.
“I take this personally, because they’re using our agency as someone that’s going to victimize people,” Washington said. “That’s not what I like, that’s not what I do.”