The Scam
How I ALMOST got scammed out of $8000 Link to heading
Background Link to heading
I’m writing this blog post to spread awareness of the increasingly believable scams being deployed in the real world. For context, I am a regular scambaiter (meaning I do my best to waste scammers’ time). This means that I have a semi-decent understanding of how scams and social engineering work.
The Initial Hook Link to heading
I get a call from an unknown number (literally no number listed) somehow bypassing the call screening default on my phone. I decline because I’m on another call. They call again and I decline again. By the third time calling, I think “seems like they really need to get in touch whoever this is” and answer the phone. The person calling me sounds like they are a sheriff in a sheriff’s office, likely using AI to create the fake voice and fake noises. They state they are looking for me and state my name. When they verify who they are talking to, they proceed to explain that I have failed to appear in court for jury duty in a federal trial. They then explain that they hand-delivered me a summons a few months ago and that I signed it. I had no recollection of this obviously, so I said that and they proceeded with the next steps.
Actual Scam Link to heading
Before going through the resolution process, they made sure to provide a “verification process” to verify it was me on the line. They stated ALL of this information in FULL:
- My Name
- My Home Address
- My Date of Birth
- My Social Security Number
They explained that there were 2 warrants out for my arrest: one for failure to appear, and another for contempt of court. They provided some fake codes and had me write them down so they sounded more legitimate. They provided me with 2 options to resolve this:
- Criminal Resolution: I get arrested and have to spend the night in jail on $8000 bond and I have to appeal this and go to court.
- Civil Resolution: I submit a bond to suspend my warrant before going in to the office and verifying whether the signature that “they gathered” was correct.
For archival sake, here were the codes they gave me FTA stands for Failure to Appear and COC stands for Contempt of Court:
FTA-221-CV-7143
COC-221-CV-1113
At this point I was RATTLED. They hadn’t gotten a single piece of information wrong about me and they provided very convincing arguments as to why they were calling me and the urgency for me to “correct the problem”.
The beginning of the end Link to heading
By this point, they had done everything right and I was finding it extremely hard to think clearly (They had me thinking I was going to get arrested), but this was the first mistake they made. They told me they were going to provide me with a verification call to verify that they were who they said they were. For this verification call, they placed a spoofed call from the official phone number of my local sheriff’s office (I looked it up obviously). They did not want me to end the call, so they told me to decline the call and continue. Since this was an incoming call, this started the tiny voice in the back of my head saying “am I being scammed?”.
The next step was to get me to withdraw money from my bank. They informed me that there is a “gag order” on this case meaning I could not mention this to the bank. They had me withdraw $8000 and say it was for something inconspicuous. At this point, the little voice in my head was getting a lot louder, but I was so stressed out I couldn’t think clearly. They then explained that I needed to deposit this money into a secure “government terminal” and that I would get a receipt explaining that my bond had been posted and that I could go in to the office to verify my signature.
Finally Thinking Straight Link to heading
I was driving to this “secure government terminal” with them on the line and I started to realize the gravity of what I was doing. So I talked to the guy telling him that I would need to do a visual inspection of the terminal to verify it was legitimate because $8000 is a LOT of money. After recalling this situation, I realized that this statement caused him a little bit of panic because he decided to place another “verification call” from the sheriff’s office phone number once I parked near the kiosk. The kiosk ended up being in a gas station convenience store which was even more alarm bells in my head. Still somehow not enough to turn me away.
Before I went in, they wanted to verify everything with me and they sent me a text with a document that I’ll provide here. They made sure I read the whole thing:
THE REALIZATION Link to heading
I walked in to the store and find a “BitPay” terminal for depositing money into cryptocurrency wallets. This was the terminal that they wanted me to deposit the money into. After about 5 seconds, my “visual inspection” was complete and I had concluded that it was not legitimate. I walked right back out, took a deep breath, and finally had the mental capacity to look up the scam. This yeilded instant results out and I started by hanging up with the guy and calling 911 (whoops sorry I was not thinking quite straight yet). They told me to call the sheriff’s office which happened to be the exact same number that the scammer called me from. I called and informed them of the scam and they explained that this is not their first call about this scam (great).
What I learned Link to heading
There is not much to be learned about scams here. I already knew everything to know about this scam. This one was just slightly different enough and convincing enough. What I learned is to trust myself and trust my gut. My whole problem from the start was not trusting my knowledge and memory to know that they never call you for these things. They either send you mail or come to your house. I also learned that I can no longer trust anything anyone says to me over the phone regardless of the amount of information they have about me. My information has officially been leaked and there is no going back, so I’m now on damage controll duty. This means freezing my credit and turning on notifications for all transactions from all of my financial institutions.
Note for victims Link to heading
I now understand the embarrassment that people feel when they have this happen to them. Despite this embarrassment, I’m writing this today to make sure as many people as possible are well informed. I’m also writing this as a way to explain that nobody is “immune” to scams. I am well versed in scams to the point where I have regular conversations about scams explaining to people the dangers. These people can study you and figure out your pain points well before conducting these elaborate scams (and they almost got me). All I want to say is if you or someone you know falls victim to this or any scam, please know that it’s not your fault and that you should tell people about your experience so nobody else falls victim.