Sheriff warns don’t be a victim of a scam

The Boundary County Sheriff's Department told the Herald that on Tuesday an elderly gentleman informed BCSO he had almost been the victim of a telephone scam.

“The caller had indicated that he was a Public Defender from back east representing his grandson who had been arrested,” said Boundary County Sheriff Dave Kramer. “The caller said that he needed $20,000 immediately to help keep his grandson out of trouble. The caller was very convincing and had information about his grandson (which oftentimes is readily available on the internet). The gentleman was in the process of getting the money from his account when he decided that he should stop by and talk to us first.”

This is typical of a scam that has been used for many years to get your hard-earned money, the story may change, but a couple things that usually remain the same — they have some information to make you believe what they are saying, they always insist that it needs to be done right away, Kramer wrote.

BCSO officials warn that with the holiday season coming up there will be more scam attempts either by phone or emails.

“We encourage you if you get a request to send money or money orders from someone that you do not know, even if they sound so convincing do not do it, talk to your bank, law enforcement first to help you find out if it is legitimate,” Kramer said.

Unfortunately, many victims, often elderly do not report these crimes because of embarrassment after losing their money, Kramer said.

“If you have elderly family members in your family, please talk to them about fraud and how not to be a victim, talk to your bank and have them help keep you informed of scams. In this case, the criminal contacted the wrong person and they recognized it as a scam before they were separated from a large sum of money,” he said.

The FBI has a fraud website at www.IC3.gov, which is the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). It is a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. There are also resources with the Idaho Attorney General's Office — consumer protection.

Many times the criminals involved in these scams are not even from the U.S., the best way to stop them is by not giving out any personal information over the phone, internet or providing funds to requests that you are not familiar with.