Risk Level: Medium
Scammers are aggressively using people search websites to identify the relatives of individuals who are arrested in Jefferson County, Colorado
Scammers are aggressively using people search websites to identify the relatives of individuals who are arrested in Jefferson County, Colorado, and phone-bombing those relatives to demand money in many cases before family ever hear about the arrest. This just happened to my family TODAY after my brother's wife who we only see occasionally was arrested late last night.
By this morning scammers had called an INCREDIBLE number of people including brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, and even my ex-wife who I divorced over 5 years ago (!). Fortunately nobody they called would have been able to or interested in bailing her out, but the quickness and intense number of calls was like nothing I've ever seen before.
Many of the calls had no caller ID number, but two calls did display two numbers that reddit won't let me post. Neither of these are Jefferson County Sheriff or any legitimate agency. When I told the scammer at the second number I was verifying his number he immediately hung up. That's all we've got except for multiple short messages from different people claiming to be cops.
The number could have checked out and then maybe you would have gotten scammed anyway, so be sure you ask for the agent's full name and the office he or she works for, so you can call them back on an outgoing line.