The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office is making the public aware of a phone scam that is going around. 

Sheriff Adam Infante says that someone is monitoring their Facebook page and picking up key law enforcement names and using that information to call people pretending to be a deputy. Infante explains that the con artist will make up false stories and ask for money to bail a family member out of jail or recall a warrant. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio about a  few tips to recognize a scam call. 

“Law enforcement will never ask you for money, not just my office, but any law enforcement agency. They will never ask you for money over the phone to get out of trouble or some sort of arrest situation. So don’t ever fall for that. That’s a dead giveaway right there. And if anybody calls and asks for money over the phone related to some sort of scam and they want you to pay with a third party application, kind of like a gift card, or an Apple card, or a green dot card ,or something like that. That should be a very high indication that this is not real and not legal.”

Infante adds that if someone gets a phone call like this to hang up. He notes that law enforcement cannot do much to stop these scammers because usually their phone calls are tracked back to a foreign country.