SALT LAKE COUNTY — ’Tis the season… for holiday scams.
Detectives with Unified Police say there’s a current scheme going around that’s already fooled several victims into forking over tens of thousands of dollars.
FOX 13 News spoke exclusively with a victim and a near victim about what you need to look out for.
The main takeaway from police: If it sounds too dangerous, too aggressive and scary to be true, it probably is — especially if the person on the other end of the line is demanding cash and want to meet at public location to get it.
It all begins with a phone call or voicemail like this:
“This is a message for Miss Katie Parker about an urgent court matter that requires your immediate attention.”
That message made Katie Parker’s heart drop, so she called the number back.
“And they basically said, 'You didn’t show up for jury duty. There are warrants out for your arrest,'" Parker recalled.
Parker panicked because she works for the State of Utah and was told if she was ever arrested, it would likely mean losing her job. She says that gave scammers the upper hand.
“They had all this information about me, and I believed it, and they freaked me out and it got inside my head and they ended up having me go to the bank and pulling out a lot of money," she said.
She wound up delivering the cash to a woman in the parking lot of a nearby drug store. We showed her the picture of a woman caught on CCTV who scammed someone else.
“Yeah, that’s her, for sure, 100%," Parker said.
Unified Police put out an alert regarding the warrant scam. Sadly, several people have already been victimized to the tune of nearly $200,000.
Amanda Martinez is one of the lucky ones.
“They threatened me with jail, they threatened me with a fine. I was scared!" she said. "I don’t want to go to jail. I’m a good person.”
Martinez got her voicemail in the middle of a work meeting and panicked.
“I had a warrant for my arrest that I needed to come down to Metro with $1,000," she said.
She went right to the bank and tried to withdraw the cash, but they said no.
“My banker said, 'That’s a scam. Call Salt Lake County,'" Martinez said.
She did, and an officer told her it was the third such call they’d received that day.
Both Martinez and Parker are now speaking out, hoping their experience will help others. Parker admits that it's embarrassing, but she doesn’t want to see anyone else get hurt.
“People don’t want to talk about it, so that’s why it’s important to talk about it. Because if everybody this happens to just stays silent, it’s just going to keep happening," she said.
Police also want to stress that if you do have a warrant or any kind of legal issue, basically all that information is readily available online, and they would never demand cash and demand to meet at a public location to deal with it.
