Ada County Sheriff’s Office deputies will never call and threaten to arrest you because you have an outstanding arrest warrant — or civil judgment — or have a tax bill due — or missed jury duty — or anything like that.
The latest twist of this phone scam involves people calling local doctors and medical professionals, telling them they missed a court date where they were supposed to be an expert witness, and then saying unless the pay a fine, they will be arrested.
Deputies will never ask you to place funds for payment on a pre-paid credit card to “cancel the arrest warrant for not showing up for court,” or to pay a phony civil judgement or anything else.
That is all part of a scam that just keeps popping up in the Treasure Valley.
We’ve had numerous reports this week of scammers pretending to be ACSO deputies – one of the names they’ve used is “Sgt. Mike Rowe” who retired in 2019 — who use phone numbers with a 208 area code to sell the ruse.
The scammers usually tell their victims to go to a store, get a pre-paid credit card (like a Green Dot), load it up with money, and then call a phone number with the card information.
Another version we’ve had to deal with lately has the scammers telling people to go to a Bitcoin machine at local stores.
An investment in Bitcoin is useful for criminals trying to steal your money because it is hard to track — just like pre-paid credit cards and gift cards.
All three have legitimate uses – but once you spend money on those things and provide that info to people on the phone or over the internet — the money is likely gone and isn’t coming back.
In reality, if one of our deputies had to issue an arrest warrant or file a civil judgment, they would try to find you in person and leave cards with call-back numbers on them several times before calling – and that would be to set up a meet.
They will never ask you to wire or transfer money electronically. That is a sure sign of the scam.
The scammers make the calls over the internet, making them very hard to trace.