Guymon police today were made aware of a phone scam that has hit at least one citizen in Guymon and others may have been hit and not realize it yet.
The scammer is posing as a law enforcement officer and calling residents on an apparent random basis from a correctional facility and then conning the person into forwarding their calls to another number. After the number is forwarded, an inmate at a correctional facility calls the number and then it is automatically forwarded on and the person at the other number will accept the call from the correctional facility. At that time the person who was scammed will be hit with not only long distance charges but also the charge from the correctional facility which are usually extremely high.
Chief of Police Eddie Adamson commented on the scam: “We were made aware of this scam by representatives of PTCI and have started an investigation into the incident and will be working with other agencies to hopefully locate this scammer and get those involved arrested.”
In this incident the calls have both originated and been forwarded to the Houston, Texas, 713 area code although other areas have been involved in the past. According to Lt. Jason Bond of the Guymon Police Department this sort of scam is not unusual, “We have had cases before that are similar to this and it is always unfortunate when a person who thinks they are helping law enforcement are taken advantage of by a criminal. In this case in particular the victim was called multiple times before he finally accepted the call from the Correctional Facility and that call led to the person identifying themselves as an law enforcement officer and then he got the victim to forward his phone to another number, which in turn allowed an inmate to call the victim’s number back and have it forwarded to a friend or family member who accepted the call and charged the victim with the cost of the call from the jail.”
Lt. Bond added, “We are investigating this first incident as a fraud case and have contacted the FBI with the information since it involves multiple states as well as the Harris County Sheriff’s department, but we suspect that there are other people who have been hit in our area. We are asking that anyone who has received a suspicious call from either area code 713 or a correctional facility to contact our agency with the information so we can look into it and see if it is related to this case.”
The scam has become so prolific the Harris County Texas Sheriff’s Department has established a complaint department to deal with the problem and worked with AT&T to allow citizens to call 800-984-8800 to have their number blocked from receiving calls from the Harris County Jail. An internet search into this sort of scam shows that it has occurred frequently from inmates at that jail.
