Wyoming Sheriff’s Office Issues Phony Warrant Scam Alert

An old phone scam has been reported quite a bit in Sublette County recently.

That's according to the Sublette County Sheriff's Office Facebook page.

According to the post, the agency has been getting a lot of reports of someone representing themselves as a sheriff's deputy calling up potential victims and demanding payment for an alleged arrest warrant. The caller sometimes claims to be "Detective Matt Sanborn" or uses another name of someone who is not actually a sheriff's deputy.

The post says the agency will never call people up and demand payment for outstanding warrants. If someone does have a warrant a deputy might arrest them, but no one will call on the phone demanding payment.

The arrest warrant scam is hardly new, as it has been reported at one time or another in most Wyoming counties, including Laramie and Sweetwater counties.

In some cases, scammers will do a little homework and may use the names of an actual police officer or deputy sheriff. With modern "spoofing" techniques, scammers can also have phone numbers of legitimate law enforcement agencies show up on the caller ID of potential victims when the call may be placed from a different state or even a foreign country.

In some cases, scammers may also demand payment using Green Dot debit cards or even iTunes or other gift cards. No American law enforcement agency or court is known to accept fine payments using gift cards.

As always is the case when dealing with unknown callers, people should never give out personal financial information to people demanding payment for alleged fines over the phone.