Scam calls keep coming from North Idaho

POST FALLS – A scam in which callers pose as police officers and threaten arrest unless money is paid continues to make the rounds in Kootenai County.

Most recently, Post Falls police said a caller is posing as an officer speaking to a person about outstanding warrants and attempting to obtain money to offset the debt. The number they call from indicates that it is from the police.

People who received this call have reported that the callers are asking for payment in gift cards or cryptocurrency to process the warrant.

Capt. Mark Brantl of the Post Falls Police Department said the scam has happened before in recent years and that previous scams have spoofed or spoofed the department’s phone number.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office and Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office also recently reported that locals are being targeted by the same scam.

KSCO Lt. Jeff Howard said they receive reports of scams daily.

He said in the past a scammer called from an unknown number pretending to work at a company. They would demand money to pay off a debt or there would be consequences such as bankruptcies or utility shut-offs.

Another scam would offer the victim money through the issuer’s Clearing House, but the costs associated with obtaining the money would have to be paid upfront. In most scenarios, the scammer would instruct the victim to purchase gift cards and then transfer the money, Howard said.

The current trend, which started more than a month ago, “is a lot more advanced,” Howard said.

The perpetrators spoofed the sheriff’s office phone number.

“They even found real deputies and used their names. I’ve even heard my name used by the scammers,” Howard said.

The scammers tell the victim that they have a warrant and that they need to deposit money into bitcoin machines to make the warrant disappear.

“They have gone so far as to legitimate the victim’s address and some of their personal information and threaten to send officers to their home to arrest them if they don’t comply,” Howard said.

The biggest problem is trying to track the caller. They have used technology so that their phone numbers cannot be tracked using local sources.

“It is my understanding that we do not have any evidence that the scammers are local, making this a multi-jurisdictional issue,” Howard said.

The FBI and Homeland Security investigated the scam and KCSO urges anyone who received these calls to report them to fraud.com or ic3.gov. Both sites forward the report to the relevant investigating agency.

“If anyone has been a victim of the scheme, we would like them to contact us so that we can ensure that a report is made and that we forward it to the appropriate authority,” Howard said.

A local man told The Press he lost about $15,000 in the scam. He said the callers were persuasive and insistent and even threatened to arrest his wife when he said he wanted to tell her what was happening.

KCSO wants anyone who hasn’t lost money to still report it to those websites because it doesn’t have the resources to take those calls all day, and it’s faster to report it to those databases.