HOUSTON – It’s a scam becoming all too common across the Houston area: Someone posing as a law enforcement officer claiming to have an arrest warrant in an effort to get money.
It happened to a Galleria-area retired Houston man less than two weeks ago when his phone rang on a Tuesday morning.
“They say jail time and that causes you to panic a little bit and I just went for it hook, line, and sinker,” said Loyd, who asked KPRC 2 to only use his first name.
He spent several hours on the call, which came from a local area code, talking to someone who claimed to be law enforcement connected to a federal district judge.
“They were pretty sophisticated and pretty adamant that, you know, you couldn’t get off the phone, it had to be dealt with right now,” Loyd said.
The man on the other end, who claimed to be Captain Moore, told Loyd that he failed to appear for jury duty, he had an active warrant, that he had to pay or be arrested, and couldn’t talk to anyone because of a gag order.
“One of the things they told me is that if if I hung up or lost connection on the phone at any time, that would be considered resisting arrest,” Loyd said.
The scammers knew his home address and directed him to his nearby bank to withdraw cash. From there, they sent him to a grocery store down the road to deposit the cash into a Bitcoin ATM.
On the phone, “Captain Moore” kept providing him different phone numbers to make the deposits.
“It was almost $60,000,” Loyd said.
It happened over three separate transactions because after each attempt, the fraudster would tell him he messed up and had to pay more.
He didn’t realize he’d been scammed until the near end.
“Once it goes into Bitcoin it could be transferred from location, location, location very quickly and then it’s pretty much gone,” Harris County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Abraham Alanis said.
Alanis leads the Financial Crimes Unit and said every day, investigators are getting calls about similar scams, which have exponentially skyrocketed across the country since 2019.
According to the FBI’s first annual Cryptocurrency Fraud Report released earlier this year, Texans reported more than $411 million in crypto losses last year.
“It’s becoming one of the most common because of the technology and the ease to spoof numbers and how hard it is to track,” Lt. Alanis said.
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Here are some tips from Lt. Alanis:
- Look up the incoming phone number to verify it’s from the actual law enforcement agency
- Don’t send any money
- Don’t stay on the phone if the caller asks for immediate action
- Hang up and call the law enforcement agency directly to verify the phone call
Lt. Alanis said law enforcement will not call to threaten any fines.
Loyd isn’t convinced he’ll see his money, hard-earned and meant for retirement, again. He said he’s likely to survive the financial blow but it’s a hit to his self-esteem that’s harder to overcome.
“I feel very stupid. I feel very naive. And I’m a little more skeptical about the world than I was before,” Loyd said. “If (the phone) doesn’t say somebody that I know and have known for years, I don’t answer the phone.”
The amount of crypto losses may be much higher because the FBI said some are embarrassed to report after falling for this type of scam. In addition to local law enforcement, you should report any crypto scams to IC3.gov.