A police impersonator scammed a Hilton Head man out of thousands. Here’s how.
A Hilton Head Island man received a phone call from someone claiming to be law enforcement and threatening jail time for unpaid taxes. The scam was quickly revealed, but not before the man provided $2,900 in gift cards to the caller, according to a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report.
An “unkown person” called called the man on Dec. 20, claiming that he owed approximately $3,000 in back taxes and would be sent to jail if he didn’t pay them, the report said.
The caller then instructed the man to go to CVS, purchase a number of gift cards and provide the caller with the numbers on the back of the cards.
The Hilton Head man complied, according to the report. After purchasing six gift cards totaling $2,900 and providing the numbers to the caller, the man contacted a friend to tell them of the situation. The friend informed him of the scam, and told him to contact the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
The deputy assigned to the case attempted to contact the caller. But when the deputy dialed the number provided by the man, “it was not a valid number,” according to the report. The scammer’s number had a Chicago area code.
“No other suspect information was available at this time,” wrote the deputy in the report.
“Anyone who demands payment by gift card is always, always, always a scammer,” wrote Jennifer Leach, assistant director of the Division of Consumer and Business Education for the Federal Trade Commission, in a 2018 consumer information post.
So-called “imposter scams” can take many forms, according to the FTC. Scammers impersonate utility companies, the Internal Revenue Service or online auctioneers, for example. Many demand gift cards because they make recovering money more difficult.
Imposter scams were the most reported complaint to the FTC in 2018, accounting for $448 million reported lost.
This story was originally published January 4, 2020 at 9:36 AM.
