TULSA, Okla — When Barbara Earl's phone rang, the caller claimed to be with the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office.
"The man told me I had missed a court date and that there was a warrant out for my arrest, Earl said. "I immediately said I don't have a court date and I argued with him. He then told me that I had been subpoenaed for jury duty and I did not show up therefore I had a warrant for failure to appear and for contempt of court."
She told 2 News the man then gave her two options: pay $2,000 in Bitcoin, or be arrested and spend 72 hours in jail.
Earl is the caregiver for her 101-year-old blind mother. "As soon as he hit me with the fact that he was going to take me away from my mother all sense of reason went out of my head," she said. "I was just so worried something would happen to her if they came and arrested me."
The caller stayed on the phone and led her on a 200-mile journey across several counties from her home to a grocery store in Guthrie where a Bitcoin machine was located. As she fed money into it she took photos of the deposits.
"He said that since Covid law enforcement were using bitcoins now because it was safer and looking back, that's so stupid. I mean that was the biggest red flag you could imagine."
Casey Roebuck with the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office told 2 News her office gets calls almost every day from people about this kind of scam. She said the easiest way to tell this kind of call is a scam, "We don't call and ask you for money. If you have a warrant, we just go and pick you up."
Roebuck adds TCSO is constantly putting out warnings about imposters pretending to be deputies coming to arrest people for missing jury duty unless they pay a "fine or fee — usually through bitcoin or by buying gift cards and reading the cards code numbers to the caller.
"We do the best that we can to combat it. We always have it on the homepage of our website. We're always putting it on social media. We're always putting out media alerts, but clearly this must be some sort of lucrative scam if it just keeps happening."
The unfortunate reality for victims is most never recover losses because once money is sent it is almost impossible to trace or get back. It also makes it very difficult to find and prosecute the fraudsters. But, that should not stop you from reporting these crimes to law enforcement where it happened and to theFederal Trade Commission. It tracks fraud schemes and losses.
Roebuck recommends one simple way to avoid this scam. If anyone calls claiming to be a deputy or saying there is a warrant for your arrest, just hang up. It's also a good idea to block the number. Earl says barely a week after she was scammed, a second man called using the same name and claiming to be a Tulsa County Sheriff's Deputy alerting her to a warrant out for her arrest for missing jury duty. But this time, she didn't fall for it. Instead, she called 2 News to tell her story in hopes it could save someone else from being scammed.
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