Hillsdale County residents have been hit by a series of phone scams over the past several weeks, in which callers ask them to pay out sums of money to support a local sheriff campaign or to avoid penalties from the Hillsdale County court system or the IRS, according to the Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office.
“We received calls from 10 to 12 residents in one hour last Friday either reporting the scam or asking if the call they received was from the sheriff’s office,” said Detective Lieutenant Lance Benzing.
So far, Benzing said, some of the callers claim to be from Lt. Tim Parker’s campaign for Hillsdale County sheriff, the IRS, or the Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office.
Benzing, who is investigating the scam, said the sheriff’s department has already served a phone company, XO Communications, with a subpoena to retrieve data that will hopefully reveal who has been making the calls.
Most of the calls have been routed through a “warehouse” to an outside IP address, making it difficult to track. Benzing said he thinks the number is coming from the Detroit area, but the department will have to wait until XO Communications returns the information from the subpoena.
“We haven’t had anyone pay the money to the scammer so far and as far as we’ve heard,” Benzing said. “Typically, when the people start to question the scammer, he hurries up the call and hangs up quickly. People in the county have been good about questioning suspicious calls.”
Benzing said that the scammers have done research about the county, since the hooks of Parker’s sheriff campaign and the Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office include names of members of the department. The first scammer claiming to be from Parker’s campaign has generally asked for a $3,000 contribution, according to Parker.
“It was a devastating hit to my campaign, because I’m getting someone trying to use my campaign to get monetary gain on their behalf,” Parker said. “It is very much a threat to the citizens.”
Parker, who is a lieutenant at the Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office, was tipped off to the scam by Denny Groves, an associate realty broker at Coldwell Banker Denny Groves & Associates. Groves, a friend of Parker, was called by a scammer claiming to represent Parker’s campaign.
Groves said the scammer initially left a message on his phone. When Groves called back, the scammer told him it was the last day to donate money and that if Groves gave $3,000, “they’d be tickled.”
“I told them I would just call Tim, since I’m friends with them,” Groves said. “The caller said he was a deputy, but I didn’t recognize the name, and I know all of the people at the sheriff’s office, so I knew something was up.”
Groves contacted Parker the next morning, and said Parker said he didn’t know someone was soliciting money on behalf of his campaign.
“Everything sounded fishy from the start…and I knew it was a scam…because if Tim needed something, he would come to me,” Groves said.
Parker added that Michigan campaign finance laws prohibit donations of over $1,000, another red flag for anyone suspecting a caller asking for money.
Benzing said most people who reported the second scammer said the caller asked for a remittance fee to avoid a warrant or an arrest. The scammer claimed to be from the Hillsdale County court system, asking for between $1,500 and $1,800 to stop a n arrest warrant for not showing up for court appearances such as jury duty.
Benzing said neither the Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office or the county court system ask residents for money to avoid penalties. Both the sheriff’s department and the court system mail notices about impending jury duty or potential fines and penalties.
Benzing also said most people receiving these phone calls followed up by calling the real phone numbers for the sheriff’s department and the court, only to discover the scam.
“One person who reported the scam said the scammer asked for money because her husband had not shown up for court, but her husband was deceased,” Benzing said. “We were tipped off by another because the call claimed to be from a judge who no longer works at the court.”
When Parker called the numbers associated with the scam, he said he hears something introducing the number as the sheriff’s office, without specifying which county’s department.
“Some of these calls are coming from the West Coast…so they could be using the same number to feedback to this one unspecified sheriff’s department to scam people in other areas,” Parker said.
Parker said no one should ever donate money solicited over the phone. More often than not, he said, there are illegitimate systems asking for money over the phone.
“Once they have your information, they have a full shopping spree,” Parker said.
Benzing speculated that, if apprehended, the scammer or scammers could face a fraud complaint for obtaining money under false pretences. Any sentencing would be based on how much information they could gather about the way the scam operated.
“Some are messages, some are person-to-person,” Benzing said. “You would have to identify who was talking, for example, to charge a specific identity issue.”
Parker posted a warning on his Facebook page “Tim Parker for Hillsdale County Sheriff” after Groves reported the scam, and since then his post has reached 18,000 Facebook users, which pleases Parker since he wants people in the community to be aware of the scam and avoid having their money stolen.
The known numbers associated with the scam are:
(248) – 785 – 4109
(458) – 212 – 0109
(503) – 719 – 8678
The Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Office encourages all residents to report potential phone scams.
