Money scams and fighting back

Last week I had someone bring me a check they got in the mail. This person believed the check to be suspicious because it came with a letter saying they had "won" the money and all they needed to do was deposit the check in the bank and then call to "activate" the check. Sounds too good to be true, right?

This was one of the few times someone brought us the check before they asked if it was a scam. Most of the time people do not report scams like this until it is too late and they have been robbed of their hard-earned money.

The majority of the scams we are able to trace end up going to some type of overseas bank, email, or phone number, and out of our reach.

The letter that came with this check had a U.S. phone number to call after the check was deposited. After tracing the phone number, it led us to a company that sells phone numbers online and forwards them to whatever phone you want.

Sometimes a phone is forwarded several times just to make it hard to trace. After looking into this particular letter, we again found it was probably from overseas.

This is the point we normally have to close the case and hope other people come to us first instead of becoming victims.

I was not happy knowing someone was out there taking people's money and not being at least a little worried about getting caught, so I decided why not at least give him a scare? The letter instructed the person who received the check to call when they got the check for further instructions, so I called the number.

Someone who spoke poor English answered and asked for a confirmation number from the letter. I gave it to him and told him how excited I was to be receiving a "prize" like this.

He told me to put the check in the bank and then call him back and he would tell me how to pay the "taxes" on the amount I had won and the rest would be mine!

I asked him what company he was with and he started to get upset and said, "Just deposit the check and call me back." I asked him where he was from and he said New York.

The address on the letter, the address on the check, and the area the phone number came back to, were all different places in the country. I then asked him where he was calling from, and he asked in an angry manner, "Why do you need to know that?"

I then said, "Because this is the Vernon County Sheriff's Office and we are tracing this call." The man suddenly became quiet, but he was still on the phone just for a moment before it disconnected.

I tried calling back but he would not answer, and by the next day the number was disconnected. That means every other person he mailed a letter to will not be able to become a victim. We may not always be able to track them down and bring them back to the Vernon County Jail, but my goal is to make sure they remember Vernon County and stay away.