State Police are advising Schuylkill County residents to be vigilant against purported spoof calls pretending to come from the Sheriff’s Office.
According to information released this week by PSP-Troop L Public Information Information Officer David Beohm, a Washington Township woman was the latest victim of this fake call scam.
The woman told police she received a voicemail from someone claiming to be Sgt. Jeremy Talon of the Schuylkill County Sheriff’s Office. It said to call back to a phone number regarding an arrest warrant that had been issued for the Washington Township woman.
That voicemail came from the phone number 570-487-5675. The number doesn’t direct to the Sheriff’s Office and was likely generated by a bot. This is known as call spoofing. Call spoofers use bots to generate phone numbers that appear to be local, the 570 area code, and trick recipients into either answering the call or returning the call.
In the case of this latest call, the recipient told police the person on the other end had no accent and in the background, she could hear noises consistent with a law enforcement facility.
The goal of the spoofed call is almost always to pry personal identification information and/or money from the recipient.
This was one of several similar calls, according to Beohm, purporting to come from the Schuylkill County Sheriff’s Office. Police say future victims should report these calls to their local law enforcement officials.
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