Fraudsters Add New Twist To Old Scam Involving Fake Cops

BRADENTON, FL — A Florida resident got a call recently from someone who claimed to be from the Manatee County Sheriff's Office.

"A phone call comes in telling them they have missed a jury duty assignment and they have to pay a fine," Randy Warren of the Manatee County Sheriff's Office shared with Patch Thursday. "They are telling them to go to our website — because it’s secure."

But, neither the caller or the website were who, or what they appeared to be. They were part of an elaborate ruse that adds a concerning new twist to a scam that law enforcement agencies across the United States have been warning us about for months — criminals posing as the good guys to make a dishonest buck.

"They’re almost taking pages from our playbook in telling people to be careful, when in reality they are defrauding people by telling them to go there," Warren told Patch.

Fraudsters included some images from the agency's real website, including a photo of Manatee County Sheriff's deputies lining up outside headquarters and included a way for people to pay their fake fines.

"They pulled our logo, things that you can easily find that are out there on the internet, and taken the time to try to build a site that looks somewhat like our normal website — our real, legitimate official website," Warren said.

A careful study of the website, however, turned up a number of mistakes such as a reference to a type of court that is not found in Manatee County.

"If they dig into it, our hope is that people will look at it with suspecting eyes, and see that there are some things about it that just don’t quite seem right," Warren said. "They have copied and pasted data from a variety of different places."

The phony website was still operational as of Thursday though investigators with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office were already trying to get it taken down. A public database of website domains listed the registrant as being in the Netherlands.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which collects complaints about scams, told Patch the agency had not yet run across this particular scam.

"We have dealt with some cases that are somewhat similar but not exactly the same thing," the agency's Juliana Gruenwald acknowledged. "We sued a company that set up a website that claimed it was affiliated with the U.S. Army and we also shut down a scam several years ago that claimed to be a government site offering free government grants."

She said the agency shut down a phony government site supposedly offering free government grants and has been warning consumers about scammers claiming to offer government-related debt relief services

"In addition, over the last few months we've warned people about people claiming an affilation with government agencies as part of a coronavirus-relief related scams," she added.

Warren of the sheriff's office on Florida's Gulf coast, said investigators are attempting to track down the person who designed the phony website.

"Those things take time," Warren confided. "Our hope would be that they get a little scared and they find out we’re on to it. They are smart enough to know this isn’t going to last very long, but they hope to scam enough people before they pull it down."