Telephone scams threatening people with jail time if they don’t pay the caller money continue to plague Grays Harbor County residents.

According to Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office Chief Criminal Deputy Steve Shumate, at least two reports of callers claiming to be from his office have been brought to his attention, while another ongoing scam has the caller claiming to be an agent with the IRS.

Victim

A Montesano man called The Daily World Wednesday evening and said his sister, who lives in Aberdeen, was a victim of the phony Sheriff’s Office scam. The caller ID showed a 249 prefix, the prefix for Montesano, and the caller claimed because she failed to report for jury duty the day before, if she didn’t come up with $972 in Green Dot prepaid Visa cards from Wal-Mart she would be arrested. According to Simpson, she was told if she hung up she would be found and taken into custody and that the caller was tracking her cell phone. She was on the phone for two hours while she purchased the cards and gave the caller the identification codes on the cards.

Shumate said the caller in the above incident identified himself as Sergeant McCloud and told the victim to go to the Sheriff’s Office to complete her paperwork. When she arrived at the Sheriff’s Office to do so, she was informed there is no Sergeant McCloud with the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office.

In another recent incident, a resident from South Beach received a call from a man claiming to be Sergeant Edward Johnson and telling them to call 214-204-1432 because they were being sued for criminal activity and good luck if they didn’t call. Soon after came another call to the same resident, this time with a female claiming to be from the IRS who said there was a criminal arrest warrant out against the resident and to call 636-275-0627 immediately to discuss this matter.

Shumate said his office would never call someone about an outstanding warrant. “If we want someone bad enough, we will go get them.”