Dallas County Sheriff’s office warns of jury-duty phone scam

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The Dallas County Sheriff’s office issued the following statement Friday in regard to a new phone scam by criminals impersonating agents of the Dallas County Sheriff’s office:

The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office has received over 75 calls the past 2 days about a person identifying themselves as Sgt. Derrick Jones from our office. These calls appear to be coming from our administration phone lines (515-993-4771). The person identifying himself as Sgt. Jones is requesting money from citizens in Dallas County for missing jury duty and threatens to have them arrested if they don’t comply.

Make no mistake about it: This is an absolute scam. We do not have an employee by the name of Sgt. Jones, and we would never ask you for money! The scammers are very diligent and are changing their contact phone number when we try to contact them back, making it impossible to speak with them.

The scammers are also utilizing an app or other software to show our phone number on people’s caller ID, when in fact they are calling from somewhere else. We currently have no way to track these suspects down and more than likely the suspects are not even in the United States.

Please hang up immediately if you are contacted by a Sgt. Jones from the Dallas County Sheriff’s office or anyone else who says they are from our office and is requesting money from you. If anyone asks you for money over the phone or asks you to pay fines using a third-party payment option, you should be instantly skeptical. Please share this information with people in your family who might be susceptible to these sorts of scams.

1 COMMENT

  1. Last week, several locals, including myself, had calls that said our light bills were past due and we had only 45 minutes to pay up before being disconnected. I’m thinking the reason it appears to the sheriff’s department this originates from overseas is the scammers may be utilizing VPN technology. These operators are probably stateside and merely hacking via an overseas internet server.

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