Dave Henderson has alerted us to a new scam which is occurring in Fairfax County:
A new scam is going around in Fairfax County that neighbors should be made aware of.. . The following Info was disseminated by the webmaster of the GWC Model A Ford Club. Names have been withheld for obvious reasons.
Dave Henderson
———-Original Message—-
Today X and I (victims) nearly fell for a scam when he received a call from a man identifying himself as a Lt with the Fairfax Sheriff’s office. He identified himself by name and gave us a phone number. He stated X failed to appear for his court date on Jun16th. When X stated he didn’t have a court date and didn’t know what he was talking about. He provided us with details of a citation and fine in April and a court date he failed to show for to answer for his failure to pay the fine. He had a lot of personal information about us and after lots of back and forth he provided the date of the infraction, the location and said a copy of the full citation would be sent by registered mail. We were told that his driver’s license had been suspended and a bench warrant had been issued. We were given a new court date at the Fairfax County court house complete with address and court assignment.
We were told we needed to send a bond payment and fine payment in order for the warrant to be lifted and the license to be freed until his court date. The court was going to be closed for the holidays but we could do this with a green money pack payment available at `7/11 and several other facilities he listed. He needed the receipt no for the payment and we need to bring the receipt to court with us. Upon notification that the payment had been made and a receipt no the officer would be able to release his license and warrant. ( Please note : The man on the phone was very calm and caring. He asked me I was able to drive. To drive carefully and not to let X drive because if he were stopped he would be arrested and the car towed because of the warrant. One receipt for $500 for the bond till he appeared in court and one for $493 for the fine he owed.
We believed him and headed out to deal with this crisis.
X sent (to a friend) a note as to what was happening and he quickly called X and said– STOP!!!!! This is probably a scam. We did calm down and began to go over what was said and agreed something was wrong. We drove to the police station and reported the incident. The police confirmed no warrants on X and no citation. They did confirm that an Officer by the name we were given was indeed with the Sheriff’s Dept. They also called the number and confirmed a message said you had reached the Officer so named and to leave a message. The police also confirmed that an officer by that name was a member of the the Sheriffs Office but that while the number was local it was not one used by the Sheriffs Office. We filed a police report and were very relieved not to have lost a great deal of money.
The Fairfax Police were very helpful, courteous and caring.They confirmed a scam was being conducted in the county and it was going to be reported on the news tonight.
I hope we would have figured it out before we lost our money but I don’t know. I was expecting a system where I had to pay to money order type payment to the Fairfax County but now researching the green money pack system I learned it was a prepaid money card . I think I would have hollered wait something is wrong but I don’t really know.
All I could think of was : what ticket/ what court date/ what warrant.
We looked up the address and dates: they were local and we were in town. We didn’t remember it ( it was several months ago)and certainly did not physically receive a ticket but could we have been ticketed and not have seen the ticket. Having a warrant out for your arrest is scary!!
Apparently this is happening now in the county and the Sheriff’s Office was on Channel 4 telling people to be cautious. Similar scams are being conducted across the country. I’ve heard about IRS ones and of course “family members in trouble: in fact I received an email from my sister-in-law needing $$ while she was traveling in another state. I called my brother immediately and his wife had returned from her trip that day and mine was one of several calls from family members who had also been contacted.
They had many facts on us. We had been away and had not heard about this. The voice on the TV is not the same as the one on my recorder. I have codes in my data that they did not break, but they got enough right for us to be frightened. They picked the location of the violation on one street I know and another I did not. We had to scramble to find out if we were even in the state on the date of the supposed violation. They have the Court House right, but not the room number of the judge. He had believable answers to most of our questions.