People eager to get a family member out of jail are becoming victims of a scam involving someone impersonating a law enforcement officer who calls asking for money for the inmate’s bond or to get them into a pre-trial diversion program or maybe to release them with an ankle monitor. It’s already happened at least three times in Leake County in the last two months and Sheriff Randy Atkinson says the victims have lost a total of almost $8,000….
“It’s just about near-impossible to trace this. We are working on it. We’re asking some other agencies in the state to be able to help us try to track these people down…”
The sheriff says, in the most recent incident, the scamster told a family member it would cost almost $5,000 to get the inmate out of jail…
“Made them stay on the phone until they went and got the cash and went to Walmart and put it on a Green Dot card…”
Atkinson says, in reality, inmates are allowed to call their family to tell them how much their bond is but no one from the sheriff’s office would reach out like that…
“There will be no officers calling trying to get a family member to try to bond somebody out of jail. That’s not the way the system works…”
The sheriff thinks the people running the scam may be getting the inmates’ names from the jail roster that’s been published online. That information has been taken down now. And he believes that they may search on the internet for the names of their relatives. The conmen seem to be getting greedier. The first victim in Leake County lost $400, the second about $2,500 and as we mentioned, the latest victim is out almost $5,000…
“They’re not gonna stop as long as they can find people that’ll fall for these scams…”
Atkinson says if you have questions, call the sheriff’s department.
