Fraudulent phone calls continue

New scam phone calls are coming in, complete with faked local phone numbers.

The scam involves claims that the Sheriff’s Office has a warrant for someone’s arrest and needs to be paid if that arrest is to be avoided.

Bella Vista police Capt. Tim Cook said this scam is similar to the IRS scam, where a caller pretends to be an Internal Revenue Service official and tries to scare people into paying them to avoid serious — though nonexistent — consequences.

“It’s the same scam,” he said. “They just keep packaging it a different way.”

Police or the sheriff’s office, he said, may need to accept payment at times, but they aren’t going to make cold calls demanding it, nor are they going to attempt the transaction over the phone. These kinds of calls, he said, should not be accepted at face value.

Anyone receiving a call from an authority, such as the IRS or a law enforcement agency, should verify any claims made about warrants, owed money or anything else, he said.

“Don’t send money,” he said. “Call. Verify.”

The department, he said, is getting three or four reports of these scam calls every day.

Someone who gets a suspicious call, he said, should report it. Enforcement for calls like these, he said, is not handled by local police because the majority of them come from out of state or even out of country.

Many of these complaints, he said, are handled by the Attorney General’s office.

The Bella Vista Police Department can be reached at 479-855-3771 and the Attorney General’s office can be reached at 800-482-8982 or 501-682-2007.

Because it can’t be handled locally, Cook said, being aware of the scams and avoiding them is the best thing residents can do to protect themselves.

“Verify, verify, verify,” he said.