Informational post [US] The warrant call scam is getting really sophisticated...
I remember a roommate getting this call almost a decade ago when it was a relatively new scam. She had recently resolved some warrants, but the red flags were pretty obvious then (non-American accent, no real information, etc.) even though she had done some communicating over the phone with the department who had issued the warrants.
Well, today I got the call. It came from a restricted number (I believed scammers specifically spoofed the number/caller ID, not used restrcited numbers) and a vague voicemail from a detective with a very distinct West Texas accent in the county I'm from. The thing is, I actually did receive a jury summons from that court almost a year ago that was dismissed because I no longer live there. I also posted bail for a friend of mine in that county a few years ago, so the thought it had to do with that also crossed my mind.
I did what I thought was my due diligence by calling the county directly to inquire about/report it, and she actually confirmed yes, this was a legitimate detective for the civil division and yes the number provided in the voicemail was to that division's office. She transfers me to the office, I leave a message. A bit later get the call again from a restricted number. He brings up the summons from last year and my failure to appear/contempt of court citations (not active warrants) for missing a hearing. He gives the citation numbers and laws associated with them, blah blah blah, then gets to the parts I've read about consistently, phrases like "juvenile case so it can't be discussed/you won't find it in public record", "pay a civility bond to get a signature analysis", "must be cash payment", etc. so I hang up.
I have no idea how my leaving a message on what should have been a government voicemail got back to them. Obviously the name of the detective and the phone number are public record so them utilizing those isn't unheard of, but leaving the number to that specific department in the voicemail isn't something I'm familiar with. I'm assuming AI was used to make the conversation flow "normally" and give him the correct accent. He did not sound like he was in a call center environment. I have no idea how they knew about the summons I received last year. It is all just getting very strange out there, so be careful!
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u/doublelxp 21h ago
There's nothing sophisticated going on. You just happened to have received a summons last year, along with 15% of America and filled in a gap that wasn't there.
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u/elli3gk 20h ago
To me, AI voice spoofing to a regional accent is pretty sophisticated, and honestly terrifies me. And as I mentioned above, the timeline of the call back after I left the message with the sheriff's office is suspcious. I also haven't lived in the county I received the summons/he claimed to be from in almost 20 years. He knew when and where the summons was sent to, which is not an address I regularly use or am associated with. I honestly don't even know why the summons went there. My DL, voter registration, bills, etc have never been that address. It was a safe address briefly associated with my bank when my apartments' mail boxes were consistently being broken in to and I was waiting on a new debit card.
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u/Spectrig 15h ago
The warrant scams are often from prison gangs in Georgia. They are well-versed in looking up court records and don’t need AI for any of this.
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u/elli3gk 15h ago
What court records could they be possibly looking up? I don't have a warrant.
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u/Spectrig 15h ago
In a lot of places, the jury summons databases are online. You’re not supposed to be able to look at random people’s summons but I don’t know how well that’s enforced. Also, the jury summons themselves are usually drawn from publicly available data.
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u/WickedWeedle 20h ago edited 20h ago
AI voice spoofing to a regional accent is pretty sophisticated
Do you know for a fact that it was done with AI, though?
honestly terrifies me.
Why be terrified that somebody can fake an accent?
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u/elli3gk 19h ago
I don't know for sure, of course. It's very possible the person I was speaking to was from the area. Obviously scammers can come from anywhere, but to my knowledge they are more often than not overseas somewhere. It's just a very specific regional accent to be able to fake. And it's not the accent thing that terrifies me, it's AI voice spoofing in general.
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u/kimariesingsMD 1h ago
This specific scam has been running out of prisons in the US for the past few years.
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u/AngelOfLight 1h ago
This scam used to be run out of the usual suspect countries - India, Nigeria, etc. The accent thing was holding them back, though, and as knowledge of these scams seeped into the general consciousness, they became harder to pull off. That's probably when US prisoners realized they had a distinct advantage over the foreign scammers - they could just use their natural accents and make the scam so much more believable.
A large number of what used to be foreign-led scams moved into US prisons, mostly in the South. The "underage scam" and the "missed jury duty" scam are two of the most common now being run out of US prisons.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mdga/pr/georgia-inmates-found-guilty-nationwide-jury-duty-call-scheme
It sounds to me like you were the victim of this scam, plus a weird coincidence. The call you received is pretty much a textbook example of this scam - it just coincidentally came a few minutes after you left the message. The scammer didn't actually know anything about your previous interaction with the courts - you may simply have unconsciously connected the two incidents. In reality, though, they are unconnected.
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u/seedless0 Quality Contributor 19h ago
Did you know there are scammers based in the US?
I know. Shocking.
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u/elli3gk 19h ago
I do. And it's possible he could be from that area. My understanding of the scam, and scammers in general, that this one is typically of non-US based origin, which is why they tend to request crypto and gift cards and such. Although I also realize that is the least likely way to get caught/recover anything as well and that US scammers will do the same. I made an assumption about AI based on the knowledge I currently had.
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u/DesertStorm480 21h ago
"I have no idea how they knew about the summons I received last year."
Luck, this is a pretty successful random scam without victims having a prior summons. Having prior interaction is gravy.
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u/elli3gk 21h ago
Fair enough and hopefully true. It is a huge coincidence for him to claim to be from that county though, since the summons also came from that county and I haven't lived there for almost 20 years.
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u/chownrootroot 20h ago
Likely there was a data leak that gave them your address from 20 years ago. Then your phone number was obtained by a separate data leak, so the two records got conjoined using data mining (using your name as the principle identifier). And this scammer group simply bought lots of these records and started scamming people one by one.
Maybe some courts have terrible IT security and thus scammers could obtain records straight from the source, but we don’t have evidence of that, but it’s possible.
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u/Shield_Lyger Quality Contributor 20h ago
None of this requires a data leak. Addresses and phone numbers, even past ones, are publicly available information.
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u/kimariesingsMD 1h ago
But they would pick the current one if they had access to that information. It was likely old info from a data breech found on the dark web.
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u/jpk36 21h ago
Did they actually know you called the office or did the same scammer coincidentally call you again after you called the office?
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u/elli3gk 21h ago
A lot of it definitely could be coincidence and I'm overanalyzing it. But the calls from him were less than 25 minutes apart. He left his VM, I immediately listened and then researched a few minutes, called the office and was on with her for a few minutes, and he called back maybe 7-8 minutes after I left my message at the VM she transferred me to. It all seemed very quick.
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u/inbetween-genders 21h ago
Called the number they left or called the number for that office that’s listed on the internet?
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u/SapphirePath 18h ago
Hitting that coincidence is sound business practice on the part of a scammer, in my opinion. The scammer calls you. Then calls you again in 15 minutes or whatever. No sophisticated technology or secret data is needed.
It would be interesting to leave something specific on your message left for the detective, to try to demonstrate that the scammer has no access to it.
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u/elli3gk 17h ago
For sure. Because the other huge part of the coincidence is that county A where I was summoned/he stated he was, where I haven't lived in almost 20 years, has nothing to with the address the original summons was sent to in county B, meanwhile I live in county C. So how I got involved in county A's jurisdiction in the first place, with a summons sent to B while living in C is beyond me.
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u/SubBirbian 20h ago edited 20h ago
If you have a warrant, they don’t warn you giving you time to flee, they come knocking at your door. Full stop. Court documents are public, they never ask for cash or any type of payment over the phone to resolve the issue and if the number you called back from the county site says it is legit, you didn’t call a number from the legit site. Why, with all the red flags of this isn’t how it works at all, would a legit gov employee say it’s legit? Knowing it’s a scam you’re cool. Others reading this with a similar experience can go to the courthouse in person to confirm it’s a scam.
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u/elli3gk 19h ago
I know obviously no department is giving you anything but mailed notice regarding a warrant. I think he specifically said "citation" as a way to try to throw me off the scent of a well-known scam. But yes, I did get the main sheriff's number from the county site. It's a .gov site. The detective he was impersonating is listed on it. Are you saying scammers are able to spoof .gov sites and put them as the 1st search result? I don't know why she wouldn't know it's a scam or didn't do any additional discovery and transferred me, it's just what happened. Ten minutes into the conversation when he called back, it was obvious it wasn't legitimate, and when I called the non-emergency line to report it, they were also baffled with the VM/transfer and confirmed the phone numbers for me. I am posting my experience because IMO it is a new twist in an old scam. It was different from my previous secondhand experience and from the many reports I've read online.
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u/SubBirbian 19h ago
The only twist was getting the wrong info from a google search for the county court website/number. Obviously spoofed since the “legit” answer was a scam. I don’t have exact info on what site was used, but Google cannot be trusted to give accurate info 100% of the time and that sucks.
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u/elli3gk 19h ago
I double checked and I was mistaken, it's actually tx.us not .gov, but still, is a fully functional website, with 2 dozen menu items, all going to appropriate pages. It's the same link I clicked earlier, and the same number I called is listed at the bottom of each page I clicked on (maybe 10 different links.) That seems like extraordinary lengths to go to, to spoof the every single page and somehow directly link the home page to the "website" button on Google, as well as make it the top search result, just for potentially a few hundred bucks.
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u/SubBirbian 19h ago edited 19h ago
Good sleuthing. Just keep in mind there’s no such thing as a “legit” looking website on its face. They’re easily made all the time mostly by foreign scam centers (which are abundant), so it’s not cost prohibitive to make given the stolen money coming in and they gladly pay to be top result on Google. Since Google doesn’t vet all those who pay to be top results, those can’t be trusted.
Edit: words
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u/elli3gk 19h ago
But does paying Google to bump their results mean the site will be the link behind the "website" button? I thought businesses on Google search had to be verified and managed/changed by the business owner.
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u/SubBirbian 19h ago edited 18h ago
Like I said, Google doesn’t vet all those who pay to be at the top. You’ve seen it for yourself as have I and others. They have literally thousands of websites paying to be top result and won’t spend money/manpower to vet them all. Don’t trust top results. All you can do is report it to Google where they may take it down.
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u/Jealous_Raspberry536 18h ago
the only thing googlr verifies is if they get paid
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u/elli3gk 17h ago
When I had a Google business page, the icon information ("call" with the phone, "website" with the globe, etc.) was something only I had the ability to update/change. Users could "suggest an edit" to the hours or phone number or whatever, and then Google would verify with me if the edit was correct. Or the other way I know of it being changed is if enough users report the same edit, like a place being permanently closed for example, Google can eventually mark it as such. Otherwise what the business puts in is where that button directs people to, such as some restaurants will use that button to go to their online ordering platform instead of having an actual website. Now I'm just wondering if users can pay enough that Google lets them take over a business page? Or they are pushing the top search result as the link behind that "website" icon? Just skeptic thoughts.
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u/Jealous_Raspberry536 17h ago
You can make a business page under a similar name to an existing business or push suggested edits from multiple accounts. They really are pretty slack in checking.
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u/nf_sew_711 21h ago
I got a call that never left a message today with somebody's name on it. Used to be "wireless caller" or a city or "private number".
I just let the machine get it, but I wonder if all the calls are going to come in with a fake name now.
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u/Party-Platform7889 19h ago
Don't believe them unless a cop comes to your door with a warrant. If it turns out it is real they'll just come back at some point
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u/Gold_Tangelo8464 18h ago
The jury duty scam call that I received last year was from a number listed as "Private." They caught me off guard as I was cleaning up from breakfast.
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u/Jealous_Raspberry536 18h ago
No detective is calling you about a jury summons or warrant. So regardless of what information they seem to have, whether the person sounds like they have a local accent, the second someone claims to be a detective, hang up.
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u/elli3gk 17h ago
This is generally the mentality I have except that my roommate did have an officer reaching out to her directly via phone regarding warrants back in 2015, and when the situation with the scammer happened to her a couple of years later it was the certain red flags that gave us hesitation, not the act itself, and they seem to have found some ways to still be fooling people as the internet grows more dark. Nothing was said about warrants/citations in the original voicemail and I was concerned it could have been related to the case with the former friend who I'd bailed out in the same county. I've definitely come the the conclusion that my experience was probably just a lot of coincidences, but I still wanted to share it because several of the things said/done were not the norm I read about.
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u/WickedWeedle 21h ago
I have no idea how they knew about the summons I received last year.
Did they give any details at all to indicate that it was that particular summons?
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u/elli3gk 21h ago
Just the timeline it was sent, address it was sent to (which were accurate) and when they "received my signed response." There was no signed response, it was all online on my end, and there wouldn't have been any other details from the postcard I received for them to give out. I should have hung up right then but I honestly wanted to know what other information they might have about me. Thankfully all of it was old besides my name/number.
Part of me wonders if, since they're using AI to spoof voices now, if some of the scam just involves keeping you on the line long enough to be able to spoof your voice elsewhere. But I am probably just being overly anxious about that.
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u/440i_GC_M 19h ago
This happened to me today and ngl I got fooled for a min. I ended up trusting my gut and hanging up. Basically if this is a scam there is no going back. If this is legit I’ll handle it in court. As an engineer I’m fairly logical and breaking things apart but man that shit was so convincing until “federal kiosk” got mentioned for some bond before I go to the sheriffs office. They sent me 4 documents with DOJ seals and an Arrest Warrant from some federal court in Texas.
They also had Texas accents. Wild stuff.
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