Residents are being advised to be cautious about callers claiming to be law enforcement.
The Colleyville Police Department (CPD) is warning citizens of scam callers identifying themselves as police officers. One of the scammers even dared to impersonate the police chief.
Authorities announced on November 28 in a social media post that they were aware of several reports of residents receiving calls from such scammers. The scammers were “threatening arrest, or demanding money, for a warrant,” according to the post.
Colleyville Police Chief Michael C. Miller issued a separate post detailing one of the reports in which a scammer had called a resident claiming to be him. The caller threatened an arrest if the individual did not offer payment in the form of gift cards.
“I’m definitely not making these calls & we would never ask for payment in gift cards or Bitcoin,” Miller stated in his post.
“CPD will not call and threaten anyone with an arrest, and no legitimate government entity will ever ask you to pay in gift cards or in Bitcoin,” stressed CPD. “You can be 100% certain it’s a scam if they ask you to pay by these means. Hang up the phone and call us to report the attempted fraud.”
The department warned that scammers have adopted a “sophisticated” method in that the call may appear to be coming from a legitimate police phone number; however, the department clarified that the scammers’ practice of describing an urgent situation reveals the deception as this is not how police departments typically function.
Residents who receive these scam calls are advised to hang up and report the incident. Those who receive a call and suspect it to be legitimate are advised to take note of the alleged officer’s name, rank, and badge number and then call 817-743-4522 (CPD’s non-emergency number) to have dispatchers connect the resident to the officer in question.
This is not the only recent occurrence of scammers attempting to impersonate law enforcement. Earlier this year, the Dallas Police Department warned citizens of fraudsters posing as officers. These imposters went so far as to modify their cars to look like police vehicles, pulling drivers over and cutting through traffic, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
As of December 1, there have been 1,640 reported instances of false pretense swindles and confidence scams, marking a 6.8% increase over the same period last year, according to the City of Dallas crime analytics dashboard.
DPD has been struggling to get crime under control amid an ongoing staffing shortage. While the department currently has only around 3,000 officers in the field, a City analysis suggests a city the size of Dallas needs a force of 4,000. The staffing shortfall is most apparent in Downtown Dallas, which leads Fort Worth’s city center across several crime categories. The latter is reportedly patrolled by a dedicated police unit that works alongside private security guards.