PRESS RELEASE – The Clay County Sheriff’s Office continues to receive reports of SCAMS of various kinds. Fortunately, most are not successful and reported to the Sheriff’s Office for informational purposes only. Some, however, are successful, which is heartbreaking. These are heartbreaking because there is little if anything that can be done locally except making a written report and notify the FBI’s fraud reporting system at “ic3.gov”. Replies back from the FBI are extremely rare, unless the details of your SCAM somehow contribute to one of their ongoing comprehensive investigations. These SCAMS originate from unknown locations throughout the U.S. or most likely overseas.

Within the last few weeks, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office was called about an unsuccessful SCAM where the intended victim was told by the caller that they had failed to appear in an Orange County, Florida court and that a warrant had been issued for them. Of course, the caller wanted money in exchange for taking care of the warrant. Luckily the call was terminated, and the Sheriff’s Office was notified. The intended victim was most concerned because the caller ID showed the actual phone number for the Orange County Sheriff’s Office! Please know this is called “spoofing” and in the past has even been used to show the number of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office!

Also, within the last few weeks the Clay County Sheriff’s Office tragically received a report of a successful SCAM. The victim received a phone call from someone representing themselves as being from Blue Ridge EMC. The caller convinced the victim that he owed nearly $2000 for an outstanding power bill for the victim’s business. The caller texted a bar code to the victim to be used to wire monies as payments for the outstanding power bill. The victim complied only to find out it was a SCAM!

These are just two of recent SCAM reports the Clay County Sheriff’s Office regularly receives. Yes, it is happening all around us here in Clay County. In today’s times, you simply can’t trust unsolicited phone calls, emails, social media messages no matter how legitimate they may appear to be. With artificial intelligence, we can’t even trust the voices of friends and family calling in urgent circumstances requesting money. We all need to reach out to our elderly, youth, and other vulnerable friends and family about these threats.

If you or anyone you know receives an UNSOLICITED phone call, text, email, social media message, etc. and for whatever reason you are asked to send money, PLEASE stop all communications. If you are uncomfortable AFTER stopping communication with the person, feel free to call the non-emergency number at the Clay County 911 Center (24/7) at 828/389-2256. They will have an Officer to call you.