Weld County Sheriff’s Deputy Impersonator Tries To Scam Real Deputy

The Weld County Sheriff's Office is warning people about a scammer who is pretending to be a deputy sheriff as part of a phone scam.

That's according to a post on the Weld County Sheriff's Office's Facebook page.

According to the post, the caller claiming to be Sgt. Paul Wood is calling people either via voice mail or real-time calls and saying that they have either missed a court date or that he needs to speak to them about "important documents."

In one case an actual deputy sheriff' called the scammer back and was told that she had missed a court date. When the deputy told the caller that she was a law enforcement officer he hung up on her, and when she tried to call him back she was unsuccessful.

The scammer is spoofing the sheriff's office dispatch number and other legitimate numbers to make the calls more believable. The phony warrant call scam is an old favorite among con artists and has in the past been reported numerous times in Laramie County and across Wyoming.

According to the post:

"The sheriff’s office will never call regarding warrants or missed court dates and will never ask for payments over the phone. WCSO also does not accept payments via gift cards, prepaid cards, money transfer applications like Cash App, Zell, PayPal, or Venmo. We also won’t ask you to wire any funds through Western Union or any banking institution, and we won’t accept payments via QR codes or ask you to go to any kind of kiosk to make a payment."

It's worth noting that no legitimate law enforcement agency will ever accept payment via gift cards, so anyone who gets a request to pay a fine that way can be confident that they are dealing with a scammer.