Phone Scams Spike Countywide

The Sheriff’s Office is reporting a countywide spike in phone scams, the most active of which features a caller posing as an IRS agent demanding owed tax payments. In another scam, a caller impersonates a Homeland Security agent demanding that a would-be victim provide his or her date of birth, home address, and Social Security number. In some more sophisticated cases, caller ID may display that the scammer is phoning from the Sheriff’s Office or an 805 area code, according to a statement. “The Sheriff’s Office wants to remind residents that [we] do not call residents to notify them of a warrant, nor do we take any payments of any kind over the phone.”