Scammers Ramp Up As Holidays Approach

As the holidays approach, scammers are ramping up their efforts to dampen your holiday spirit by wrangling you out of some cash. Hamblen County Sheriff Chad Mullins says tis the season for scammers and within the last couple of weeks a resident of Knox County and a resident of Loudon County have fallen victim to scammers who identified themselves as lieutenants with the Hamblen County Sheriff’s Office. The scammers generally use the same old ploy of someone having missed jury duty or someone having fines or an outstanding warrant to con people out of their money. They make the scam look even more real by having the number of the sheriff’s department come up on caller ID. Sheriff Mullins says the two latest victims lost $17,000 and $12,000to the scam.

The sheriff re-iterates that no law enforcement agency is going to contact you to ask for money to pay fines. Mullins says the best way to protect yourself is to outsmart the scammer, by hanging up and calling the sheriff’s office yourself. The sheriff says that people to stay vigilant when it comes to these types of calls and to never share any kind of personal or banking information over the phone.