Lubbock Police are seeing an increase in scams targeting citizens, some of whom have been defrauded of tens of thousands of dollars they will likely never get back.

Lubbock Police Sergeant Brandon Stewart said about 20 to 30 people have come to police stations in the last few weeks reporting that they had been defrauded out of thousands of dollars by people posing as account representatives and protecting them from fraud.

“This keeps happening,” he said. “It’s really picked up in the last two or three months, and it’s not just the scams, but the amounts they’re after.”

The scams seem to be very simple: they call an unsuspecting victim and pretend to be a representative of their bank or online account. They claim that hackers or thieves have gained access to their account and use the alarming message to manipulate the victim into handing over their money.

“And from that point on, they use an intimidation tactic and then say, ‘Hey, to protect your account, we want you to deposit a certain amount of dollars into a Bitcoin ATM. And then the victims deposit $20,000 or $30,000, whatever the amount is, and then they realize it’s a scam,'” Stewart said.

By the time victims realize they have been cheated, it is too late.

In one case, a fraud victim walked into the police station on July 26 to report that a scammer had called him using a seemingly legitimate bank phone number and told him that his debit card information was being used by someone in Florida.

The scammer asked the man to make two separate transfers to catch his debit card user in Florida.

However, he later learned that the caller, who had claimed to be a bank employee, was actually a scammer who had defrauded him of nearly $60,000.

“It’s one thing to get scammed out of $100,” Stewart said. “But when you lose half of your entire life savings, $60,000 to $70,000, whatever the amount, the largest amount we’ve seen right now is about $60,000. That’s a big concern for us because it’s money they’re not likely to get back.”

Stewart said he was convinced the fraudsters were using technology to fake legitimate bank phone numbers on mobile phones.

“It’s extremely difficult to track them down,” Stewart said. “Especially when they’re using technology to spoof numbers and use the tactics they’re using.”

About two days earlier, another resident had walked into Lubbock Police Department headquarters and reported that he had been tricked into sending over $4,000 worth of bitcoins, a digital currency, by scammers posing as Apple representatives.

The man said the scammers told him there was a fraudulent transaction pending on his bank account and he needed to withdraw all the money from his account to stop the transaction, according to a Lubbock police report.

However, the scammers convinced him that withdrawing all his money from the bank would arouse suspicion, so they instead asked him to go to a cryptocurrency ATM, buy $4,400 worth of the currency, and deposit the money into an account they set up.

The man followed the instructions, but realized too late that it was all a hoax.

Stewart, who took the man’s statement, told him it was unlikely he would get his money back.

“Because these scammers are probably not even in the country yet and have no more investigations,” he said. “They are simply lost.”

But while there may be no way to recover the stolen money or bring the scammers to justice, Stewart encouraged victims of scams to still report the crime to warn other residents about the scam and prevent more victims from falling victim.

“That’s the goal here today,” he said. “If we don’t know about it, we have no way of educating the public and the citizens of Lubbock that this is fraud.”

Stewart said citizens who believe they have been scammed should trust their instincts, hang up and call their local bank to verify that the call they just received was genuine.

“If something looks suspicious, chances are it is,” he said.

For example, a warning sign that a call could be a scam is when scammers ask victims to stay on the phone while they go to the bank to withdraw money or go to a store to purchase gift cards or cryptocurrencies.

“No reasonable person would ever tell you to stay on the phone while making a financial transaction at a bank,” Stewart said.

Another warning sign is scammers telling their victims not to call their bank, the police, or inform law enforcement.

“If these scammers tell you not to contact the people at your bank, that should be a red flag – just hang up and don’t take any further action,” he said.

Stewart said another common scam involves residents being called by people posing as police officers and telling them they need to send money to quash pending warrants for failure to appear for jury duty.

“We are not reaching out to people who may have arrest warrants or who have failed to serve as jurors,” he said.

This article originally appeared in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lubbock police warn residents of rise in phone scams