SPANISH FORK, Utah, Sept. 22, 2022 — Police regularly issue scam alerts for the public, warning of phone and online scams, but the latest round of a familiar scam touched a nerve in the Utah County Sheriff’s Office.
“Scammers are blood-sucking creeps who prey on people who want to trust others,” Sgt. Spencer Cannon ranted in the latest alert from the sheriff. “They are among the lowest of the low. What they do feels dirty!”
What set off Cannon, the sheriff’s public information officer, is the scammers were using his name and that of Chief Deputy Dave Oliver in phone calls threatening citizens into paying off non-existent bench warrants or fines.
“Hang up and call us if you have questions,” reads his post on social media. “Chief Deputy Oliver and I are real. These scammers are not! These are NOT our numbers.”
The phone calls in the latest cycle of the common scam came with a Utah area code, but an exchange out of California, Cannon told Gephardt Daily. “But with the technology available, it could be coming from anywhere from Pakistan to south Provo,”
“Normally I try to be diplomatic,” he said, “But this time I decided to call a spade a spade. There are degrees of evil to these things.”
He hadn’t heard of anyone falling for the scams in this current cycle yet, he said, but in the last, maybe six months ago, three citizens were taken for $1,800, $4,000 and $6,000 respectively.
Actual contact phone numbers for the Sheriff’s Office are 801-851-4000 for the main office in Spanish Fork, 801-851-4040 for the Provo office, or non-emergency dispatch at 801-794-3970, or the sheriff’s website at sheriff.utahcounty.gov, or Facebook page.
