For years, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office has been warning area citizens about scammers who use the names of TCSO employees to try and scare people into paying hundreds, sometimes even thousands of dollars over the phone in order to avoid being arrested for warrants that don’t exist.

The most recent version of this scam is targeting medical professionals, such as doctors, nurses and physicians assistants.

In the past two weeks, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office has been contacted by numerus medical professionals, who report that someone claiming to be a Deputy or supervisor from our office has called them, to threaten them with immediate arrest if they don’t pay thousands of dollars in fines for missing a court date in which they were subpoenaed to testify.

In every case, the scammer spoofs TCSO’s phone number, so it appears the call is being made from our office. The scammer does their research. They know their target’s home address and employer. This is all information that can be found online.

Just as in past scams, they order their target to purchase cash cards from local retailers in order pay the fine. As soon as the scammer has the numbers from the cash cards, the money is stolen. In a few cases, they have also tried to get the victim to use ApplePay as well.

On at least two occasions, the scammer has instructed potential victims to meet them in the parking lot TCSO’s headquarters building. But the criminal never showed up. So investigators believe the scammer does this in order to make the scam more believable to their target.

So far we have not received reports of anyone falling victim to this latest version of scam. But as we investigate, the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office wants to remind everyone:

• TCSO never calls anyone with warrants to demand money.
• If you receive one of these calls, hang up.
• If you’re a victim of this scam, contact us at 918-596-5600 to file a report.
• As an added tool to combat this scam, citizens can check to see if they have a Tulsa County warrant using the ”Check warrants” link on the homepage of tcso.org.