Scam artists are always looking for new fraudulent ways to separate people from their money.
Cape Coral Police Economic Crimes Unit Detective Christopher Simonds gives out a warning about a particularly new such new trend — courier scams
"We're receiving a lot of complaints regarding people emptying their bank accounts and then depositing that money into a Bitcoin machine, or possibly taking all their money and turning it into gold bars and putting it in a duffel bag and then it gets picked up by a courier," Simonds said. "Ultimately, there's a lot of ways the scam can look but it's going to be someone contacting a victim, either over the phone from a text message, it could be an email and it's going to be trying to coerce people into taking their money out of their bank account and putting it into this other thing that that the criminals then have access to."
He said that if someone contacts you, claiming to be the police, a federal agent, someone working for the IRS, it's probably fraudulent. Don't take your money out of your bank account.
":No matter what they tell you, they're going to try to convince you that the bank is out to scam you, or the bank is trying to steal your money. That's not the case," he said. "We've never seen something like that. If you get a call like that, contact your police department."
HE said that if you get called by your bank, hang up and then call your bank at the number that you know to be valid to confirm what the person is saying.
"But no matter what, don't, don't take all your money out of your bank account to then put into a Bitcoin ATM or a package or something like that," Simonds said. "Unfortunately, the fraudsters are very convincing when they speak with people over the phone, because they're very successful with it."
No one is going to call you to ask you to empty all the money out of your bank account, or even some of the money out of your bank account, he said.
"We're seeing people being taken for anywhere between a few $1,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the scams are very convincing. Just please don't fall for it," he said.
Contact your local police department or sheriff's office, as soon as you get one of these calls, it impacts a wide range of people.
"We're seeing information reports come from all over the country. These people just prey on whoever answers the phone, and it's not any specific group of people, it's just whoever they can get on the phone, keep them talking, and ultimately get them to then empty their bank account and give their money away," he said.
Simonds said the scammers rely on a sense of urgency. They need you to do this now. You need to take this action now to prevent from being arrested. There's a warrant out for your arrest. We're the U.S. Marshals, and if you deposit this money to us, the warrants going to go away or the bank is not in your best interest.
The Cape Coral detective said there will always be a sense of urgency, trying to get you to do it as quickly as possible, to put all your into a double bag or an envelope and then meet a courier, at like a third party location, or maybe a vacant field away from the person's home, where they know there won't be any cameras.
"They'll be instructed not to make eye contact with the person picking up the money," Simonds said. "If it sounds suspicious and the red flags are going off, it probably is just like I said, just contact us."
Additionally, he said that if you receive a text message or an email or one of these fraudulent phone calls that then sends you a link, don't open it because they have the ability to put software on your phone that can then compromise your information, whatever you know, whatever information we have on our phones.
"Once they get to that, then they can further compromise you and have even more money or identity theft you," he said.
WGCU is your trusted source for news and information in Southwest Florida. We are a nonprofit public service, and your support is more critical than ever. Keep public media strong and donate now. Thank you.