By Hank Silverberg, ADVANCE CORRESPONDENT
The call comes when you are at home relaxing. The person on the other end says he’s a Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Deputy, and he has a federal arrest warrant for you because you missed a federal court date. They will be coming to arrest you unless you pay a cash bond of $9,000 through a pay service like Venmo or CashApp right away.
It happened to one local resident, who didn’t believe it and went to the Sheriff’s department in person to check it out. Most people would be suspicious of such a call, but some people fall for it. It’s an old scam with a new twist, and it’s been circulating again in the Spotsylvania, Stafford, and Fredericksburg region.
Spotsylvania Sherriff’s Major Liz Scott says senior citizens are the usual targets, but it can happen to anybody. The scammers use real names of deputies at the department who sometimes have to field frantic call backs from potential victims.
Some of the scams involve allegations of missing jury duty, or not paying large sums in speeding or parking tickets. Scott says the Sherriff’s department would never ask for payment of fines or anything else over the phone. They sometimes call people where there’s a warrant out, but that’s just to encourage that person to turn themselves in.
Most notices about missed jury duty or fines will come in the regular mail.
Scott says if a police or deputy calls you asking you to pay a fine or a fee over the phone it’s a scam for sure. You should take down whatever information you can get, without telling them anything, and report it to your local police.
Another new scam that is cropping up is an email or text claiming to be from Apple Pay and saying you have money being held for you. But clicking on the link to retrieve it can expose you to other kinds of scams like identity theft.
If you frequent Facebook or other social media sites and click a like on your favorite celebrity you may also become the target of a scam attempt. Several big Hollywood stars including Sandra Bullock and Kaley Cuoco are being impersonated with the imposter telling the fan they have won a large amount of cash, and a truck. All the fan has to do is pay the delivery fee or the taxes. The victim sends off the money, often several hundred dollars, and finds out later the whole thing is a scam. The celebrities aren’t giving away cash and trucks.
Another scam uses the name of philanthropist Michael Bloomberg in an email and offers a $5 million gift to random people. All the “winner” has to do is pay a processing fee.
The FBI says more than 15 million adults in the United States lost an estimated $68 billion from fraud in 2025. About $20.8 billion of that total was on-line fraud, while another $3.5 billion was last through imposter scams.
If you are the victim of a scam, in addition to alerting your local police, you can file a complaint with the FBI HERE.
The use of a real deputy’s name is the unsettling detail here. A line worth having ready: “I’ll contact the office directly, using a number I find myself.” It gives someone a simple way to end the call and check.