I received a phone call today from someone who claimed to be named "Gregory Jackson" telling me that I missed an appointment for a "secondary DNA sample" on Monday. He claimed the state had sent me a notice by certified mail. When I insisted that I'd gotten no such notice, he said that the USPS showed it had been delivered and said something about how they'd need me to come in and sign and do a signature analysis for court.
He went on to tell me that because I had missed an appointment, a warrant had been issued for my arrest and that if I came in to give the DNA sample, they'd have to book me. Then he put me on hold for awhile and came back with some mumbo jumbo about how I would be able to "self bond" and could pay now so that I wouldn't be locked up.
Of course, I got really scared because it is 100 percent plausible that both the State of Louisiana and the USPS could fuck things up in exactly this way. So, he told me I had to pay several thousand dollars so that I wouldn't be put into jail. Then he told me I had to stay on the phone with him the entire time so they'd know where I was, since I had an active warrant. This is where things started feeling really fishy. Obviously, he didn't want me to contact anyone and try to vet what was happening.
I went to the bank, and withdrew some money from savings. When I got back to the car, there was this text about depositing cash into some weird kiosk. "Sgt Jackson" told me an address and that I was to go deposit the money there. At that point, I told him I was going to need some kind of documentation before I deposited money in some random electronic kiosk. He got adversarial and told me "if that's how you feel about it, I can just come pick you up." I told him I'd already texted my PO about it and he didn't really have any response to that. So, I put in the address on my GPS and while driving there. At this point there was radio chatter and the guy starts talking about having units on standby and saying random "codes." I think he said 1088. While driving to the address, I called Lt. Moore (the local authority over sex offenders in the parish). He immediately assured me that the call was a scam and asked me to merge him into the call. I did, but the guy hung up right away. I was the 5th or 6th person who'd called him about this came today.
I'm so angry. I didn't need this extra stress. Also, sex offenders are already a marginalized group who have to pay lots of random fees. Trying to prey on us financially is really shitty. I'm sure the people take some comfort in the fact that they're taking advantage of "bad people," but damn. It turns out that having a legally vulnerable group of people who are required to post and publish all of their contact information and criminal history online makes us an especially tempting target for scammers.
Both the number above and the number that texted me about the kiosk are answering calls. Though, as soon as I they figure out I'm on to them, they just hang up.
Apparently one of the guys who got called actually made a payment of some amount. That sucks a lot, but the good news is that at least a crime has now been committed. Until money actually changes hands under false pretenses, no crime has actually occurred. Though, now that I'm thinking about crime and punishment, I'm really not sure what kind of penalty I'd like these guys to face. I know incarceration isn't reasonable. Maybe they should have to be on the sex offender registry for awhile.
.jpg)
Update: Putting these comments in a screenshot for posterity.
I'm 90% sure the person who wrote this is one of the scammers because I texted both their numbers a link to this post. But, there are people out there who really feel this way about sex offenders. Note how this person automatically assumes the worst about me and says that I deserve to die.
I also enjoy how they're not willing to comment from their actual Google Account and made a throwaway one under the name "Concerned Citizen" because they're actually just a troll who's into the idea of punching down.
