The Larimer County Sheriff's Office has issued a warning about a particularly cold-hearted scam preying on the families of individuals recently incarcerated. Scammers, exploiting publicly accessible booking information on the LCSO website, meticulously search for and contact relatives of inmates, claiming they need immediate payment for various release-related expenses.
These con artists, finding the names of those booked into custody through the Sheriff's Office’s own resources, then take to search engines and delve into social media to obtain contact details of the inmate's family, often grappling with the disarray of a loved one's imprisonment, are the scammer's target, according to the Larimer County Sheriff's Office. They tell them funds are urgently required for things like early release, ankle monitors, or breathalyzer services, and demand payment through methods that make it nearly impossible to trace or retrieve the money once it is sent. Options preferred by the scammers include PayPal, wire transfers, Zelle, Venom, cryptocurrencies, and gift cards.
It is a heartless offense that capitalizes on the heightened emotions of people in vulnerable states, manipulating their desire to help their incarcerated loved ones to siphon money that will serve no such cause. In the announcement made by the Larimer County Sheriff's Office, they steadfastly remind the public that official requests for payments related to incarceration will never come by way of an unsolicited phone call.
