One of the great pests of the modern world: phone scammers.
We’ve all bore the brunt of fraudsters chancing their arms: whether it be over the phone or an email from a ‘foreign prince’.
Out of all the people you could try and scam though, surely a police officer is pretty low on your hit list. Well, this robocaller put his foot right in it when he called a North Carolina police captain.
Check out the video below:
Caught on video and posted to the Apex Police Department’s Facebook page, a highly amused Capt. Ann Stephens is seen engaging the fraudster on loudspeaker, who is accusing her of drug trafficking and money laundering more than $10 million.
According to the gentleman on the other end of the call, ‘Officer John Black’, Capt. Stephens is set to be arrested in the next 45 minutes.
The police department posted the video as a caution for people not to give out any personal information on the phone, captioning the post: ‘SCAM CALLERS – DO NOT TELL THEM ANYTHING!!!’
In the video, ‘Officer Black’ proceeds to try and coerce Capt. Stephens into giving up her bank account details which are linked to her Social Security Number.
‘Officer Black’ says:
If you don’t tell me then we’ll go ahead and suspend all the bank accounts that are connected to your Social Security.
So don’t blame us if you lose any money. We are trying to help you out over here.
Capt. Stephens isn’t having it. She persists in questioning the caller’s need for this information, dissecting the components of the tall tale he’s using to get the details.
She says: ‘I want to know what the allegations are against me and what you’re going to take out a warrant for’. According to the caller, she’s looking at ‘two criminal charges against you, [number one], drug trafficking, and number two, money laundering.’
As the call progressively leans more in Capt. Stephens’ favour, ‘Officer Black’ abruptly hangs up. Another scammer bites the dust.
Robocallers are a serious problem in the US: in 2018, more than 16.3 billion spam phone calls pestered people across the country, according to the New York Post.
Robocalls have been the number one consumer complaint at the Federal Trade Commission for several years, including four million gripes in 201.
If you would like to see Capt. Stephens full battle with ‘Officer Black’ check out the video below:
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.