RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) – A healthcare worker is warning others after she was scammed out of thousands of dollars following a phone call where two people pretended to be Richmond Police officers.
According to the woman, who wished to remain anonymous, the scammers called her on Monday, Jan. 22, pretending to be Richmond Police third precinct officers. She said the scam sounded so believable – even the officers names and badges checked out.
“I answered [the phone call], of course, and it was, who I thought, [was] an officer [who] sounded very formal, sounded very professional,” she said.
She said the people on the phone made it known that they were an officer, and went on to tell her she was supposed to appear in court that same day as an expert witness for one of her old juvenile patients, who has sexual assault charges against him.
“My last rotation right before I graduated was psych, and there were a lot of patients that matched that description in that rotation. And so I was thinking that this was just one of those. Any one of those patients, it could be,” she said. “This happens all the time. If you ask a bunch of health care workers, they get subpoenaed, subpoenaed and asked to come into court all the time.”
The scammers then told her she was being charged with failure to appear in court and contempt of court – both charges holding a $4,000 fine each – and said if she didn’t pay it right away or hung up the phone, she would then be arrested.
“I was so blinded by [thinking] ‘I’m scared to death, I’m going to lose my job that I don’t even have yet, that I haven’t even started working. I’m scared to death that I’m going to lose my license that I just worked my whole life for,” she said.
Out of fear, she followed the scammer’s directions and ended up taking out $8,000 dollars in cash at the nearest Wells Fargo bank. After that, the scammers instructed her to feed the money through a CoinMe kiosk located at the Food Lion on Staples Mill Road in Henrico.
“At this point, this is when my dad was able to get a hold of me and was like, hang up the phone, meet me at my work, come now, like, put your phone on airplane mode,” she said.
After she had hung up the phone, she said she realized what happened was a scam call. She told 8News that this was a lesson and hopes it will educate others in the medical field.
“There are a lot of us that are just getting our state licenses. And this is like a really good time for physician assistants, so if I can help one of them not got scammed, that’d be great because this was very realistic,” she said.
The Richmond Police Department is currently working with the woman to try to figure out who was responsible for the scam call.
The Richmond Police Department does not call individuals to collect fees, fines or payments ordered by a court. To verify warrants, jury information, fees, fines or payments people are to call the applicable court district.
The Virginia Association of Area Agencies gives these tips to help people avoid fraud:
- Don’t answer unsolicited phone calls, let them go to voicemail.
- If someone is asking you to pay for anything by an obscure method — such as a wire transfer, money order, gift card or bitcoin — it’s probably a scam.
- If someone threatens you over the phone for not providing sensitive information, you’re probably dealing with a scammer.
- If someone is asking you to pay for something over the phone, ask for them to send you proper documentation in writing. If you owe money, they should have your address — don’t give it to them.
