People Suck

 I got a call from someone claiming to be a State Police Sargent. He left a message saying he need to get in touch with M. M had just checked his phone and had recieved a text message after a missed call with the same message. 

He gets on the phone with them and they claim that he had missed a "meeting" and there was a federal arrest warrent issued for him. They had sent notice of this "meeting" via certified mail and it was signed as having been recieved. He denied ever recieving anything and they said he needed to come to the state police department to sign a card front and back to prove he did not sign it. Then he needed to pay 10% of a PR bond $4500 that would be refunded if he was proven correct. 

They tell him he has to stay on the phone with them. He is in panic mode so Hubby says he will go with him since M can't drive, stay on the phone and look at directions at the same time. They tell us that no one is allowed to go with him. That does not fly of course. They tell us that we are not allowed to go and loiter in the parking lot to which we tell them that we will drop M and go to Walmart or somewhere else to wait for him. 

They get to the bank so that M can get the cash while I am contacting his PO and asking about it on Reddit. Now that Hubby is going they change their tune. Now they want him to deposit the money in a kiosk nearby and come down to the police station with a statement from the kiosk. They tell M that if he does not come by with the statement that he will be arrested on site. 

I get on the phone with the police department they orriginally wanted him to go to and am told that everything is done through the courts that the police will never ask for cash. I let M and Hubby know and this but M of course is still worried about the potential warrent for his arrest. I call the police again and she says that she cannot tell me if there is a warrent but after looking his name up tells me it is 100% a scam. 

M tells the guy on the phone. They tell M that if he does not come by with the statement that he will be arrested on site. We are 90% sure it is a scam at this point but there is still the fear of a warrent so they go by our local police department. They reassure him that there is no warrent. 

All of this time Ms phone keeps disconnecting from the scammers. While they were leaving the police department the scammer calls back and M takes the phone inside and offeres it to the police officer he had just been talking to. Click.

They drove by the location of the kiosk that they wanted him to deposit the money into and it was a Bitcoin machine in the back of a gas station. 

Lesson learned but now we are all ready for a drink.