CCB MEDIA PHOTO
Barnstable Police Sergeant Sean Sweeney
HYANNIS – On a recent day, a local man was on his way to the Western Union office in Hyannis with $5,000 in cash in his pocket, preparing to wire money to a man he thought was an Internal Revenue Service agent.
But just minutes before falling victim to the elaborate con, a convergence of events occurred that foiled the scam.
The man was driving by the Barnstable Police Station on Phinney’s Lane, and the caller pretending to be the IRS agent called the man and repeated a threat that he would be arrested by police if he did not pay the money.
Since he was driving by the police station, the man decided to go into the station to check whether police were about to arrest him.
Barnstable Police Sergeant Sean Sweeney happened to be at the desk that day.
“He was worried that the police were going to arrest him and he had the phone in his hand with this so-called agent on the line,” Sweeney said. “I said ‘give me that phone. That’s no IRS guy.”
Sweeney then had some words with the caller.
“We had a colorful interaction and I told him never to call the guy again,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney emphasized that the call was obviously a scam. “The IRS is never going to call you and say pay us by Western Union or MoneyGram,” Sweeney said.
But the incident is just one example of a range of scams that are helped by criminals’ access to the Internet.
Sweeney said that a lot of the scammers are calling from another country. The Internet’s ability to provide free long-distance calls has helped people who seek to trick people by telephone. They can make numerous long-distance calls for free in what are known as “phishing” expeditions to try to convince someone to send money.
Other than the IRS scams, police are also seeing a number of scams where callers claim people have won a large amount of money but they must send money to collect the large “prize.”
Sweeney said this is a frequent scam and one that is often successful.
“There’s a lot of people that fall for it. It goes back to a little bit of the greed in all of us. Everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to have free money and people fall into it,” he said.
Listen below for more advice from Barnstable Police Sergeant Sean Sweeney about scams.
This is what serving & protecting truly looks like. Kudos to this good cop for watching out over us and his dept!
It should be common knowledge that this is a scam. I knew it.