ONLY ON NEWS 5: Scammers threaten to arrest Foley woman unless she pays up in cryptocurrency

FOLEY, Ala. ( WKRG ) — It started with a disturbing phone call from a local number to Brenda Hancock.

“He says I missed court on Thursday, and if I did not pay a bond, I would immediately be arrested,” Hancock said.

It was a scam Hancock almost fell for.

“He wanted me to use Apple Pay,” Hancock said. “I don’t do that, and he kept giving me alternatives. He said there is an ATM in Foley that you can go to and pay and at the bank he’s on the phone the whole time and at the bank he said don’t tell them what this is for.”

She withdrew the money and headed to a local Winn Dixie that has a BitCoin kiosk.

“And he’s on the phone telling me, and the man at the customer service desk tells me, ‘Are you on the phone with somebody who wants to send money through that?’ And the Winn Dixie guy says, ‘Hang up.'”

She hung up and later documented the whole experience in a notebook.

“I’m talking to you because I don’t want anyone else to send the money in that BitCoin machine, and it’s gone,” Hancock said.

We called the number and surprisingly the scammer picked up.

“There’s no way the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office would call someone and ask them for money correct?”

“That’s correct, ma’am,” the scammer replied

“So why did you do that?” There was no answer.

Hancock said she can laugh about it now.

“There were so many red flags; you would have thought a hurricane was coming,” she said.

She hopes those red flags will warn others before someone falls victim to the scam.

The scammers used “spoofed” phone numbers, so it looked like they were legitimately coming from the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office. There were never any warrants for Hancock’s arrest.

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