EL PASO COUNTY — Do you know who is on the other side of your phone call? A viewer reached out to News5 after he said a man called him impersonating a law enforcement officer.
Joseph Hernandez wants to share his experience and message, warning others in our community of what he went through.
"It was pretty convincing, and I'm a pretty skeptical person,” Joseph Hernandez said.
For 15 minutes, Hernandez was on the phone with someone he thought was a law enforcement officer.
“They really had me for a little bit, and I wasn't quite sure exactly what to do,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the man on the other side of the call identified himself as an El Paso County Sheriff's Deputy.
“It definitely sounded like a legit, honest police officer,” Hernandez said. “He had originally asked me, is this Joseph Hernandez? Then he had stated my address, and it was correct. I know a lot of that can be easily found on the internet, but it was pretty convincing.”
Hernandez was in his home office on his computer.
“So I was actually Googling, and the phone number they called was the phone number from (the) El Paso County Sheriff's Office,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez has the screen shot he took of the call, it shows a 719 number and the caller ID as El Paso County.
On Thursday, we double checked the phone numbers and it showed they were a match, 719-520-7100.
“They can... spoof that on your phone, that information is actually put in by the caller. There's a device they can actually use to put in the phone number and the caller ID,” Hernandez said.
The man on the phone told Hernandez he missed federal jury duty. The man then threatened to arrest Hernandez if he did not pay a fine.
“They were trying to get me to basically deposit $3,000 in what they call the federal kiosk,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez was not sure what a federal kiosk was.
“I've never heard of that before. Then he gave me a thing about, well, during COVID this was established with the federal government for people to deposit money because they couldn't go to the courthouse. So I was like, well, where's this federal kiosk and he gives me the address,” Hernandez said.
He googled it and saw it was at a local Safeway close to where Hernandez lives.
“So they were trying to get me to take the money and deposit it into a Western Union account to pay a fine. I told the guy... no way, I'm going to deposit, you know, $3,000 into a federal union account,” Hernandez said.
Confused and frustrated, Hernandez told the man he would drive down to the sheriff's office to straighten this situation out.
“Then he's like well, I'll warn you that getting in your car, if you get pulled over, you will be arrested, you know, because there there is a warrant out for your arrest, and so, you know, even driving down there, he said, if I showed up there, that they would arrest me. And I'm like, I'm a law abiding citizen. I've done nothing wrong. So you can arrest me if you want, but I've done nothing wrong here,” Hernandez said.
The man threatened Hernandez by saying he would be in jail for 48 hours to 72 hours for not complying.
“I am just confused. So I'm Googling this still some more. Then I found a website up in Denver and it basically spelled it all out,” Hernandez said.
It is a website from The United States District Court— District Of Colorado Division. It lists out their warnings to jurors.
After reading what was on the website Hernandez had enough and hung up. Hernandez is a cyber security engineer and says anyone could fall for this.
“I hope nobody does, but just want to get it out there, awareness for people aware that they're doing this in the area and they're impersonating basically El Paso County Sheriff's,” Hernandez said.
He said the people on the other side of the phone call had done their research. Hernandez described it as a well oiled machine.
“They definitely had done their homework, you know. They had the address for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. And then he had mentioned putting his lieutenant on the phone, you know, and then he said the name of the lieutenant. So I Googled the name, and that actually came up then as well. So they've... done their research,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez's advice to others is to never give money to someone over the phone.
“Number one, don't fall for a cold call if they're calling you like that and there's been no correspondence via the mail, which was one of the other things that I had asked, was basically like, why did I not receive anything in the mail, you know? Obviously from the get go, I never received anything about needing to appear in court,” Hernandez said.
He said something needs to be done to protect people from these callers.
“I think the phone companies should not allow people to change the information that shows up on your phone. The fact that the phone number and El Paso County Sheriff showed up on my phone was kind of convincing at first. It took me a little while to realize and think that that could actually easily be spoofed, and that they could have been doing that. So the phone companies should not allow that to happen. Anybody like you or I make a phone call, our information shows up, but the bad guys have the ability to change that, and so you really can't believe anything nowadays,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said when in doubt, just hang up.
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