EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office says a telephone scam is targeting registered sex offenders in the county, trying to scam them out of money
According to EPCSO, registered people around the county have gotten calls from someone identifying themselves as employees of the Sheriff’s Office.
The scammers tell the registered sex offender that they are non-compliant with their registration and have warrants which will result in their arrest if they don’t pay a specific fine. The victim is then told to buy Money Trax cards or gift cards to resolve the issue.
My recommendation: If anyone in California is called for a scam, please get as much information from the call as possible, then contact ACSOL with the information. Transcribe as much as you can remember (remember, recording is illegal without consent of both parties), particularly any contact points or payment requests. Finally, contact law enforcement and at least file a complaint. I doubt LE will act on it, but the complaint needs to be on record.
I would imagine with enough reports, there may be a potential that pressure can be applied on authorities to clamp down on this. Keep in mind that the general sheeple public perversely thinks that scamming registrants is a POSITIVE thing, to which end pressure must be applied from the afflicted.
Texas is a one-party consent state. Recording conversations is illegal in the State of Texas, unless one party to the conversation consents. You may record your own conversation with another person, without their knowledge or consent, but you may not record two or more other people unless one of the people in the conversation consents to a recording.
What this means is that in Texas, if you consent to recording a call, you can legally record your own conversation with another party without their knowledge or consent, so long as it is only one other person. If there are two or more other persons on the line, at least one other person must give consent.
If you are in Texas and a scammer calls you, and only the two of you are on the line, so far as you know, you can legally record the conversation.