Police say to stay on lookout for scammers

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officers and community members targeted by fraudsters are advising people to stay alert for phone and email scams.

The issue recently came up in Washington County after a woman was allegedly conned out of substantial cash by Florida man Luc Vautier, who police say claimed to represent a family member who ostensibly died in a fictitious car accident. Vautier is already facing charges for a similar stunt in Wisconsin, according to that state’s legal system database, as well as Illinois, according to a handful of local news outlets around Lake Forest.

Washington County Sherriff’s Office Investigator Jayce Horning said scammers tended to target older populations for money and younger populations for explicit images, and advised everyone to use caution in interactions that are not face-to-face.

“These guys are smart, they do it all day, every day, and if they’re successful with one person when they’ve contacted 100, it pays for their time,” Horning said. “The dollar amount they’re getting, it’s significant … they’re master manipulators, they’re going to play on your heartstrings.”

Cases like Vautier’s are remarkably difficult to solve. Horning said most scams worked through anonymized platforms that made perpetrators hard to pin down, and that most were good about covering their tracks.

In Vautier’s case, police managed to find a license plate on surveillance footage around the time he allegedly picked up an envelope full of cash from a defrauded county resident. From that information, they figured out a rental car company, and subpoena’d for a name of the driver.

“We did get very lucky,” Horning said. “We ended up figuring out who the suspect was off of a shot-in-the-dark video … sometimes, once the money is sent, there’s nothing the sheriff’s office or anybody else can do to get it back. These people are ghosts.”

Horning suggests that community members follow a handful of precautions in their online and over-the-phone interactions. The list includes refusing to keep a transaction secret, questioning any insistence on acting fast, and declining to provide personal information, money, or passwords unless you can personally verify the identify of the person on the other end of the line.

When contacted by someone claiming to be a family member from an unusual number or with an unusual request, he said the best bet was to hang up, and contact that loved one (or someone close to them) personally.

“If you’re contacted out of the blue, that’s a red flag,” he said. “Or if they ask for money in weird ways … they’ll ask you to pull cash out of the bank, or get gift cards, and legitimate companies don’t do transactions that way. And if they ask you to mail cash, don’t do that.”

Washington resident and former nursing home administrator Ellen Krueger said she’d been called at least four times in the last week by someone claiming to represent Medicare — each time from a different number — offering her medical equipment in exchange for her Medicare number: information which could be used to commit identity theft, much like a Social Security number.

“I just saw my doctor yesterday … and I said, ‘I believe if he wanted me to have these products, he would have discussed it with me,’” Krueger said. “That’s on the back of anybody’s Medicare card: ‘Medicare will never call you.’ If you have problems, you may call them. So when he says he’s from Medicare, c’mon, give me a break.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com