Mass State Police : Citizens Urged to be Aware of Fraudulent Phone Calls

the information below was published by the Mass State Police

Citizens Urged to be Aware of Fraudulent Phone Calls

Over the last few days, the Massachusetts State Police have received numerous reports from members of the public regarding fraudulent phone calls. Specifically, the people received phone calls from someone claiming that the call recipients were subject to arrest and directing them to call authorities. The caller claims to be from the MSP, informs the recipients that they are subjects of a warrant, and directs the recipients to call a phony number to clear up the warrant before someone comes to arrest them. Some calls mentioned that the source of the warrants was the IRS. The calls of which we are aware have been made by someone with a heavy foreign accent, but the public should be wary of any such calls, whether the caller has an accent or not. Through technological means, the calls are set up so that the incoming number a cell phone user will see is an actual MSP number. The public should be advised that the calls are fraudulent and are not coming from MSP. The source or sources of the calls remains under investigation. Anyone receiving any call stating that he or she is the subject of an arrest warrant, and directing them to call the IRS or Massachusetts State Police should disregard the call. For the record, we do not call warrant subjects in advance and ask that they call us back; rather, we tend to just show up on their doorstep.