Collinsville Police Warn Against Phone Scam Imitating City Staff

The Collinsville Police Department is warning everyone about phone scammers who are impersonating either the police department or the city itself.

The police department has received a few phone calls in the last few weeks from people asking if they have warrants out for their arrest or if they owe money because someone supposedly from the city said that they did.

Collinsville Police Chief Matthew Burke said that if you do receive a suspicious phone call like that, go ahead and hang up the phone and call the entity that supposedly called you first to make sure that you don't owe money to the city or have a warrant out for your arrest.

Some of the scammers may show up as spam risk on your phone, however, some will show up as a number from a particular entity because of spoofing. Spoofing is when a scammer essentially clones someone's number and pretends to be them before trying to request money.

Even if someone has spoofed a number, there are some tell-tale signs that someone is trying to scam you.

"The biggest thing I’d watch out for is people asking you to make payments via a gift card whether it be a Visa gift card, iTunes, or Walmart gift card. An official business or IRS or police department or wherever will not ask you to go to a store and buy gift cards to make the payment," Burke said.

Burke also said that there's not a whole lot the police department can do about these calls right now because a lot of these calls come from out of the country.

Burke also said that this is something the police department deals with constantly and that they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

"It’s something that we just deal with constantly, year-round. It’s a never-ending thing, and the best thing we can do is when we hear about a new one that we let people know about the new tactic, let people be aware of it so that way they can vet it themselves," Burke said.