"Around 2 p.m. on Oct 20, Danielle White was at work for her job as a special education teacher at Berkeley's John Muir Elementary School when she got a call from four Oakland police officers. They said the call was being recorded for her safety and theirs and gave her their badge numbers. They said that I had missed a court appearance and that I was supposed to be on this jury, White told Berkeleyside in a phone interview."
"Twenty-seven hours later, and nearly $70,000 poorer, White realized the truth: The cops weren't cops, there was never any jury assignment and the arrest with which they had threatened her never would have come to be. But for those 27 hours the scammers, who ripped off the 31-year-old teacher of her life savings, kept her isolated from anyone else in order to control her reality using fear, sound effects and fake identities, she said, to drown out any reservation that bubbled up in her mind."
"Obviously now, kind of listening and hearing this story, it sounds crazy, White said. Not at all, say Berkeley police, who are now investigating. Sadly, this is not the first time I have heard a story like this, Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Byron White (no relation to Danielle White) wrote in an email. The FBI lists this exact strategy as one of the more common types of fraud."
Danielle White, a 31-year-old special education teacher in Berkeley, received a call from people posing as four Oakland police officers who said she had missed a court appearance and provided badge numbers. The callers told her the call was being recorded and threatened arrest. Over 27 hours the scammers isolated her, used fear, sound effects and fake identities, and directed her to deposit cash into ATMs around Oakland, ultimately taking nearly $70,000, her life savings. Berkeley police are investigating. The FBI identifies this impersonation-and-isolation tactic as a common fraud, and digital scammers took an estimated $16.6 billion nationwide last year. State agencies have begun penalizing operators of cryptocurrency ATMs that enable such scams.
Read at www.berkeleyside.org
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