Phone Scam Clones State Police Number, Requests Your Personal Information
PIKESVILLE, Md. (WJZ) — Maryland State Police are warning the public about a reported telephone scam where the caller cloned a state police number and requested personal information from people as part of a criminal investigation.
A woman called the Maryland State Police on Thursday morning and reported she had received a call where the caller ID on her phone showed "Maryland State Government" and the number 301-475-8955, which is the number for the Maryland State Police Leonardtown Barrack.
When she answered the call, the person on the other end told her she was a suspect in a drug trafficking investigation and she needed to give them her Social Security number and other identifying personal information.
This is one of several phone scams recently reported to MSP. The Salisbury Barrack reported that some of the scams include victims getting phone calls where they are threatened with arrest or continued detention of family members if they do not provide money, account numbers or purchase a re-loadable gift or credit cards.
Another scam includes the victim being called by a representative of the Internal Revenue Service and threatened in the same way.
Other victims have had their computers infected with a computer virus and were prompted to take immediate action to save the computer, including buying up to $2,000 in gift cards to pay the company to correct the issue.
This came after the Maryland State Police Cumberland Barrack was recently flooded with numerous telephone calls regarding a scam in which a man or woman claiming to be from the Social Security Administration requested information and threatened to have the police respond to their address to arrest them.
Maryland State Police warn the public to not fall for scare tactics and to be aware of these scams.
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