A Sapulpa woman is speaking out on a scam she nearly fell victim to, were it not for her previous experiences. She hopes that by sharing her story, she’ll prevent a less experienced person from being taken advantage of.
Kara Johnson received a call after 10 p.m. on Monday from someone posing as a representative offering help for her son, who had just been arrested.
The caller claimed to be from something called “Pretrial Services” and was offering Johnson the chance to help expedite her son’s release into a special rehab program.
“They told me, ‘he has to have an ankle monitor, but he’ll be able to leave Creek County Jail and go directly into this program.'”
The catch? It would cost $650.12 exactly.
Even before making it this far, Johnson already had alarm bells ringing in her head. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time her son had been arrested, and she’d been through the process before.
“They called me from an unknown number, while he was still in booking,” she told Sapulpa Times in an interview on Thursday. “I didn’t even know that he’d been arrested. They said he’d listed me as his emergency contact, but didn’t know I was his mother,” she said. “I asked if I could put them on hold, and they said ‘no, if you put me on hold, I will say you declined the program, and it may be two years before he gets a chance like this again.’ We’ve never been offered something like this so quickly. It usually takes weeks, sometimes months.”
The caller told Johnson he was a sergeant and gave her a badge number. When she told him she couldn’t pay the fee, he said he’d try to put her on a “hardship deferral plan.” And then, strangely enough, he put her on hold.
While on hold, Johnson had her daughter call the Creek County Jail. As suspected, the person at the jail said they didn’t know the caller from “Pretrial Services,” and that badge number was nothing like the badges they had.
Before the scammer took Johnson off hold, the call was disconnected.
Two days later, she received another call, this time from a 405 area code. The caller said he, too, was from “pretrial services,” but he was more of a social worker. He gave Johnson his name and phone number to call him back, if needed. He was polite and pleasant to speak with, Johnson said.
She began to ask questions similar to those she asked the first caller, but got different answers. Before any sort of payment for additional services was even discussed, that call also got disconnected.
When Sapulpa Times tried to call the second man at the number he gave Johnson, the number was no longer in service.
Johnson says that the interaction was enough that someone without her experience might have fallen for the whole scam, hook, line, and sinker. She says they prey on the vulnerable and will exploit the emotions of a shaken and worried parent.
“Families who have members who are drug addicts, we get victimized by the nature of that addiction. We want them to get help. It’s incredibly difficult, as a mom, to say ‘no,'” she said.
Johnson said the first thing she did after hanging up the phone was call her mother-in-law to tell her what had happened and warn her not to give out any information. “She told me, ‘I’m glad you called, I would’ve been reaching for my credit card.'”
“When you’re so desperate to help your child, you will grasp at the first thing that looks like a lifeline,” Johnson said. But she urges anyone who gets a call like this—whether legitimate or a scam—to be skeptical and inquisitive.
“Be wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove,” she cautions. “You have to be aware, and if it’s legitimate, they will stand up to your scrutiny. Ask questions, do your due diligence, before you give any information.”