Beaufort Co. residents losing thousands to police impersonation scam, sheriff warns
Fraudsters targeting South Carolinians are posing as police in innovative attempts to nab residents’ money. The phone scam has recently resurfaced in Beaufort County and can take on a number of forms, according to the sheriff’s office.
Many of the calls come from fake local law enforcement representatives, bearing titles like “captain” and “sergeant” — often using a real officer’s name. They might lead with a number of different stories, including that the target of the phone call has a warrant for their arrest or they missed jury duty.
No matter what their narrative is, “It all ends with ‘You must pay a fine,’” said Lindsay Housaman, an assistant spokesperson for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. Often threatening the resident’s arrest, the scammers will request payment through Bitcoin, gift cards, PayPal or other financial platforms.
The sheriff’s office will never solicit payments over the phone, the agency reminds residents. Anyone receiving a possible scam call can contact the county’s non-emergency dispatch line at 843-524-2777 to inquire about the caller and to report potential fraud.
Local law enforcement agencies have also warned of an IRS impersonation scam that’s making the rounds once again. In a new form of the tactic, fraudsters send links over email, text or social media, asking users to check their tax refund statement or to fill out a form to receive their refund.
Clicking on links in these fake messages can lead to malware or stolen personal information. The IRS will never make first contact over phone, email or text, according to the Federal Trade Commission — they’ll always start by sending a letter.
More long-standing scams come in the form of fake alerts from financial institutions, warning that customers’ accounts have been hacked and offering software to fix the issue. In May of last year, a single “customer support” download — purportedly from the online payment system PayPal — cost an elderly Hilton Head woman nearly $500,000.
Thousands of dollars lost
One scammer posing as a real-life officer bled nearly $8,000 from a St. Helena woman earlier this month, according to a sheriff’s office report. The 64-year-old got a call from a person claiming to be Capt. Lee Stoneburner at the York County Sheriff’s Office — a real administrator at the agency — who threatened to “throw her in jail” over an unpaid bond unless she promptly paid the department $3,847.
With the scammer still on the phone, the woman drove to a Walgreens on Lady’s Island and sent the money through a Bitcoin purchase on her debit card, the report says.
Less than an hour later, she got another call from a fraudster, this one impersonating yet another official from the York County agency. Her payment hadn’t gone through, he told the woman, and she’d have to make a new payment of $3,850 in cash. She complied, driving to another supermarket to wire the cash through Bitcoin.
The St. Helena resident reported the scam to police later that day, telling investigators the callers both had “a southern good-old-boy accent.” The incident report says the woman was able to make a fraud claim for the payment made on her debit card but “could not do anything” for the cash she handed over.
The York County Sheriff’s Office has long dealt with their own troupe of impersonators. In a video shared to social media this year, Sheriff Kelvin Tolson called one scammer himself: “You’re caught. Quit doing it,” the sheriff said before the poser hung up.
These scams typically prey on the elderly and weaponize apparent high-stakes situations — active arrest warrants, unpaid fines, family members in distress — to force victims to pay before they think. The callers often make aggressive attempts to keep their targets on the phone, trying to keep them from verifying the claims with a real law enforcement agency.
