LUFKIN (KETK) \u2013 Officials are warning residents that scam artists are allegedly impersonating Angelina County law enforcement officers and demanding East Texans send them Bitcoin payments. According to our news partner KETK and the Lufkin Police Department, scammers are impersonating a deputy from the Angelina County Sheriff\u2019s Office, where they call residents to claim that they\u2019ve missed jury duty and must pay thousands of dollars to make up for it.<\/p>\n
The scammers can make their call appear as if it\u2019s coming directly from the Angelina County Sheriff\u2019s Office but officials insist these calls are not real and should be promptly ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis scam is oftentimes done by scammers posing as other state and federal agencies, as well,\u201d Lufkin Police Department Chief Travis Brazil said. \u201cThese scammers will always create a sense of urgency to make the victims panic and pressure them into paying quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scammers will ask residents to make these payments through the new Bitcoin cryptocurrency ATMs that can be found at many convenience stores around the country. Usually, once a Bitcoin transaction is made, police can\u2019t recover any of the funds from scammers, but luckily, Lufkin Police detectives were able to retrieve over $10,000 from a Bitcoin ATM last week after residents reported making their payment to the sheriff\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
Similarly, Angelina County Sheriff Tom Selman said a local woman recently showed up to the sheriff\u2019s office with cash in hand and was able to keep her money because she couldn\u2019t figure out how to use a Bitcoin ATM to make the payment that scammers demanded.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of these calls are real,\u201d Selman said. \u201cThese are scammers scaring you by threatening jail time to get your money. Once the scammer empties the Bitcoin machine, the money is gone and we cannot trace it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Diboll Police Department also warned of similar scams reported in their area, where scammers ask for gift cards and tell residents that they\u2019re under a gag order and can\u2019t talk to anyone about their illegal demands for payment.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo law enforcement officer will ever call you and ask for any immediate payment in lieu of jail. We do not ask you to get gift cards of any type and we do not ask for you banking information, ever! We will not tell you that you are under a gag order and cannot contact anyone,\u201d Diboll PD said. \u201cIf you have received any phone call or text and you even suspect it might be a scam, google the number for your local police department or sheriff\u2019s office, call them and ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sheriff\u2019s office and Lufkin PD are working to stop these scams but the best way to stop them is for East Texans to learn that these people are only after your money and that no one should ever have to call you for missing jury duty or to pay off a warrant.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither department will call residents about missing jury duty,\u201d Brazil said. \u201cPlease hang up on these callers and call either the Lufkin Police Department or the Sheriff\u2019s Office to report the call. Notifying our offices will help you verify it is a scam and will give us more information to track down these scammers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selman agreed and noted that nobody will get a call before being arrested.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is a warrant for your arrest, we will come and arrest you. No one is arrested for missing jury duty,\u201d Selman said.<\/p>\n
The Smith County Sheriff\u2019s Office has called for these Bitcoin ATMs and all cryptocurrency machines to be banned at the state level, in light of these recent scams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LUFKIN (KETK) \u2013 Officials are warning residents that scam artists are allegedly impersonating Angelina County law enforcement officers and demanding East Texans send them Bitcoin payments. According to our news partner KETK and the Lufkin Police Department, scammers are impersonating a deputy from the Angelina County Sheriff\u2019s Office, where they call residents to claim that … Continue reading Authorities recover $10K in Lufkin Bitcoin scam as officer impersonators target residents<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2851],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1505793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state-news-archive"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-29 09:54:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1505793"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1506485,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505793\/revisions\/1506485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1505793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1505793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1505793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}