News Photo by Steve Schulwitz A person searches the Alpena County Sheriff Office website for the new scam information page.

ALPENA — The Alpena County Sheriff’s Office has created a new page on their website with information about scam calls and a form to report them.

Kat Tomaszewski, administrative assistant to Sheriff Erik Smith, built the web page as a central hub for information about scams.

“I took the idea to the sheriff, and he said it was a great idea,” Tomaszewski said.

She said that she gets a lot of calls at the front office about scams, and that having a web page and linking to the page from the Sheriff’s Office website would be helpful for people.

“We get calls more often than I would like from people who are reporting scams,” she said. “By that I mean I wish scams weren’t a thing.”

There is no easy way to measure the amount of scams that occur in Alpena County. For every one person that reports a scam call, there are a greater number of people that do not report.

Tomaszewski hopes that the new web page will allow data to be collected more consistently with a form that community members can use to report any scam call they receive. The form is for residents who received a suspicious call, did not send money, and did not provide personal information, but would like to notify the Sheriff’s Office about the incident.

“It seems to go in waves, it seems like there’s more reports in one month, and maybe we’ll go a couple months without any,” she said.

Tomaszewski said the page will be updated regularly with scams that are circulating, but that it is difficult since scammers come up with new ways to target people’s information and money everyday.

One scam recently reported is a jury duty scam, where the scammer impersonates a sheriff’s deputy and claims that a person failed to appear for jury duty and has an arrest warrant. The scammer says that you need to pay bond immediately over the phone.

Tomaszewski said that while deputies will call people, they will never ask for money over the phone. Warrants are never dealt with over the phone either. A person with a warrant needs to take care of it by visiting the Sheriff’s Office.

Scammers will often impersonate sheriff’s deputies and will use their real names. They can spoof their phone number to look like they are calling from the Sheriff’s Office. They use the same tactics in other counties as well.

Tomaszewski said that scammers will find lists of residents’ phone numbers wherever they can and call them. She said one scam happened where scammers got a hold of inmates’ families and tried to get money from them to pay for a tether so the inmate could be released.

So far, she has not heard any reports from Alpena residents of scammers using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replicate people’s voices.

Visit the web page at alpenasheriff.com/679/Scam-Phone-Calls for more information about scams or to report a scam.

Reagan Voetberg can be reached at 989-358-5683 or rvoetberg@TheAlpenaNews.com.