Imagine this scenario: your phone rings and you don’t recognize the number. You answer and someone says there’s a warrant out for your arrest, and you have to send them $1,500 in Target gift cards now or police will come to your door.
It's a scam, and Detective Brendan Kirkpatrick with the financial crimes unit at the Ada County Sheriff's Office has seen people fall for it many times before. He’s spent more than half his career investigating these kinds of crimes.
Kirkpatrick spends a lot of his time educating the public and his fellow officers on how to spot and avoid financial scams.
He's teaching a class called “Financial Crime Awareness: A Guide for All Ages" at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Boise on Tuesday, Aug. 25. He joined Idaho Matters to give us some tips on how not to get scammed.
