Multiple Ashland residents receive calls threatening arrest; authorities offer tips on how to keep yourself safe from scammers

By Cameron Aalto, Ashland.news

At 10:43 a.m. on April 8, Ashland physician Dr. Deborah Gordon received a phone call from a scammer taking on the alias of Jackson County’s Sheriff  Nate Sickler. In the phone call, Dr. Gordon was told that she had failed to appear at a court summons as a material witness, resulting in issuance of a warrant for her arrest. 

The scammer stated that she was not to inform anyone about the warrant or to leave her house, and that if she did and was stopped by police, she would be “drag(ged to) jail” for up to a 72-hour hold. 

“I got a call and somebody said, ‘is this Dr. Deborah Gordon?’ she recalled in an interview with Ashland.news. “‘Yes, this is Dr. Deborah Gordon,’ and he said, ‘this is’ — I think the name they gave me was, ‘Nate Sickler’— and he said, ‘you failed to show up in court today for a summons’ — and, you know, I thought, what? I didn’t get a summons.” 

Dr. Gordon was skeptical, but the “what if?” was still present: “What if i was wrong, what if I just didn’t trust him and it was really true and I had to spend two days in jail?” That’s when the caller gave her a loophole; Dr. Gordon recounts him saying “I will offer you an option, but to do that, I will need to pass you to my commanding officer.” At first, the scammer had called her from a no-caller-ID number, which caused Dr. Gordon suspicion originally. 

“What I should have been more suspicious of is that … it was like no caller ID, you know? Like, if this really is an official business, they really don’t have to call me from an anonymous phone call.” 

When the call was transferred, there was a new number displayed. The scammer said, “There’s good reason that you could be suspicious of this, so I want you to … put this number in your browser,” and when she did, it was traced back to the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO). 

Later, Dr. Gordon realized that the scammer had “spoofed” the number (a technique to fraudulently alter the displayed caller ID) as a means to trick her into believing it was actually the sheriff’s office. 

The night after the scam call, while watching TV, the topic of spoofing came up on “The Rachel Maddow Show.” After watching the show, Dr. Gordon says, “If I had known about that, like if I had heard Rachel Maddow the night before, instead of the night after, maybe I would’ve said to him, ‘I know you can spoof that. I don’t believe that it’s true. Let me call you (at) the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.’ You know, that’s what I should’ve done.’” 

Dr. Gordon’s instinct to call back the number was not wrong. In fact, it is even corroborated by the Public Information Officer (PIO) of JCSO, Aaron Lewis. He told Ashland.news, “(Scammers) have the ability to spoof our phone number. So you can’t even trust a legitimate phone number calling you these days.” He advises that if you receive a call from a trusted number but can’t identify whether it is legitimate or not, “‘just say ‘hey, you know what, I’m just gonna call you back (and) make sure this isn’t a scam,’ and then hang up, and call the actual number.” You can reach JCSO at 541-774-6800.

After Dr. Gordon had searched the phone number and traced it back to the Sheriff’s Office, the “commanding officer” told the doctor, “there is a way you can get out of … having this warrant out for your arrest.” The supposed loophole was to pay off her two warrants, summing up to the tune of around $9,500; if she put the funds into a specific account, they would clear her signature and then reimburse her fully. 

“I said ‘well, can’t I just come down there?’ and he says, ‘well if you got stopped just being on the sheriff department’s property, you would be taken into custody.’” Instead of going to the sheriff’s office, she was instructed to drive to a specific address: the local Albertsons; “… and I said, ‘this is Albertsons. Do I go to the produce department and give it to somebody?’” But she went along with the plan and was instructed to place her money in a green and white kiosk located inside the store. 

After having withdrawn the $9,500 from her credit union, Dr. Gordon decided to call it quits: “By (then) it had been like 30 or 45 minutes, you know, doing all this stuff, and I said, ‘you know what? Bring it on! I’m not gonna do this, I don’t believe it,’ and he said, ‘alright, Dr. Gordon, what I can tell you to do is (that) when we are finished talking, I want you to turn off your car, put your hands on your dashboard, and wait for the officers to arrive,’ and I said, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m already driving out of the parking lot, send them after me.’”

No officers were sent after the Doctor, and no laws were broken — except for those by the scammers. Dr. Gordon is one of the many individuals who has been targeted, and describes that it was difficult to determine whether the caller was actually a sheriff or a scammer. She characterizes him as, “really professional, he sounded like a middle-aged mature man, and he called me Miss and I said, ‘I’m not Miss, call me Doctor,’” which he responded with, “oh, oh, yes, Doctor, and everytime after that,” he would say, “ ‘Miss-Doctor, sorry,’ you know. Like he sounded like kind of nervous, following the letter of the law – (an) older man.” 

Similar to Dr. Gordon, community member Jane Sterling received a call last year from a scammer impersonating someone from the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office threatening arrest for missing jury duty. Unlike Dr. Gordon, Sterling had coincidentally been called to duty, but had written a letter expressing her need to be absent prior. 

The scammer threatened that “(she) would be arrested and he … was ready to send the cops over,” but that he could “straighten this all up if (she) sent $600.” Sterling recounts that she was skeptical, having asked him, “how do I know if this is real?” only to be told that if she didn’t send the money, he would send a police officer over to detain her. She describes the scammer as aggressive, “he started out nice, like ‘oh I can fix this on the records for you,’ and then because I was questioning him, then he really started up on the sending the police over right (then), (to) arrest (me).” 

Sterling was instructed to send the $600 to a PayPal address, but had entered the address incorrectly, only to send another $600, but this time, to the scammer. After they got off the phone, Sterling called the police and was informed that she had been scammed. She says, “fortunately I stopped payment on both of (the money transfers) quick enough, but it was real scary, you know?” 

Scam calls occur frequently in Jackson County, according to Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Aaron Lewis: “Yeah, so we receive these kinds of calls, literally, every day from residents in our area reporting it. And so, it’s actually really disheartening … how many scam calls are out there, and some of them do sound very real, you know, they take names of our deputies, or in this instance, our sheriff, and they pretend to be us, and then they call asking for money.” 

Lewis states that in no circumstance would a deputy call a citizen asking for money. “As soon as they ask for any form of payment, hang up,” he said. “You know right then that it’s a scam.”

This sentiment is echoed by Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara, who says, “A police officer might call you and say, ‘hey, you have to turn yourself in,’ but a police officer is never, ever, ever, going to say, ‘you need to give me money over the phone, or you’re going to jail.’ Any legitimate institution is never going to do that. My advice would be that anytime anybody calls you on the phone and says, ‘you have to give me money, in this moment, right now,’ that is most definitely a scam. It doesn’t matter who they’re reporting to be, it’s an attempt to victimize you.” He said that the Ashland Police Department receives reports about scams “constantly,” but that “a great deal of them don’t even get reported to us.” 

In the event that an individual does get scammed, O’Meara recommends reporting the incident. He says that if you do get scammed, “you can report it to us. I’m not gonna promise that there’s a whole heck of a lot (that) we can do about it, but we can document it. You should also report it to your financial institution. I’m not a financial institution, but I’m under the impression that sometimes they work with you to mitigate the loss.” 

Financial institutions, depending on multiple factors, may have the ability to refund money to victims of scams. This is dependent on the way in which the money was transferred, its amount, and individual bank’s policies. 

Catching scammers that have the ability to work anywhere in the world, “is a massive undertaking, and we don’t have the resources to do something like that” says O’Meara. That being said, “If somebody attempts to scam you, like if they’re calling from the Ashland Police Department, you should let us know that that attempt was made so we know what’s going on. Maybe we could put … a news release out, or a social media, you know, public service announcement to make sure that people are on guard for the scam attempt.”

If an individual has fallen victim to a scam, O’Meara says to let the police know and, “… if nothing else, we can document it and give you a case number. If there is some thread for us to pull on an investigation, we’ll certainly pull on it, but more often than not, there is not a thread for us to pull on.”

The JCSO’s Facebook posted a notification in early January regarding the issue of scamming in Jackson County, saying, “This is a reminder, do NOT send money to someone representing themselves as law enforcement on the phone. JCSO and other law enforcement entities will NEVER call you to collect money and will NEVER ask for payment in gift cards or bitcoin. When in doubt, hang up and call the department’s official phone number (ours is 541-774-6800).” 

You can reach the Ashland Police Department at 541-482-5211.

Ashland.news intern Cameron Aalto is a senior at Southern Oregon University. Email him at aaltoc@sou.edu.