A federal fraud task force arrested 49 people Thursday and charged 34 in connection with telephone scams, authorities said.
Cobb County investigators started tracking the alleged fraud in May 2013, when a Marietta man called police about a suspicious phone call he received, Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren said.
Warren said the caller identified himself as Lt. John Bagley with the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office and tried to convince the homeowner a bench warrant had been issued for missing a jury summons.
Clark Howard in December warned of similar phone scams, saying senior citizens are commonly targeted.
The homeowner told police he was given the choice of paying a fine over the phone or having a deputy sheriff dispatched to pick him up on the warrant. He chose instead to report the incident to the Cobb authorities.
The Marietta man wasn’t alone.
Over the next 12 months an additional 27 Cobb County residents reported having received similar calls, said Robert Quigley, a sheriff’s spokesman. Quigley said more than $4,000 had been lost in the county due to similar fraudulent calls.
“These guys sounded convincing on the phone, they used names of local officials and even answered the telephone claiming to be us,” Warren said. “Families were falling victim to hundreds of dollars in fraudulent fees and then had to struggle to make their house payment or cover the grocery bill.”
After an “alarming uptick in the amount of fraud activity,” Quigley said the FBI started a task force to look into cases of phone fraud being reported metro-wide.
“Our investigators kept digging and working until they had the information needed to get this case really rolling,” Warren said.
Police said the 34 people charged allegedly are connected to 342 scam incidents, where 41 fraud victims lost a combined $37,000.
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