Recently Russell Tafron Weatherspoon, was convicted of masterminding a multistate scam between March 2022 and April 2024 in which  he and other co-conspirators called targeted victims throughout the country posing as local law enforcement officers using an app that allowed them to spoof the phone numbers of legitimate law enforcement agencies so that their calls would manipulate their targeted victims’ Caller ID to make the calls appear to be actually coming from real law enforcement officers.  The scammers told their victims that arrest warrants had been issued for them due to their failure to appear to testify in a court proceeding that they had been subpoenaed to attend. The scammers, conversant with legal terminology, directed their victims to obtain a bond to avoid arrest.

What makes this case somewhat different from similar scams is the fact that Weatherspoon was directing this scam while serving time in a Georgia state prison for a 2020 conviction of aggravated assault and violation of the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act.  The calls were made by Weatherspoon and other inmates using cellphones that were delivered to Weatherspoon by drones.

TIPS

No legitimate law enforcement agency will call you on the phone and threaten arrest unless a payment is made. Official notices for missing a court appearance would be sent by mail rather than a phone call.  In this instance, anyone receiving such a call who might be concerned that the call was legitimate should call the clerk’s office for the court where the trial was alleged to have occurred to confirm that indeed this was a scam.

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