Montgomery County scammers spoofed sheriff's office number, nearly took $15,000 from local man

A Montgomery County man says he came within a phone call of handing over $15,000 to scammers who spoofed the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office phone number and told him he had missed a federal jury duty summons.

Steve McCreight said he has fielded plenty of scam calls before and usually spots them quickly, but this one caught him off guard.

"This one was pretty good," McCreight said. "I've gotten some scam calls in the past and typically I've caught on pretty quick that it really wasn't what it was sounding to be, but in this situation they had their game put together."

The callers told McCreight that a civil servant had delivered a federal jury summons to his home and that he had failed to show up. McCreight told them he never received any such summons and didn't recall anyone coming to his door. The callers then sent him documents that appeared to show citations for missing federal jury duty, including what was presented as his own signature. McCreight said the signature wasn't his.

The callers instructed him to report to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office to sort out the problem, but said he first needed to clear outstanding bonds tied to his name or risk being detained the moment he walked in. They demanded about $15,000 and told him to pay it through a kiosk.

The number on McCreight's caller ID matched the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office. McCreight said that detail is what convinced him the call was real.

McCreight said he started to doubt the story and called a friend who works as a police officer.

"He immediately told me, 'Hey, hang up. This is not real. This is a scam,'" McCreight said.

Even after that, the callers kept pushing, warning him that hanging up would trigger an active arrest warrant. His friend told him not to worry about it: if deputies actually showed up to arrest him, the friend said he'd bail him out. McCreight hung up without sending a dime.

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office says it has fielded reports of similar calls and that government agencies around the country have seen a rise in the same tactic. The office says it will never call a resident to collect money or fines over the phone, and it will not call anyone demanding payment because they supposedly missed jury duty or have a warrant out.

Other agencies across the Houston area, including the Fort Bend County District Clerk's office, have put out similar warnings this year about callers impersonating officers or deputies and using threats of arrest, missed jury duty, or unpaid warrants to pressure people into paying.

McCreight said the experience left him unsettled by how convincing the setup was, especially with a caller manufacturing urgency while appearing to already have personal details about him.

"It's happening everywhere," McCreight said. "People have been scammed for $5,000, $10,000, $25,000."

The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office says caller ID alone isn't proof of who's actually calling. Phone numbers can be spoofed to display the name and number of a real government office, which is exactly what happened in McCreight's case. The office recommends hanging up rather than staying on the line while a caller pressures you into an immediate decision. Nobody legitimate needs a Social Security number, bank account information, a password, a PIN, or a verification code read over the phone, and no legitimate agency demands money to avoid arrest.

The Sheriff's Office advises anyone who gets a call like this to hang up and look up the agency's publicly listed number independently, rather than calling back a number given during the suspicious call or clicking a link sent by text or email. The office also flags payment kiosks as a red flag on their own: legitimate courts and sheriff's offices don't direct people to pay fines, bonds, or fees through a kiosk over the phone.

McCreight said he decided to go public with what happened to him so someone else might catch the warning signs before wiring money or walking up to a kiosk. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office says residents who receive a similar call can report it directly to the office by calling its published, publicly listed number rather than any number given during the call itself.