POCATELLO, Idaho (KIFI)– The Pocatello Police department claims multiple scams in town have been reported. One scam that’s been making the rounds in Pocatello is the ransom phone scam.
“They’ll call a father or mother or grandparents, and say, ‘hey, we’ve abducted your child and you have to pay us ransom money to get the child back,'” said Pocatello Police Department Lieutenant Josh Hancock.
The ransom scam is where the scammer will claim to have your loved one hostage. Recently, they have begun to use artificial intelligence to generate fake images, audio, and video to make the hoax look more believable.
“People are using the internet to contact specific people within the community, and they’re using, some type of AI information to gather information on people,” Hancock said.
Unfortunately, this is not the only scam method infiltrating Pocatello.
The Pocatello Police Department has found something called a romance scam, where scammers will pretend to be a romantic interest and request gift cards and money.
They have also seen a serious scam where scammers will impersonate an officer, and claim that there is a warrant out for their arrest and the only way to avoid jail, is to pay.
“Just slow down. Just be really cautious of scams because it’s. It’s pretty bad right now,” Hancock said.
