These aren't your old-school phone scammers.

It's getting to be an increasingly sophisticated and laser-targeted industry.

One writer has the story:

The wife called the number back:

Weird, but not that weird.

That's how they get you. Just close enough to a possible scenario to scare you into compliance.

Government agents don't need to make you follow weird, abnormal, byzantine processes for getting your money. They can just come arrest you and take it from your bank account. It's not that hard for them!

If they want you to deposit or send cash somewhere, you hang up that phone.

Thankfully, this couple recognized the gambit.

But the sheer polished nature of this scam was really a step up from earlier efforts:

They knew a lot about my wife - address, age, place of birth - that they dropped into the early conversation as ways to verify she was who she claimed. We hit 'return call' and it showed - and still shows - on our phone as having dialed the US Marshalls.

There was a receptionist who put us on hold. The 'officer' put us on hold twice to get approval for proceedings from the court house, and googling showed that the name of the judge and judge's admin person are, in fact, a real judge and admin person at the PDX federal courthouse. So all of the window dressing was pretty damn sophisticated and impressive.

As he notes, the actual request for cash was "pretty bats**t," and "obvious [to most people]." But of course you might miss it if you're in "a panic about going to jail for a week."

This gent didn't even touch on scams that use AI to replicate the voice of your own loved ones.

Or the fact that pretty much every American's personal data just leaked on the internet:

Be careful: It's the Wild West out there.

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