Tips on how to identify a scam call

I recently received a scam call, and I have to say I went along with it longer than I should have.  In my defense, this scam call involved two purported sheriff’s officers and took a while to get going, but as soon as they started demanding money I knew it was a scam.  Also, I definitely had my radar up the whole time and as a result I can clearly remember most of the telltale signs that this was a scam. 

I feel that it is now my civic duty to walk you through this phone call, telltale sign by telltale sign, so you can have them all in mind if you ever suspect you’re being scammed:

1.  The scammers did not call me directly at first.  No, instead they scammed my ex-wife!  As I tried hard to explain to her later, they must’ve looked me up on some peoplesearch site and figured out there was some connection between us.  Then they left a voicemail message on her phone “trying to locate Mr. Zee.”

2.  “If you know of his whereabouts please have him call Sgt. Shithead at [##].”  Think about that for a minute.  The Leon County sheriff’s department doesn’t have my phone number and doesn’t know my whereabouts ??

As you can imagine, my ex-wife was very upset when she called me to forward the voice message to me.  It didn’t seem right, but when your ex-wife is that upset you can’t just tell her later on, “Oh no, I didn’t call them back …” and you can’t lie about it either because she’s likely to have some questions about how the call went and it would be nice to have some legit answers, right?

3.  No Caller ID.  You should know right there, right?  But they were a little clever – the phone number they asked me to call was a legit number, but I could only leave a message there.  When they called me back that was No Caller ID and I made a mental note of it.

4.  He seemed pretty unfamiliar with my registry sheet. I had to correct him several times.

5.  He referred to my address as my “primary address.”  That’s a red flag because in Florida’s registry it’s called a “permanent address.”

6.  He didn’t know what a “snowbird” is.  Wait a minute – this guy is supposedly calling from Florida, the snowbird capitol of the world, yet he don’t even know what that word means …?

This was a DNA and fingerprint scam, with a dash of COVID-19.  The premise is that the Florida Department of Corrections is updating all of the DNA and fingerprint evidence for every sex offender in the state.  The updates were to have been done within the first 90 days of 2025 but apparently I and quite a few others didn’t get notified.  We all have to get our asses down there right away to avoid getting arrested.  But if we do, all is forgiven. 

I am currently at my summer home in Iowa (as I said, he didn’t know what a snowbird is).  So what I have to do is arrange with the Johnson County IA sheriff’s department and provide this shit so they can send it down to Florida.

I will speak of the preposterousness of all this in a moment, but let’s start with this:

7.  All the time he’s feeding me this I’m thinking, “Wait.  I’m this big active member of the Florida Action Committee.  If this was really going on it would be all anybody would be talking about.  Instead I’ve never heard of this.” 

8.  I even said at one point, “Are you really telling me that Florida is doing this to all 86,000+ of its registrants?”  “Yes, we are.”  Knowing as I do that “only” about 32,000 of us are even in Florida, the rest are out of state or international, that’s gonna be a pretty tall order, especially when you don’t have any of their phone numbers.

9.  If anybody was actually doing this it wouldn’t be DOC, it would be FDLE.

10.  Apparently we were all supposed to have been notified by mail.  Imagine the bureaucratic nightmare and budget-busting cost of this.

11.  When he told me to go down to Johnson County I said, “Wait.  Johnson County already has my DNA and fingerprints on file.  Why can’t you just call them up and have them send it to you?”  “Oh no no this all has to be done over.”  I think this was when I said to him, “All this makes no sense – but then neither does anything else about the registry.”

But to be fair, nobody had said anything about money yet.  But soon it was time for Sgt. Shithead to put me on hold, presumably to call the Johnson County sheriff’s dept. and get someone on the line to arrange my indignities.  A couple of minutes later he comes back and says Lt. Penis will call in momentarily.  “Here he is now, just take that call and hang up on me.”  Duhhh … okay.

12.  Another No Caller ID.

That’s when things took a dark turn.  I said, “Okay Lt. Penis, I’m free tomorrow so why don’t we just set a time and get it over with?”

13.  “No no – there is a warrant out for your arrest …”  If there is one thing y’all have beat into this thick skull of mine it is that if there is a warrant for your arrest the cops will NEVER tell you about it.  They just come and snatch you like Death Eaters.

14.  “… and if you go to the sheriff’s department you WILL be arrested for a registry violation!  You have to pay the bond now before you go to give the DNA. The total bond is $50,000 and you ‘only’ have to pay 10% ($5000)!”

Okay that’s it.  “This is a scam !!  You are a scammer !!  Tomorrow morning I’m going down to the REAL Johnson County sheriff’s department and straighten this out and report you!”

“No you won’t! If you don’t do as I say right now I’ll have you arrested TODAY!”

I hung up.  He tried calling me back but I didn’t answer.  He left no message.

And I’m sitting here the next morning writing this up.

Where are the Death Eaters?