SCAM ALERT
The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office has been made aware that multiple local residents have received phone calls from subjects claiming to represent the Sheriff’s Office. In some cases, the scammers are even using the names of actual HRCSO employees or utilizing a spoofing system to have the HRCSO phone number appear on the Caller ID.
If you receive a call out of the blue from someone claiming to be from the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office, but they ask you to do anything such as provide your personal info or pay a fine over the phone, please immediately advise them that you will call them right back, hang up, and call the Hood River County Dispatch non-emergency line at 541-386-2711. If there is an HRCSO employee who is actually trying to contact you for a legitimate reason, they will re-connect you with that employee.
As a general rule, we do not call ahead of time to provide a heads-up regarding an active arrest warrant. We just show up. We also do not collect fines in lieu of making an arrest.
Regardless of the story being told, you should never provide any kind of payment over the phone to anyone who calls you up out of the blue, no matter how legitimate it may sound. And we can’t stress this enough, but no legitimate entity will ever ask you to make your payment by purchasing gift cards and providing the numbers over the phone. Just don’t. We mean it.
Stay safe out there.