Several Starke County residents have gotten telephone calls recently stating that their grandson or granddaughter is in jail and they need to send $6,000 right away in order to bail them out. Sheriff Oscar Cowen says these calls are scams. He says the best thing to do is hang up on the person. If you are worried your grandchild may be in trouble, ask the caller for a telephone number, hang up, and check to make sure your grandchild is not in jail. A red flag in any sort of telephone scam is a request to either send money via wire transfer, as that money is untraceable and cannot be recovered. Scammers also ask people to load funds to a prepaid credit card and use it as a means to transfer money. Again, these funds cannot be traced and are virtually impossible to recover.
