A frantic Stamford woman recently pulled into the Darien Police station parking lot and waved down some cops to help her with it.
Norwalk police just issued an alert to residents after eight recent reports about it.
Police in Darien, Greenwich, Milford and other towns have each had to deal with it on multiple occasions, and now U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide a little help to local law enforcement.
The problem: A phone scammer who tells a victim that a close relative is being held for ransom after a car accident. Money is demanded immediately, to be wired to an anonymous account, and the victim had better not get off the line -- or else. The caller has a Spanish accent. Police can't trace the phone number.
Murphy, according to a news release from his office, "sent a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ask the agency to immediately alert the public about a telephone scam occurring in Connecticut and around the United States. Murphy urged the FBI to publish the details of this fraud using the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) network so that state and local authorities can be on the lookout."
“People should be immediately alerted of these malicious telephone scams,” Murphy said in the news release.
In his letter to FBI Director James Comey Jr., Murphy wrote: "Connecticut’s working families, immigrant communities and senior citizens appear to be the targets of this insidious activity, and our state’s law enforcement could use any help that you might be able to provide in seeing that no more Connecticut residents are tricked out of their hard-earned money."
Milford police, Greenwich police and, most recently, Norwalk police have advised people on what they can do to avoid the scam or avoid being taken in by it.
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