Woman who almost fell victim to scam speaks out

CANADIAN COUNTY, Okla. (KFOR) - The Canadian County Sheriff's Office prevented a woman from sending thousands to a scammer pretending to be a sheriff's deputy. Now, she's speaking out.

"The first thing he said to me is, I'm with the Clay County sheriff's department. I'm looking for Amy Duncan," said Amy Duncan, a woman who had been almost scammed.

Amy Duncan says the call came from her home state, Kansas, and she answered it thinking it was someone she knew needing something.

"So the whole thing's premise was this big urgency that I needed to leave work. I needed to make my way to the sheriff's department in my county," said Duncan.

She says the man on the phone told her she had an arrest warrant for missed jury duty, even sending her documents and reciting her personal information back to her.

"He knew everything. He knew my Social Security number. He knew my phone number. He knew all of my information," said Duncan.

She believed everything, left work, and started making her way to the sheriff's office in Canadian County. The man on the phone told her she had a bond set at $45,000 and to pay $9,000 at a kiosk near her.

"You're either going to be arrested or you're going to turn in the bond money. But you have to go to the Canadian county sheriff's department, regardless," said Duncan.

She was driving down Garth Brooks Blvd. when she realized something was not right about the call. That's when she flagged down a sheriff's deputy, who put a stop to it.

"I said, they've sent me all these documents, he goes, let me see them," said Duncan. So he looked at me, goes, It's fake. Hang up on him."

Duncan was not sure, and that's when the deputy took the phone.

"The captain said, Where are you out of? And there was a pause," said Duncan. "Then he hung up."

She says the personal information the caller had was shocking, and she believes one possibility for this happening could have been from a data leak.