Scammers still calling, pretending to be police

Another round of phone spoofing scams appears to have struck Vancouver, and the grifters are again using a Vancouver Police Department phone number to trick people into divulging sensitive information.

“Once again, we’ve had multiple calls today from citizens who said, ‘Yeah, I got a call from the police department,’ ” police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said Monday.

Scammers can use another phone number, usually one belonging to a legitimate caller, to trick a phone’s caller ID into thinking the phone call is from an official source.

The method, known as caller ID spoofing, helps build a con artist’s case toward, usually, extracting personal or financial information from whoever answers the call.

“We do not call people to let them know they owe fines or they’ll be arrested for warrants they don’t even know they have or those types of things,” Kapp said. “That’s not our process.”

In those situations, she encourages call takers to hang up, then look up the agency’s number and call that to be sure.

Caller ID spoofing is a common scam, Kapp said, and scammers have used Vancouver police numbers before.

There’s little the department can do, she said.

“Fortunately, the people that have called us have not fallen victim to any financial theft or identity theft,” she said.