The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office is making it clear that scammers aren’t welcome here.
According to CCSO investigator Steve Combs, the sheriff’s office has conducted three recent operations targeting “cash mules,” who travel into the county to collect money from individuals who have fallen victim to various scams.
“We’ve been keeping them kind of close to the vest,” Combs said. “We’ve arrested one person per event. And of the three people that we’ve arrested, all three were foreign nationals.”
Combs said the most recent operation was a coordinated effort involving the sheriff’s office, police departments from Green Forest and Mountain Home, the Department of Homeland Security and a social media organization known as Trilogy Media.
Combs said the operations have left scammers leery of operating in Arkansas.
“In the week leading to our operation, we were not really able to get a lot of people willing to come out here,” he said. “And once we got the one to come here and placed him under arrest, the scam organization completely shut down their call center and changed all their phone numbers. Trilogy has a person that they work with inside one of the scam networks. He’s a reformed scammer trying to help us out. He reached out to some of his people and as soon as we gave him the address, he said: ‘Absolutely not. We are not sending anybody to your location.’ Pretty much the entire state of Arkansas has been flagged as hostile toward scammers.”
Scammers traditionally collect money from their victims through electronic means, such as BitCoin or prepaid cards but if victims are not able to send money through those means, the scammers will send the “cash mules” to pick up the money in person.
Combs said all three of the individuals who have been arrested have traveled to the area from Dallas.
The most recent individual to be arrested drove a rental car to Carroll County to collect what he believed was $60,000 from an elderly victim, Combs said.
The individuals who have been arrested have been placed on hold for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, Combs said, and will either be prosecuted on the local charges or deported to their countries of origin.
Combs said there are four primary scams that are occurring now.
“One of them is a romance scam, where they act like they’re in love or you’re talking to some female and in reality, you’re not,” he said. “And something tragic will happen in their life, at which point they’re going to request that you send them money. Once you send that first little bit of money, they know they’ve got you and they will keep asking.
“Then we’ve got what’s called a pig butchering scam,” Combs said, alluding to one local victim who lost $1.6 million. “They fell victim of that because they believed that they were investing into a company that was going to get them huge returns. I’ve got several of those.”
Another victim fell prey to a scammer who used a video created using artificial intelligence to convince the victim he was speaking with President Trump, Combs said.
“If you look at the video, somebody that’s been trained can look at that video and say: ‘Nope, that’s absolutely fake,’ ” Combs said. “But when a person has bad eyes or bad hearing, they don’t realize or understand that these are fake. And that victim was out $800,000.”
A fourth common scam involves victims being told they’ve won the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, Combs said.
“These guys are clever, but they’re violent,” he said. “They’re usually scammers based out of Jamaica, and what they do is they will tell you that you’ve won the Publishers Clearing House. They’ll send you all kinds of certificates, IRS documentation. One victim was sent car keys to an AMG Mercedes with license plates, all this other stuff, and they’ll tell you you have to pay the taxes on it before we can do anything. So they’re after him for $250,000. Luckily, a family member has intervened, and I’m still working that case with Trilogy Media. We’ve been able to track down this scammer. We know where he’s at. Oddly enough, he’s one of the ones that is not out of the country. He flew back out of the country last week, but he’ll be back in the country in 10 days.”
Combs said Trilogy Media was created by an individual who operates under the pseudonym “Chappy.”
“A friend of hers was scammed and that friend took their life and Chappy found that friend’s body,” Combs said. “After that, Chappy left a lucrative corporate job and has made this her full-time career.”
Trilogy Media conducts scam operations all over the world, Combs said, and covers expenses for law enforcement operations targeting scammers.
“Like if we have to rent an AirBnB to be our sting house, they’ll pay for the rental,” he said. “It’s an organization we’re going to work with quite a bit.”
