Beware of phone scams!

This warning comes from 3rd Dis­trict Supervisor Dave Roberts’ office:

The voice on the phone sounded ur­gent and serious:

“A warrant for your arrest has been issued by the IRS!”

What a bunch of boloney.

Almost anyone who owns a tele­phone has been called at least once by some kind of scam artist.

That was the case for a constituent from Rancho Bernardo. She contacted Roberts’ office last week to report that she and her friends had been receiv­ing calls claiming to come from the IRS that sounded genuine. She said she worried that unsuspecting people could become victims of the scam­mers.

How should she, or anyone else, handle such calls?

“Just ignore them,” said a spokes­woman for District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis. “Don’t engage them. Don’t trust them. Don’t answer questions. Just hang up.”

Phone scams can be hard to track because the scammers often operate overseas and use equipment that dis­guises their number so the call appears to be domestic.

Solving these kinds of crimes is the mission of CATCH, the Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Team, a multi-agency task force that targets criminals who use technology to prey upon people.

Please keep your guard up. Especial­ly on the phone.

We have advised people to change their number if they’ve been scammed once,” said the DA’s spokeswoman, Tanya Sierra, “because that phone number gets sold on the black market.”