Everything about the calls stink. You're not going to be arrested for missing 'jury duty', a warrant, or arrest won't be forewarned ahead of time, and the "cutting a deal" so the non-existent charges are dropped is garbage as well. Wire transfers and Walmart are synonymous with con artists. All 'Harold Skelton' and the other idiots you talked to are are low down and dirty skunks. Sorry you were duped.
A male called, identifying himself as "Harold Skelton", which is now believed to be a fake name and his position as Chief of Deputies with Lane County, OR. He claimed I had not appeared for a grand Jury duty at 8:30 PM, July 13th. He said the summons to appear was placed by hand in my mail box, by 2 officers with body cameras on June 26th. He said the door bell was first rang with no answer. He claimed a bench arrest warrant was going to be issued, because the federal court system required it due to lack of appearance. He had another person join in on this now "conference call", stating his name was Billy Williamson and he was a court official requiring that this warrant be issued because it appeared I was in violation of the law for lack of appearance.
This latter party said he had to issue the arrest warrant based on the law. Harold was trying to convince the officer of the court to not issue it because of my age, a senior citizen over 73. Then Harold asked if there was any other way for the defendant to meet his obligation to the court and the arrest warrant. They agreed that I could just pay the bail amount using a wire transfer. With threat of arresting officers coming to my home, I reconsidered the situation. We became disconnected at that point. So I tried calling the local city police number to verify these two people and their positions, but was not able to reach anyone at the city police number.
Another call came in from Harold within a minute or so, wondering what happened with the disconnect. Not explained how, Harold went on with his story of how to solve the issue. The end game is, every time I tried verify who they were, between hang ups, they would call right back. I believe some of those hang ups were on purpose. However, a couple were mine handling my cell phone.
Then the threat of issuing a warrant was applied more seriously in tone and words. So I became convinced to "post the bail" because of two reasons. One, I had two friends of mine waiting on me to pick them up for planned out of town trip. One did not have a cell phone to reach and was waiting in a parking lot. So I couldn't reach that person. The other person I finally did reach, but late into the scam game to leave the phone & more convinced it was legitimate. The calls and conversations were meant to keep me convinced by not letting me call or use other sources to verify for sure or not.
The payment was made via a wire transfer at a local Wal-Mart. It was picked up at another one in Decatur, GA, 15 minutes later. However, the Decatur Wal-Mart employee did not validate the ID number used by the receiver of the funds, first. RIA Financial services called me directly, because they did try to validate it later and after the funds were released from the Decatur store. So, RIA Financial Services management decided they were at fault, in not stopping this scam of illegally transferring funds and because it is better PR to do so then let a customer suffer that huge loss.
The agent I talked with at RIA stated the funds would be available with 24 hours at the local Wal-Mart where I instituted the transfer. He gave me a ticket #, which will be the case #, if any issue happens after I am notified the funds are at the my local store. I will not leave just after that call comes in, in case the refund is a hoax also, catching me away from my home. I will call the customer service dept to see if it really is there, under the ticket & case # to be used for authorization of a refund in cash.
In the mean time, I had my debit card # cancelled to stop any attempt of drawing any funds illegally from that account. Waiting on the results of the refund.
About 2 hours after the scam had taken place successfully, calls came in on my cell and on my home phones. I did not answer either of them and no messages were left first . Two more came in from the same number. Both of those calls were 'Harold Skelton' leaving two very long messages, saying he is sorry, but was justifying his actions because the world didn't care about people. He had so many problems happened to him and his family that he had no choice but to get money to feed his family.
He claimed he would keep all of my personal information on this incident and some day pay me back. He promised. He also said, he used to be a police officer and learned this scamming method from someone who makes a living at it!!! Fortunately, I have voice mail recordings of all what he said. BTW the phone number showed up in the lists of phone numbers that have been previously determined coming from scamming callers. Phone records show it is an Ashland, OR area number.
Everything about the calls stink. You're not going to be arrested for missing 'jury duty', a warrant, or arrest won't be forewarned ahead of time, and the "cutting a deal" so the non-existent charges are dropped is garbage as well. Wire transfers and Walmart are synonymous with con artists. All 'Harold Skelton' and the other idiots you talked to are are low down and dirty skunks. Sorry you were duped.