BEWARE: No matter the age, anyone can be scammed.
You can think it’s legit what somebody tells you over the phone, but actually, they are nothing less than a scam artist, out for one thing – your money.
Deputies and detectives with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office have set out to inform senior citizens about these kinds of crimes because they are often targeted by these crooks.
“We want to prevent these kinds of crimes from occurring in our county,” said Baldwin County Sheriff Bill Massee, who was a recent guest speaker to a large group of senior citizens at a local church.
Massee was joined by Detective Lt. Evelyn Johnson, who heads up the relatively new Real Time Crime Center located in the E-911 Center adjacent to the sheriff’s office administration building off Old Monticello Road.
Massee began his comments with a humorous one that quickly turned serious.
“Since I was born here in 1946, I can tell y’all something that I can’t say with some groups – y’all are getting old,” Massee said as the crowd laughed aloud. “Let me tell y’all this, people want y’all’s money because they think because of your age and you’re retired that you have money. And some of you do. And these people that call you and deal with you – they’re really smart.”
He introduced Johnson to the group. Johnson has been with the sheriff’s office for the past three years.
“I’ve been telling my people for years, look, I’m going to hire an analyst and buy every kind of software I can buy, and we’re going to continue to do what we’ve always done at the sheriff’s office here. We’re going to try to be a leader and we’re going to join the new world.”
At the time, Massee said his people looked at him like he was from Milledgeville.
A little more than three years ago, Massee said he was attending a class training session when he heard the name, Evelyn Johnson.
“I looked up and had this little video that came up that said, ‘Hi, I’m Evelyn Johnson. I graduated from Mercer University with a degree in analytics. I’ve interned with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and I want to be an analyst.”
Massee said he quickly sent her an inbox message and told her his name and that he was the sheriff of Baldwin County.
He said he informed her that he was interested in starting an intelligence program and he wanted her to sit down with him and talk.
“I’m going to tell y’all, she’s not from here,” Massee said. “She literally went to work for me and us in pure blind faith.”
The sheriff said working together the sheriff’s office now has a state-of-the-art Real Time Crime Center.
“We’re not Mayberry; we’re really advanced,” Massee said. “I wanted Evelyn to come because she’s worked a lot of the scams we’ve had (in recent years).”
Massee said during the last 2 ½ to 3 years, deputies and detectives have investigated local scams involving people they know have been swindled out of as much as $3 million.
“That’s a lot of money,” Massee said. “And sadly, some of them are life-long friends of mine. You know, when you’re in your 70s and somebody tricks you into giving away $350,000, or as one man took his retirement and gave away roughly $500,000, you will never replace that. I don’t care what you do unless you hit the lottery, you will not.”
The sheriff told his captive audience that when the sheriff’s office gets a picture of a potential suspect, or a license plate number, or some sort of other information related to a crime, he has been amazed at what Johnson can do with a computer and how the sheriff’s office can find people.
“We’ve recovered money for people,” Massee said. “We had $28,000 picked up from a local retirement home here. And they made one mistake. We got a picture of their tag. And within 15 minutes, we knew who owned the car, where they were. We found them in Columbus, and we got the money back.”
The crowd applauded after hearing that outcome.
Johnson, a Harris County, Georgia native who earned a degree from Mercer University in Macon and earned her master’s degree from Georgia College & State University, was recently accepted into the doctoral program at North Georgia University, followed the sheriff and addressed several scams that have been played out locally and elsewhere with unsuspecting victims, especially those who are senior citizens.
“I’ve worked very hard to build an intelligence division at the sheriff’s office,” Johnson said. “And what that means and how we operate is that we are sort of the guy in the chair for our deputies, our detectives, and our dispatchers. So, while we are working on active calls for service in our community, we are running intelligence and collecting information that will help our deputies as they are responding to a scene.”
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