SAN ANTONIO – An email is making the rounds across the country, in which recipients are told there is a warrant out for their arrest, along with instructions to call for more information.
The email states, "We receive Arrest warrant against your name Kindly call as soon as possible before the court case is file in order to get a settlement before you have any trouble at your home or job."
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The email, which contains a number of grammatical errors, also includes a phone number to call, and is signed "State Investigation Department." Some of the emails also include a header, with an emblem or seal, to make it look official.
"I read the email, and my first instinct was, 'Oh my God, why am I getting this? What's the basis behind this?'" said Ashley Aguilar, who received the email while at work.
After calling the number in the email, Aguilar said, the woman was unable to provide her with concrete answers as to why she was receiving the notice.
"Just from her reaction and the way she was speaking, I could tell that something wasn't right," Aguilar said. "She kind of danced around the issue, and never gave me a real explanation of what that was."
Aguilar said the woman on the other line instructed her to send in a prepaid $500 MasterCard to avoid getting arrested.
"No agency anywhere is going to ask you just to start paying money for an arrest warrant to make it go away," said KSAT Crime Analyst Eddie Gonzales. "You normally will not get an email out of the clear blue sky, without some identifiers."
Gonzales said police will not email a person about warrants, especially if they haven't been involved in a crime.
"If you haven't been involved in anything, or had any type of correspondence with any law enforcement agencies that you're aware of, then that should set off a red flag that there's nothing going on," Gonzales said.
A quick Internet search found indications of this scam happening all over the country, with different numbers listed in each email.