When Oxford resident Helen Barwig received a phone call from her grandson last week requesting money because he supposedly had a run-in with the law in another state, she didn’t send him a penny.

Instead, she reported it to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office and called the Leader.

That’s because the person on the line was not one of her grandsons. It appears to have been a scam artist in search of a victim.

Whoever called Barwig claimed to be her grandson, but didn’t give a name. The caller told her he was in Florida because a friend of his had died.

“Had any of my grandkids gone to Florida, I would have known it,” she said. “With our family, everyone knows what everybody else is doing or if they’ve gone some place or if somebody dies like that.”

The caller told Barwig that following the funeral, he had a few drinks and got arrested. But if he pays some money, the prosecutor has agreed to let him go.

Smelling a rat, Barwig played along and told the caller she would have to contact either his mother or father. She said the caller wasn’t bothered by that and gave her a phone number where he could supposedly be reached.

The number had a 620 area code, which covers most telephone exchanges in southern Kansas, not Florida. A reverse phone lookup using whitepages.com indicated it’s a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) number in Canton, Kansas, but no other information about the owner was listed.

This reporter dialed the number a few times.

The first two times, there was a recorded message stating, “We’re sorry, your call cannot be completed at this time. Please hang up and try your call again later. Thank you.”

On the next two calls, a male identifying himself as “David” answered, but when this reporter started explaining the situation and asking questions, he quickly hung up.

Barwig reported the call to the sheriff’s substation in Oxford because she’s worried there are other older people out there who could be duped by this scam.

“A lot of grandparents would be upset and just automatically send them money without thinking,” she said.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Frank Lenz is looking into Barwig’s call. He, too, called the number and a man with an accent identifying himself as “David” answered, but when the sergeant attempted to speak with him, he was disconnected.

According to Lenz, phone scams are “a constant complaint that all of our substations get.”

Many scam artists claim to be calling from the Internal Revenue Service or Microsoft. They also pretend to be relatives in trouble who need money to get out of jail. “Those are the main ones right now,” Lenz said.

People who receive scam calls are advised to never, under any circumstances, give out any personal or financial information such as credit card or Social Security numbers.

Lenz added, “Don’t acknowledge them (or) carry on a conversation.”

“Hang up and block that phone number from your cell phone, if it has that capability,” he said. “Then report it to us, so we can keep track of how many (calls) we’re getting (from which) phone numbers.”

The sergeant stressed the importance of not engaging in conversation with scammers because “it is common” that if a person “begins to take the bait,” it can “lead to a slew of follow-up phone calls” from that scammer and others.

“The next thing you know, you’ll be getting 20-30 phone calls a day from all different types of people trying to pull some kind of scam on you to get money,” Lenz said.

Lenz noted the U.S. Secret Service keeps track of phone scam complaints.

Telecommunications fraud is one of the financial crimes over which the agency has jurisdiction, according to the website www.secretservice.gov.

“For us locally, it’s a very hard crime to solve or investigate and that’s why if there’s an abundance of them, it’s usually handled on the federal level,” he said. “Most of the time (phone scams are) done by people (calling from) outside country.”