Across the Northland, there have been several victims of scams, with fraud sometimes running into the thousands of dollars.

There are several types of scams, one common type is “spoofing.” This technique involves the scammer using a seemingly legitimate phone number to impersonate someone else.

“The suspect told our victim that a subpoena had been missed and a warrant, therefore had been issued for our victim, and that they needed to provide money in order to make the warrant go away. In this case, the victim was frauded slightly over $6,000″ said St. Louis county Sheriff’s Office investigator Zach Peterson.

Another type Peterson has seen is known as “pig butchering.” This is where a scammer will slowly build trust with the victim over the internet. Once trust is gained the scammer will offer the victim investing advice, which of course, is fraudulent.

“Our victim decided he wanted to withdraw his money is when it was found out to be fraudulent and that there was in fact no money being invested and he had not received these returns. Again, all those investments have been done through a cryptocurrency of Bitcoin, and our victim was out over $300,000 in that case.”

While there are lots of scams to look out for, Peterson and the Sheriff’s Office issued a list of tips to help citizens stay vigilant.