MCCANDLESS, Pa. — An Allegheny County woman said she wanted to go public as the victim of a scam after enduring eight hours of threats by people pretending to be sheriff’s deputies.
Karen White said scammers contacted her Wednesday to tell her she missed jury duty. They texted her a picture of an arrest warrant with her name on it.
They said to avoid arrest, she would have to pay $25,000, which they later knocked down to $8,000 when she told them she didn’t have the money.
They also told her she couldn’t hang up the phone and stayed on the line as she rushed to the bank and then to seven convenience stores to feed her money into bitcoin machines.
“I just listened to them. I was very foolish,” White admitted. “I do not want anybody else to ever go through anything like this again.”
She said she was fortunate: six of the seven stores had broken bitcoin machines, including one that stopped working as she tried to use it. Her phone then died, freeing her to go home and finally process what she went through.
That’s when she realized she had been scammed, and reported the scam to police.
The fake jury threat scam is not new. Allegheny deputies have put out warnings for years, every time it resurfaces. The last warning was earlier in August when a man lost tens of thousands of dollars to the scam.
It’s an effective scam. The Federal Trade Commission said in 2025, Americans lost $917 million to phony government employees.
Deputies – or law enforcement members at any agency – will not threaten someone over the phone and never ask for payment in the form of gift cards, Venmo or Bitcoin.
Deputies say if someone does receive a phone call like that, they should hang up immediately and contact their local law enforcement agency.
“It is horrible, and I hope by hearing me, this won’t happen to anybody else again,” White said. “We have to win over these horrible people.”
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