Deputy Suffolk County sheriffs are not calling to demand you buy prepaid credit cards

The Suffolk County Sheriff's Office reports scamsters are calling area residents and demanding they buy some pre-paid credit cards to pay off alleged debts or fines - or risk jail time.

The office says people are getting calls from alleged deputies claiming they either skipped out on jury duty or face some other potential criminal complaint that they can settle by buying Green Dot Money PAK cards and either call back with the card numbers - and then show up at the sheriff's civil-process office on Portland Street downtown.

In a statement, Sheriff Steven Tompkins said:

We do not make these types of calls nor do we ever demand money over the phone as a way to avoid arrest, and our office would have already had contact with the recipients by way of process service well before they would ever be subject to a civil arrest. Finally, any financial transactions that we do are performed inside the Civil Process Division at 132 Portland Street, not over the phone or on the street.