CHP to public: Beware of imitations

An old telephone scam is making the rounds again, and the California Highway Patrol wants to make sure no one falls for it.
“A person calling and impersonating a CHP officer will tell the victim that a close friend or family member has been injured in an auto accident,” CHP Sgt. Trent Cross said in a statement released this week. “In order to find out more information, the con artist says, the victim must call another officer by pressing *72 followed by another phone number.”
However, there are two problems with this scenario: the CHP doesn’t operate like that, and *72 (or 72# on some systems) activates the telephone’s call-forwarding feature – causing all incoming calls to ring at another number.
“At the end of the other line the original caller’s partner-in-crime is able to accept all collect and third-party calls,” Cross said. “Once you have pressed *72, you get billed for all calls made because your number is the one from which they are forwarded. … The victim does not know it has happened until it is too late and the charges appear on their phone bill.”
Cross said known variations on this scheme include inmates or payphone customers asking the victim to make a family call, and phone-company technicians trying to receive “remote access” to make repairs. He advised those receiving such calls to simply hang up. Those who feel they’ve already been scammed should call either the Sonoma Police Department at 996.3602 or the Sonoma Valley Sheriff’s Substation at 996.9495 – and press *73 (or 73#) to turn off the call-forwarding feature.