I answer my phone this morning and the gentleman introduces himself as Officer M. D. of the Apple Valley Minnesota police department and states that the call is being recorded to make sure none of my civil rights are being violated. He proceeds to tell me that I failed to appear in Federal Court as a material witness for something I notarized and that this is a courtesy call to let me know that there are two warrants that have just been issued for my arrest this morning. He asked me what my excuse was for not appearing in court on May 7th.
I proceeded to tell him that this sounded like one of those scam calls I have been hearing about where they are targeting notaries. I told him that if I notarized something fraudulent, I would have received a telephone call when it was first discovered. I did not appear in court because I received no notice, and there was no court on May 7th due to the pandemic.
Well he got super mad and argumentative with me and when I asked him for the warrant numbers so I could check on it, he hung up on me. Busted!!!
I called my Apple Valley Police Department and the name he gave me is of an officer who worked there ten years ago and there are a lot of scam calls out there telling people there are warrants out for their arrest and they want you to pay money. The address he gave me of where the notice came was an address I had never heard of in Burnsville. I think he then googled me and asked me if I resided at and he rattled off my real address. It is so scary that all of our private information is listed everywhere on the internet. The State of Minnesota lists our home address on their website and we are not allowed to use P.O. Boxes. I think someone should petition the courts to allow a Notaries private information to be private.
Thank you to all my Notary Rotary family for alerting me to this so that I knew what to do when I got one of those calls |