- May 16, 2024
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Aug. 18
A losing proposition
8:28 p.m. First block of Wellesley Lane. Fraud.
A 93-year-old Palm Coast man got a phone call from a man who told him he’d won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes for $2.5 million.
The caller said the 93-year-old would need to pay the taxes for the award in order to get the money, and told him to put the money on prepaid Green Dot cards, which are redeemable by anyone who has the security code on the back of the card.
The 93-year-old wasn’t suspicious at first, he later told deputies, “because he has been purchasing items from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse since the 1980s,” according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
There were “numerous calls from different subjects who stated that they were with the sweepstakes requesting additional amounts of money,” according to the report.
From Aug. 13-18, he bought four cards for $250 and two $500 cards at local drug stores.
Then, on Aug, 18, the callers old him to send funds in $1,000 increments.
He refused.
A caller threatened to kill him and his wife, then said he knew the 93-year-old’s social security number and the amount of his credit card limit. The 93-year-old told deputies he hadn’t provided that information to any of the callers.
They called hundreds of times, he said, so he and his wife went out to dinner to escape the phone.
When they returned, there had been 49 missed calls within two and a half hours.
The man told deputies he will change his phone number and not send anyone more money.
A deputy went to the stores where the man bought the cards, but a store clerk told him there was no way to track who redeemed them.
Not the subtlest of thieves
5:42 p.m. First block of Essington Lane. Residential burglary.
A woman got call from a neighbor, who said she saw two men walk out of the woman’s house with “something covered up, and then place it into a gold or champagne in color SUV,” according to a Sheriff’s Office report.
When the woman got to the house, someone had entered her screened-in back porch, shattered the window of her French doors, removed a window screen and entered the rear of the home.
The woman called the Sheriff’s Office.
The intruders had stolen her $700 ASUS 20-inch laptop, an $800 55-inch Vizio flat-screen television, a U-Verse remote control, and a $600 Walther PPK 22-caliber pistol.
The loot totaled $2,100, but the total estimated worth of the damage to the home was even more: $3,550
The woman submitted a written report to the Sheriff’s Office.
Two witnesses, including the woman who had called the homeowner, spoke with deputies, and said they had seen the men and found the pair suspicious-looking.
Aug. 19
Of all the targets to pick …
9:14 p.m. North Old Dixie Highway, Espanola.
A deputy out for a jog near North Old Dixie Highway called 911 reporting he’d just been shot at.
He said a white car with a temporary tag drove by him several times, and he thought it was involved.
Deputies responded to the scene, and one unit found a car that matched the description the deputy had called in.
Deputies initiated a felony traffic stop on the white car, and placed its driver and three passengers, all men ages 18-25, in handcuffs in the back of a patrol car.
The deputies read the men their rights, then interviewed them.
The men said three of them — the fourth man, they said, was picked up just before deputies stopped the car — had gone out to Old Dixie Highway with three shotguns and done some target shooting, aiming at paper targets and bushes.
To of the shotguns jammed, so they decided to leave.
As they did, they saw a man jogging in the area. They didn’t realize he was a deputy.
They “threw a firecracker out of the window in the direction of (the deputy),” according to the report, and sped off.
Then they picked up the third passenger.
Deputies found fireworks on the floorboard of by the car’s rear seat.
They photographed the car, the shotguns and the fireworks, “determined that no crimes had been committed and that the firework being thrown near (the deputy) was mistaken for a gunshot,” told the men why they’d been detained, and released them from custody.
