In April 2024 I picked up a call from an unknown number at the grocery store where I work. The first few moments were enough to send shocks of terror through my body. “Jeff Noland? This is Officer Walker with Davidson County Police Department. We have a warrant out on you.”
My mind raced. What did I do? I can’t go back to prison. I can’t ever go back to prison. I won’t make it out alive this time.
The person on the other end of the call said he needed my personal cell phone number. When I hesitated, he rattled off my home address, my parole officer’s name and my ID number from the decade I spent in Tennessee Department of Correction custody. My coworkers were watching. Shaking, I told him my number and said a silent prayer that I would not go back to prison.
Next he called me on my cell phone and said an officer had been dispatched to my work address. As the initial shock wore off and I began to regain my senses, I asked for his badge number. He said something fake-sounding and repeated that an officer was on his way to arrest me right now. I gathered my courage and replied that I’d be waiting out front with my lawyer.
“Fuck you!” he screamed. “Child molester! Go to hell!” Then he hung up.
A few months later, I picked up a call on my work number from a Lieutenant Robert Morrison of the Davidson County Sheriff’s office, who informed me that I’d missed a DNA sample appointment that morning. This time I asked for his badge number right away. He hung up. I called him back and asked if this was a good number for my attorney to reach him at. He hung up again.
If you’re one of the approximately 800,000 people in the United States on a sex offender registry (SOR) then information that’s normally private, like your address, is publicly searchable. Anyone can look you up and call you at work saying they have a warrant for your arrest.
I’ll always regret that I hurt the people I loved the most. I also want the chance to redefine myself. And I want some privacy.
In 2018 Tim Huff, who is also on Tennessee’s SOR, received a call similar to mine. But in his case, he was told that in order to clear the warrant and not go back to prison he needed to deposit $400 into a Bitcoin account.
Cryptocurrency scams, and other kind of scams threatening legal action, are fairly common. But they’re especially common for people on SOR.
On December 11, 2024, Jerry Sherrill picked up the phone to someone saying this was a contact call, he was in SOR noncompliance for failing to update his DNA and photo, and there was a warrant out for his arrest.
“They were quite convincing,” he told Filter. “Kept me on the phone so I couldn’t call my parole officer to verify any of this. Before I knew it they had sent me a Green Dot receipt; then I knew.”
They got him for $1,700. When he filed a complaint, the investigator who met with him said scams like that happen a lot. They’ve even used my name before, Sherrill recalled the investigator saying. Last week they got someone for $2,000.
I’ve never been required to pay fees via Bitcoin, but it’s not that much of a stretch.
Stereotypes about people on SOR prompt plenty of strangers to make these kinds of calls in their spare time, but that’s not the only reason we’re obvious targets.
I’ve never been required to pay my SOR fees via Bitcoin, but it’s not that much of a stretch. I regularly pay fees in cash. Armed officers enter my home without warning whenever they want. I’ve picked up calls from unknown numbers at 9 pm to have someone I’ve never heard of tell me they want to do a video search of my home, and it was legit.
If you say No to something that looks like a scam, and it was an actual SOR requirement, then you’ve pissed off the people who control your entire life. So when strangers call telling you to pay up or you go back to prison, you have to take that seriously.
After Huff sent the $400, he drove to two different sheriffs’ offices looking for the officer who’d called him, to make sure there really wasn’t anything he was supposed to do.
“Both places said, Sorry, they don’t work here. It sounds like you got scammed.“
Top image via Ohio Department of Commerce. Inset image via Office of Sex Offender Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking.
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