In 2024, Kathy Felker received a call from a pleasant and polite man claiming to be a sheriff’s deputy, who promptly provided his name and badge number. The man delivered shocking news: She had missed jury duty and could face jail time. 

As evidence, he sent her a copy of what looked like an arrest warrant with her name on it. 

“That scared the hell out of me,” said Felker, an Anacortes resident who owns Clever Kathy Designs in La Conner.

There was one way, however, that the now 74-year-old could make amends: deposit $55,000 into a cryptocurrency kiosk. While she succeeded in lowering the fee to an amount she could afford and that would not bankrupt her, Felker would soon realize she had been the victim of a jury duty scam, and that there was no way to get her money back. Felker declined to disclose the amount lost.

Over a year later, she remembers that call as a traumatizing and life-changing experience. But despite the anxiety, which has occasionally resulted in her losing sleep, Felker decided to share her story to help raise awareness of an issue that affects millions every year.

Advocating for change

While April is Fraud Prevention Month, the global scam industry remains committed to taking advantage of vulnerable and well-meaning people year round. In Washington, scammers were responsible for the loss of at least $272 million during the first nine months of 2025, according to the Federal Trade Commission. 

Dan Maul sees the effect on people every week as he answers calls from victims seeking advice from the AARP Fraud Watch Network, a free resource that provides people with guidance and tools to deal with scammers.

“This has stretched my emotional envelope,” he said. “It’s just unbelievably tragic.”

Maul, an AARP volunteer from Anacortes, convinced Felker to join him in advocating for a ban on crypto kiosks in the city, which the Anacortes City Council approved on April 20. The ordinance would allow the city to charge $500 per day for hosting or operating the kiosks in the city and to terminate a host’s city business license, according to the Anacortes American.

Crypto is a form of digital currency that is independent and allows people to make direct payments rather than relying on banks to verify transactions. Bitcoin is the best known cryptocurrency.

Maul and Felker believe that if local governments embraced bans similar to Anacortes’, they would protect people from losing years of savings.

Not all crypto transactions are bad, Maul acknowledged, but they still pose risks, particularly to seniors. A 2024 FBI report found that people aged 60 and older account for over 85% of losses involving the machines. 

There is at least one machine in La Conner, located inside Pioneer Market on Morris Street. Pioneer Market did not return a request for comment by press time. 

Scammers get creative

There are numerous ways scammers can extort money from anyone, including younger individuals and digital natives. 

Romance scams fall under the umbrella of “financial grooming,” where scammers — often under false or stolen identities — first gain the trust of their victims before they start to ask for money.

Other scams may look like calls or messages from entities posing as law enforcement, a bank, the Internal Revenue Service, or even job recruiters for remote work. 

Some scammers may hack a person’s social media account and reach out to friends to persuade them into investing in crypto or to ask for money. Others can use artificial intelligence to produce audio that gives the illusion that the caller is a family member who got in trouble and needs money for bail. 

Thanks to social media and data breaches, Maul said, scammers can easily access people’s personal information to make themselves more believable.

When it comes to scams involving fake law enforcement officers, government officials, agencies or bankers, Maul said they can be particularly effective as people are generally not accustomed to questioning authority.

But as soon as crypto or gift card payments are mentioned, it’s certain people are dealing with an impostor as those are not legitimate transaction methods when dealing with those entities. 

Tami Mason, a banker who works at WaFd Bank in La Conner, said requests for banking information, Social Security numbers and other personal information are also red flags, because a real bank would not make such requests. 

If clients give their online banking username and passwords to scammers, the bank is usually unable to issue refunds, she said.

The best course of action for those who have not given their money or personal information yet is to just hang up or ignore the message or pop-up on a device’s screen, and to look up the real phone number of that entity to verify whether the caller was legit or a fraud, Maul and Mason said. 

Never call any numbers provided by the potential scammer, Maul added. 

Those who have been scammed should contact their bank immediately, and law enforcement if they want to, Mason said.

Feeling hypnotized

The fraudster deputy kept Felker on the phone for a few hours, demanding — with a gentle Southern accent — she never hang up and prohibiting her from speaking to anyone about what was going on. 

Afraid of what could happen if she disobeyed, she canceled a doctor’s appointment and kept the phone on speaker the entire time, setting it on the passenger’s seat while driving. Whenever the call was interrupted, her phone would ring again.

Felker, like many other victims who have spoken with Maul, recalled feeling “hypnotized” as she was instructed to withdraw funds from the bank and deposit them into a crypto machine in Anacortes. When the store clerks, who felt suspicious about the situation, threatened to pull the plug on the machine to prevent her from being tricked, the fake deputy told her to go to another location.

“When your brain gets tricked, it’s tricked,” she said.

Mason, who spoke at a Memory Roundup event hosted by the Helping Hearts and Hands on March 28, said store clerks and bankers will usually try to dissuade clients from sending money to possible scammers. Often, however, the clients just go elsewhere.

Felker realized what had happened only after the ordeal was over. Though she called the police, nothing could be done. 

Fearing judgment, she confided only in her husband. Then, encouraged by Maul, she shared her story with the public. Much to her surprise, she received many words of gratitude and praise from the community, as well as lots of questions.

To filter out the tricksters, Felker now uses a call screening system that asks callers the reason why they are reaching out, which she recommends to anyone as scam calls become more persistent.

Today, her advice is to be cautious of others, to never disclose how much money one owns, and to “prepare as though you are sure it’s gonna happen to you.” 

Luisa Loi is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.

Photography by Nancy K. Crowell.