Colorado sheriff's office launches fraud awareness training program

Whether it's a loved one or even yourself, anyone can become a victim of fraud. On Friday, Boulder County Sheriff's Office launched a training program to increase awareness about these types of crimes.

Stephen Conley is the sheriff's office victim advocate behind the program. He visited The Pearl on Boulder Creek, where several dozen senior citizens sat in the conversation. For him, the crime hits close to home, which is why he wants to bring awareness to fraud and scams.

"Ten years ago, my mom fell for the grandparent scam," explained Conley, whose mom received a call from a scammer who said a family member was in jail, and the district attorney was asking for $10,000. 

Luckily, Conley's mom called him before sending any money. 

"Then, two years ago, it happened to my mother-in-law," Conley continued. "She actually did lose money."

Conley's mother-in-law was victim of a tech support scam, where a pop-up on her computer screen said she'd been impacted, and she was asked to call Microsoft.

"The biggest common element is that whatever they're doing is urgent. It must be done right now," Conley said. "They get you to act before you have time to think and before you can talk to anybody."

The fraud awareness training program is a volunteer effort led by Conley, with the goal to reduce the number of victims.

"Can we do these presentations just to get people to sort of slow down, pause for a minute, maybe talk to somebody, but ultimately to, in the back of their head, be asking the question, 'Could this be a scam?'" Conley said. 

The training equips people with knowledge and tools to avoid becoming victims, plus identifying common scams and how they operate.

"We hand out a little card with our sort of common scam elements and our acronym of SUPER -- secrecy, urgency, password, exporting your money out of the country -- and does it seem real," Conley said. "Those are the things to look for."

Fraudsters and scammers are becoming more sophisticated and smarter. The sheriff's office says Colorado ranks seventh in the nation for fraud complaints per capita. The office also says recent FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data shows scammers stole more than $243 million from Colorado residents in 2024, which was an increase of nearly $56 million from the previous year.

The program offers free sessions to senior centers, community groups, businesses and other organizations.

"We want to get the message out as broadly as we can. We started with these senior facilities, and the reason is this group loses the most money, by far," Conley said. "People are targeting seniors because they have the money."

Nyla Witmore, a victim of fraud who was part of the conversation, said, "I actually set myself up for it. What ended up happening was that, when my check was cashed, I happened to notice that it wasn't to this company that I thought I was dealing with. I was feeling very defenseless."

Several weeks ago, Witmore used her phone and called a fake company and placed an order. She contacted the original company, which advised her to stop the payment. Through working with her bank, her money was returned to her account. She said the training is a reminder that it could happen to anyone.

"I think our communities need it more than once a year," Witmore said. "We need it two or three times a year to remind us what's still out there, and to refresh our memory of the things to avoid and how to recognize the scam."

Anyone interested in participating in the fraud awareness training program, or would like to learn more about it, can email SheriffFraudAwarenessTraining@bouldercounty.gov.

"The other half of this is getting people to realize that they shouldn't be ashamed that this happened," Conley said. "If you don't talk about it, that's the worst thing and what the scammers are counting on. I need the person sitting here to realize it happened to someone they know, and people need to be willing to share the stories."