{"id":12441,"date":"2012-01-26T15:50:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T20:50:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=12441"},"modified":"2012-01-26T15:50:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T20:50:55","slug":"law-enforcement-says-%e2%80%98drop-scam%e2%80%99-is-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=12441","title":{"rendered":"Law Enforcement Says \u2018Drop Scam\u2019 Is Growing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>BY LEON B. CREWS<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Sentinel Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Detective <strong>Sal Augeri<\/strong> with the Tampa Police Department\u2019s Criminal Intelligence Bureau, said the \u201cDrop Scam\u201d criminal network is growing, and without the proper resources, they aren\u2019t going to be able to slow it down.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Augeri<\/strong> said according to information they\u2019ve received, the scam artists recently collected on two big paydays, and they are gearing up in expectations of even more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s bigger this year than last year,\u201d said <strong>Augeri<\/strong>. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten a lot of reports this year, and ledgers have been confiscated and arrests have been made. It\u2019s shocking the amount of fraud that\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Augeri<\/strong> said there\u2019s just not enough manpower to handle the growth of the scam, and they also need to know what\u2019s being done in a federal level to deal with the problem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI personally don\u2019t see this problem being solved anytime soon. Now, they are having tax dollars dumped on Capital One cards and through direct deposit. What we\u2019re seeing here in Tampa is happening all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Augeri<\/strong> said the perpetrators are outfitting their homes with expensive furniture being purchased with the cards, throwing lavish parties, and driving around in expensive cars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s even more frustrating is a lot of the people getting the drop dollars are also getting federal assistance. That makes it even harder. I had a list of at least 50 known drop suspects, and the majority are getting other state and federal assistance. The government is the biggest loser when it comes to managing money, and that\u2019s what has made this scam so easy to perpetrate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Augeri<\/strong> said he has received calls from people who want to assist them, but without the resources, there\u2019s nothing they can do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe upcoming GOP convention will shrink our forces even more. I also feel the city shouldn\u2019t have to foot the entire bill for this investigation. It\u2019s all federal. In the next two months it\u2019s really going to hit big.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY LEON B. CREWS Sentinel Staff Writer Detective Sal Augeri with the Tampa Police Department\u2019s Criminal Intelligence Bureau, said the \u201cDrop Scam\u201d criminal network is growing, and without the proper resources, they aren\u2019t going to be able to slow it down. Augeri said according to information they\u2019ve received, the scam artists recently collected on two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}