Protecting yourself against bail bond con in Lee County

More than 50 people are hoping to get their loved ones out of jail; instead, they lost thousands of dollars.

The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is warning of a fake bail bondsman going around taking people’s money.

They use the public jail website to find the family members of people who are currently in jail and then call using a 561 area code and convince people to send money. Then, once the money is delivered, they block the victim, using this business’s name: All Out Bail Bonds.

We spoke with a victim who ended up sending money. William Rodgers was trying to bond a loved one out of jail.

“So all of a sudden, the phone rings, and it’s this person telling me that he’s from All Out Bail Bonds, and I’m friends with the owners,” Rodgers said.

Rodgers said it sounded suspicious.

“He starts telling me [that] she wants to get out. We can get her out today, and I’m saying to myself, ‘I just talked to the prosecutor.’ He said, ‘There’s a Noah hold bond,’ and I know the law because she’s we’ve been involved in this,” he said.

But the caller kept at it, eventually convincing, persuading Rodgers that this was legit.

“He just kept going and going to plug it away and plug it away, and I ended up going to get the card, and I gave him the money. I got scammed,” Rodgers said.

Robyn Farnsworth is a bail bond agent and said that more than 50 families have fallen in the last six weeks.

“People come to a bail bond agent at the worst start of their lives. Their family’s trapped. They’re incarcerated. They just want the family member out. It’s a high-stress situation,” Farnsworth said.

All Out Bail Bonds owner Maria Paterno said the person calls, convinces and gets people to send the money through unprotected means such as the Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Green Dot cards.

“I’ve been [the] in business for 35 years. We don’t solicit anyone,” Paterno said.

And despite that, Paterno said it’s frustrating.

“We’ve been catching a lot of heat, and we get a lot of phone calls saying that we took money from them and did not provide a service,” Paterno said.

LCSO is aware of the situation and has issued a scam alert. They encourage anyone to contact them if they get a call from this “Michael” and to file a police report, and if you do get a call, do not send money.