NORFOLK, Va. — Recently, a phone call came into the News 3 newsroom that stopped me right in my tracks.
The caller said I was being sued and was planning to have me served with court papers at work. After the initial panic wore off, I did some digging and found out that call was part of a growing trend in the world of phone scams. And I wasn’t the only one being targeted on the job.
“It sounded legit.”
Sammi Bilitz, part of our team of digital producers at News 3, answered the phone call. It came in around 8:30 p.m. one evening in December. The woman who called was looking for me, saying I was in legal trouble and needed to coordinate with me to serve legal papers.
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“I took down the number of your court case, I took down their phone number, that woman’s name, and I asked if I could call her back later that night,” Bilitz recalls. “And she told me she was busy.”
In hindsight, Bilitz admits that should have been a red flag that the call wasn’t legitimate. But that wouldn’t be the only call we’d get. Two other people connected to our newsroom also got similar calls, threatening lawsuits against them. Including the wife of our Director of Digital Media, Jon Sham.