Chatham County detective: Scams are ‘getting smarter’ — experts urge caution against urgency and impersonation

"Scams are getting smarter, more convincing, and harder to predict," the interviewer said in introducing a series about fraud targeting residents. The host then introduced "detective Kiara Robbins" of the Chatham County Police Department (the transcript later uses the variant spelling "Keanna").

Robbins said she is "a detective with the police department" with about four years of experience and that she frequently handles financial crimes. "From my perspective, scam is just, I guess you could say, it's just another word for fraud," she said, adding that fraud is "the act of unlawful misrepresentation."

Robbins described a common phone scam in which callers impersonate a bank fraud unit and pressure victims not to hang up or to avoid speaking with others about the supposed "investigation." She warned that scammers often create urgency or fear — including threats of arrest or claims that a victim's identity was used in a serious crime — to push people into immediate compliance. "Those kind of ... you can't hang up the phone. You can't talk to anyone about what we're talking about because then the investigation is compromised," she said, describing the script scammers use to isolate victims.

Robbins said the targeting is often random — "it's kinda just the luck of the draw that someone answers the phone" — and that victims frequently feel embarrassed and later realize warning signs they missed. She cited delivery channels including social media, phone calls, emails and deceptive pop-up alerts referencing products such as Microsoft or services like LifeLock or Norton.

The detective urged residents to treat unexpected calls and unsolicited safety alerts skeptically, to verify contacts independently (for example, hang up and call a bank's publicly listed number), and to report suspected fraud to law enforcement. The transcript does not record specific local resources or a hotline; Robbins's name appears with inconsistent spelling in the recording (Kiara/Keanna).