New NJ scam involves you, a prison inmate, and an ankle monitor

Authorities in the Garden State are alerting you to yet another scam that's been going around.

News snapshot

• Warning comes from the Salem County Sheriff's Office in South Jersey
• Scammers are trying to get $2100 from people
• This scam involves inmates supposedly being released from prison

Don't fall for the prison overcrowding scam in NJ

The Salem County Sheriff's Office says they have been made aware of a scam involving callers posing as employees of the Salem County Correctional Facility.

These fraudsters claim that due to prison overcrowding, an inmate has been approved for release with an ankle monitor.

That itself seems like a rather odd basis for a scam, but it gets a bit more bizarre.

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Those scammers then demand that you pay $2,100 for the monitoring service by using PayPal, Venmo, or other payment apps.

Truth be told, you are not responsible for paying for someone random inmate's ankle monitor. That should be rather obvious. But as weird as this scam sounds, people are actually falling for it.

Authorities were quick to point out the obvious:

The Salem County Sheriff's Office and the Salem County Correctional Facility will never request payments through apps for an inmate's release or for any other service.

If anyone contacts you with this request, do not make any payment. Instead, report the scam, with as much detail as possible, to your local police department.

Should you have any legitimate questions about inmates being released, you can call the Salem County Correctional Facility directly at (856) 769-4300.