The Gazette | Chief of the Civil Police of ES is victim of WhatsApp scam and issues warning

Cases of criminals pretending to be a close family member or acquaintance of someone to carry out scams are increasingly common. They take a photo, put it in a messaging application, usually WhatsApp, and try to trick the victims. The audacity of the criminals, this time, went a little further: they were trying to impersonate the general delegate of the Civil Police of Espírito Santo (PCES), José Darcy Santos Arruda.

The warning was made by the head of the PC himself, in a post on Instagram. “Friends, unfortunately, criminals are using my photos to commit different types of scams. I ask that you report and register incidents so that we can identify these people. I am already taking action, and the Civil Police of Espírito Santo (PCES) is already investigating.”, he says. the caption of the publication. Finally, he still leaves a warning. “Thank you and please be very careful,” he concludes.

The Civil Police reported that the case remains under investigation by the Specialized Police Station for the Repression of Cybercrimes (DRCC). According to the PC, other information will not be disclosed at this time, so as not to hinder the investigations.

In March of this year, José Darcy Santos Arruda had already gone to social media to warn his followers that his photos were being used to carry out scams. At the time, he wrote “again they are using my photo to practice scams”, implying that this has happened other times.

The report asked PCES whether anyone involved in the March case had been arrested, however, the police did not provide any feedback on the outcome of the investigations at that time.

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