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As financial crimes soar, Iredell County sheriff seeks new investigator

The Iredell County Sheriff's Office is looking to hire a new investigator after finding the number of financial crimes targeting innocent families has doubled.

Sheriff Darren Campbell walked into his office Monday to find three new reports of people who've had their identities and accounts compromised. He says they're proof his repeated warnings aren't working.

"You’re not going to win a sweepstakes," he said. “You don't have a long-lost family member worth hundreds of million dollars."

He told Eyewitness News the county's caseload of identity theft, tax fraud and phone scam cases is growing. In 2014, economic crime investigators worked 770 cases. In 2015, the figure doubled to more than 1,500.

Campbell said 2016 could be even worse.

"It’s an easy crime, for one. They prey on the elderly," he said.

In January, Channel 9 was there when a bomb squad responded to an elderly couple's home after a scammer, trying to get money, sent a suitcase and alleged there was a bomb inside.

On Friday, a woman gave scammers nearly $25,000 thinking she'd won a $3 million sweepstakes prize.

Eyewitness News spoke with a man on the phone who went to apply for unemployment insurance benefits and found someone else had been using his Social Security number.

"I had a state of panic. I’ve been trying to apply for new jobs, and I wonder if that can affect my future positions," Ben Jones told Eyewitness News by phone.

To help with cases like his, the sheriff is hiring another financial crimes investigator. He says tracking down scammers can be tricky, but they can find important information to help victims pick up the pieces.

"We have to be there to help the victims," Campbell said.

The sheriff will have funding in place on July 1 to bring in the additional investigator. The sheriff is advertising for candidates with experience investigating financial scams.

The sheriff said roughly 80 percent of the scams originate overseas, and 20 percent are committed locally.

Click here to learn more about how to avoid scammers.

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