Feb. 2—A local business was the victim of a phone scam last month, and the Logansport Police Department is asking citizens to be vigilant and use caution when dealing with anonymous callers.

On the morning of Jan. 13, a sum of money was removed from the former D&J Liquors location at 3800 E Market St., now known as Mega Liquor and Smoke, by a caller masquerading as the business owner.

Sergeant Dan Frye of the Logansport Police Department responded to the incident. He said one of the employees received a phone call from whom she believed was the business's owner. The "owner" directed her to take money out of the cash drawer to a Bitcoin kiosk, saying he was expecting a shipment that day and that he had paid for it with a check, which they did not take anymore.

The caller then said there was going to be an extensive penalty for late payment, and directed her to break open the safe when she could not find the key to it. During this time, she was also on the phone with someone allegedly from FedEx. They directed her to take the money, which had reached a larger sum due to more fees, to a Bitcoin kiosk in Peru.

Police were then called when someone came by the business, still locked though it should have been open, and saw the safe was standing open, according to Frye.

"Nobody was suspected of any wrong doing," Frye said. "The young lady just got scammed and she thought she was trying to help out the boss that was in some trouble."

As they anticipate the callers from being overseas, Frye said he is not sure if they will be able to get any information. They do not suspect the employee having any involvement and all money that was put into Bitcoin was accounted for, although not retrieved, he said.

"There's no suspects. I mean, there's no way to track them to my knowledge at this point... it's obviously a big scam. They got more than one person doing this and the numbers don't come back to anything," Frye said. "Most of the stuff that's happening like this are from overseas."

Frye said other businesses should absolutely be aware of this scam, as he said it happened to another store in Logansport. He said there are multiple different types of scams out there that can affect the community, such as a phone scam where an alleged police officer says a relative is imprisoned and a certain amount of money is needed.

"... it's just unbelievable. I feel bad for them and I wish we had the ability to track them down. And if there is, maybe we'll learn about it, and if so, it probably will come after the time I'm retired," Frye said. "But... we can't do anything with it... if we could, we'd certainly jail them."