An Astoria doctor has warned others to take care after he said he was scammed out of $9,500 by a caller claiming to be a police officer.

Thomas Duncan said he was contacted Monday morning by a spoofed phone number that was identified as “Astoria Police Department.” The caller demanded a fine, alleging Duncan had not shown up as an expert witness in federal court and that he had signed a subpoena in November.

The scammer said federal courts were contracting with local police departments. Duncan went to the police station, but the caller warned him that if he stepped inside he would be detained without sufficient bail.

Duncan said he had identified and avoided dozens of scams in his lifetime and thought of himself as relatively immune. He said he did not recall receiving any subpoenas or being called as an expert witness in any court proceeding. Still, he said, the caller instilled a sense of urgency and fear so intense that he drove himself to the bank and took out $9,500.

“He got more and more aggressive and was telling me that I mustn’t talk to anyone who tried to talk to me,” he said. “He said, ‘You cannot talk to your wife, you can’t talk to anybody, this is very serious.’”

After withdrawing the money, he was instructed to go through a third party, with the scammer claiming the police department could not accept the bail.

At a Bitcoin machine in Safeway, Duncan said he sent over $9,000, anxious over the possibility of incarceration or detainment and extremely concerned he had failed to do an important duty for the community.

“When I talk about it, it sounds completely nuts,” he said. “But he really triggered a fear response … They figure out how to get a combination of fear and duty. In this case, that I must be failing in some duty — I should have gone to court to do this thing, and someone is going to get messed up because I didn’t show up.”

After the money had been sent, Duncan was approached by a Safeway employee, who let him know he had been scammed. The employee contacted police, who filed a report.

Deputy Chief Eric Halverson said local police departments do not demand money or issue warrants over the phone. Over the past few months, the police department and the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office have had to issue several warnings about scams of this nature.

“If you look back at some of the press releases, I’d say over the past couple years we’ve been putting out warnings specifically related to police departments, where people are calling and claiming to be police,” he said. “But we don’t collect money that way, we don’t deal with our business that way.”

Halverson said that it seems the scams have been getting more sophisticated, with scammers using the names of local authorities.

“I don’t know the particulars of this one, but obviously they’re working our area for whatever reason,” he said.

Duncan said the most dangerous and effective tactic used by the scammer was how they isolated their target.

“Don’t do it yourself,” he cautioned. “You know, they isolate you. And no police department in the country would ask you not to talk to your wife about something. The main thing about getting scammed is to not allow yourself to be isolated.

“There are these scams out there, and they will look for any possibility of making you feel that you’ve failed. And, you know, doctors are always sort of worried about failing, because you’re under the kind of pressure where you have to make decisions rapidly and you’d have incomplete information, but then you’re held liable for it. And so there’s always this fear of screwing up and they can play on that fear, obviously.”

Halverson said that any suspicious calls claiming to be police in order to collect money or issue warrants should be reported to the police department, and that people can always call the department to confirm if they aren’t sure about a situation.