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Fake Social Worker
October 27, 2011 permalink
A man calling himself Matt Lyles scared a parent by falsely claiming he was a social worker for Florida DCF.
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DCF impersonator alarms parent
The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a report that a man impersonated an officer with the state Department of Children and Families.
According to a news release from DCF, a man who identified himself as DCF investigator Matt Lyles called a Santa Rosa County woman at her work on Oct. 18 and said he was investigating a complaint about her son having bruises.
The woman described the man as very professional and said he knew details about her family, including her name, phone number, place of employment, date of birth, address, her son’s day care center, her husband’s name and his place of employment.
The woman visited her son’s day care center, where employees said they had neither been contacted by nor contacted DCF about the issue. The day care center then contacted DCF to learn the agency had no open investigation on the family.
The News Journal requested the incident report in the case, which Sheriff’s Office spokesman Sgt. Scott Haines said would be available Thursday.
A similar case occurred in Bay County a week before the Santa Rosa incident, according to the release. In that case, a man and a woman knocked on the apartment of a family at an apartment complex and asked for the family’s baby.
The man wore a strange badge, the family reported, and the visitors did not state why they wanted to see the child.
Cindy Long, a family support worker at DCF’s Navarre Office, said the agency’s officers wear street clothing and carry photo IDs bearing the title “Child Protective Investigator.”
Source: Pensacola News Journal
