‘Donuts with DA’ event raises awareness about online crimes, provides suggestions for avoidance

A room full of people turned out at The Post on Friday to spend some time listening to Grayson County District Attorney John Kermit Hill.

While the event was billed as a donuts with the DA meet and greet, it turned out to be an explanation of the dangers of online crimes, what people can do to try to avoid being a victim of such a crime and what to do if one suspects they may have fallen victim to an online scam.

In addition to Hill, those who attended also heard from DA investigator Tim Murrin and Grayson County Sheriff Tony Bennie.

“You need to understand there are nasty people in the world doing nasty things. Scams are a nasty thing. There is no good scam going on out there,” Hill told the audience. 

He said one type of scam is ransomware attacks. 

“They get you to click on a link and then they’re able to obtain access to your computer,” Hill said. Then he described a scenario where the scammer will say they have been alerted to irregularities in a person’s financial information and ask them to click a link that will look similar to their bank’s link. The scammers then lock up the account holder’s computer 
and demand a ransom to unlock the computer. 

“Don’t ever pay them money. Contact law enforcement,” he said.

Hill said the threat of that type of scam has been around for years. But with the progress of artificial intelligence, the ways and ease with which those types of scams can be conducted has grown substantially. 

Hill took a minute to remind those who came out early in the morning to meet him that he, Bennie and Murrin were all raised in Sherman and attended Sherman schools. Hill said he has practiced law for 39 years, mostly in private practice. 
Hill said when he took office in 2024, the office was staffed at about 50 percent.

“I brought five ADAs in with me on the days that I took office. We’ve had some significant changes along the way,” he said, noting that the office now has about 35 staffers with 15 of those being attorneys and five investigators with the rest being support staff.

He said his job and that of his staff is not to get convictions or long sentences but to find justice. Hill said he feels very strongly about crimes against children and third or more driving while intoxicated cases. 

However, he said, there is a misconception out in the community that his office is an investigative agency. It is not. He said that people who feel like they have an issue that needs his office’s attention need to first report it to the appropriate law enforcement agency. It will then be forwarded to the DA’s office if the law enforcement agency feels a crime has been committed. The office, he said, cannot discuss cases that are ongoing and they don’t generally reply to social media posts. 

Murrin was up next and spent time talking about the growth in scams. He said the Federal Trade Commission said last year that scams cost folks $3.5 billion. He warned folks to be weary of communications that look like they come from online dealers who are asking about information concerning supposed recent transactions. He told people to verify any information requested from such dealers by going to the shop’s online presence or making a phone to confirm that the request is legitimate. He said such crimes are very hard to investigate so the best bet is to do whatever one can to avoid getting caught in those traps.

He advised that a lot of these scams start on social media, so people should be especially vigilant about interacting with such posts. If a social media post promises something that seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.   

Bennie also added that people should be especially suspicious of demands that fines or fees appearing to come from a governmental or law enforcement agency be paid with something other than money, such as gift cards, bitcoin or other hard-to-trace types of currency in an expedited time frame. He said AI makes it easy for scammers to clone phone numbers in a way that makes it look like the call is coming from within the agency it purports to be from. He cautioned that law enforcement will not ask for bitcoin or gift cards and most won’t call ahead of time if there is a warrant out for someone’s arrest. 

He said to be careful even if the name of an officer is one that people are accustomed to seeing in the media. That’s where a lot of scammers get the information that they use to sound legitimate. If people have questions, they should look up the number for the agency referenced and ask if they have any issues there. 

Bennie said it is often good people who get caught up in such scams because they are trying to take care of any outstanding issues they may have with law enforcement. 

The bottom line for the presentation was that people need to be vigilant when dealing with issues online and should go slowly. The more someone tries to speed up a response, the slower one should be in responding.