Sonoma County authorities want the public, especially the elderly, to be aware of a spate of scams involving couriers and demands for cash withdrawals under false pretenses. But in one recent case, an arrest has been made.An elderly Sonoma County couple was recently manipulated into handing over app roximately $28,000 to a fraud operation whose members posed as US Customs and Border Protection officers, as KRON4 reports. The callers told the victims that a family member had been detained and that money was needed immediately to cover legal expenses and secure their release — a claim that was entirely fabricated. The couple was then walked through a series of wire transfers and cash withdrawals, with some of the cash handed off to couriers at multiple locations around Sonoma County.On Sunday morning at 5:30 am, a man reportedly knocked on the couple's front door to collect what the scammers expected would be another package of cash. The couple had by then alerted authorities, and Sonoma County Sheriff's deputies responded and arrested Marco Antonio Garcia-Hernandez, 40, of Los Banos.The suspect reportedly told investigators he had been dispatched to Sonoma County via instructions sent over text messages and WhatsApp, with directions to collect a package from the victims. He was booked on attempted grand theft, obtaining money by false pretenses, and elder theft over $950, and he had an outstanding warrant from another county as well.The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office says the scheme is part of a broader fraud trend known as the "courier scam," which involves impersonating government officials, law enforcement, or attorneys and then sending a physical courier to collect cash directly from the victim's home — a method that sidesteps the electronic paper trails that might otherwise flag a wire transfer as fraudulent.We've covered similar cases to this before in the Bay Area. In April 2025, we reported on a very similar scheme in which a scammer nearly bilked an elderly Atherton man out of $15,000 via a fake PayPal alert before the man's caregiver and family caught on and the would-be courier was taken into custody. In that case, as with this one, the scam targeted an elderly victim using manufactured urgency, and the pretense of authority.Some of these scams also involve imitating the voices of family members on the phone, something that has become far easier with the rise of AI. As recently as last week we reported on an East Bay woman who was scammed out of thousands of dollars after an AI clone of her daughter's voice convinced her she had been kidnapped by a drug cartel.The growth in these cases is genuinely alarming. FBI data released this spring show that complaints about government-impersonation scams nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025 — from around 17,300 to more than 32,500 — resulting in roughly $800 million in losses last year alone. The FBI separately warned that in-person courier pickups are increasingly the preferred collection method in such scams, with 98% of identified courier scam victims being over the age of 60. The Marin County Sheriff's Office issued its own warning last year about a surge in exactly this type of scheme hitting North Bay residents.The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office is asking anyone with information about this fraud operation to contact their tip line at 707-565-2650.Related: Local Woman Bilked Out of Thousands After Scammers Clone Daughter’s Voice With AI ...read more read less