CHP Asks Victims Tricked by Phony Police Officers for Assistance

The California Highway Patrol is urging people who were tricked into sending hundreds of dollars to help friends or associates supposedly involved in traffic accidents to notify authorities.

Two men posing as law enforcement officers allegedly bilked 23 California residents, including 10 from San Diego, and 160 people in 22 other states, as far away as Virginia and Vermont, of a total of $40,000.

Steve Harrison Payne, 40, and Greg Alva McKenna, 26, both of Georgia, are being held without bail in a San Francisco jail. They were arrested March 13.

Payne and McKenna allegedly telephoned people and persuaded them to send money via Western Union to help friends and associates who were supposedly involved in traffic accidents, San Diego CHP spokesman John Marinez said Thursday.

The money could be picked up at any Western Union office in the country, said Alice Huffaker, Sacramento CHP spokeswoman. She said Payne and McKenna called collect and gave their victims code words so that they would not be required to show identification when collecting the money.

After a three-month investigation, CHP officers discovered that most of the money was being picked up at two Western Union offices in San Francisco, Huffaker said. She said the CHP put those offices under surveillance and arrested McKenna as he picked up $257 sent by a man in Kansas. Payne was arrested an hour later at a bus depot in San Francisco.

The two men allegedly obtained country club listings from library business journals, then called the clubs’ members. They told the member that a business associate had been in a car accident and needed money for hospital or towing costs, Huffaker said.

CHP spokesman Marinez said he received a call from an Old Town resident who said a man posing as a representative of the nonexistent Motorcycle Police Officers Assn. called and asked for a $250 donation to help manufacture tricycles for handicapped children.

Marinez said the woman became suspicious and called the CHP when the man insisted on picking up the money. The man failed to show up after the woman told him she wanted to discuss the donation with her husband, Marinez said.

Marinez said Payne and McKenna used the names of San Diego County CHP officers. The CHP believes they obtained the names from news articles. Marinez said calls from fraud victims are still coming in, and that the money lost could eventually amount to more than $70,000.

CHP Commissioner Maury Hannigan said, “We believe that many others have also been taken in by this scam but are too embarrassed or upset to report the incident. I urge all those who have been victimized by this swindle, but have not yet come forward, to do so to help resolve this crime.”