A Texas woman was arrested after authorities say she scammed more than $280,000 from a Putnam County resident.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard R. Sills said his office received a call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after the woman attempted to leave the country from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and travel to Nigeria.
“We had her listed on the National Crime Information Center as a wanted felon, so they saw it and called me July 1, and I sent a deputy to go pick her up the next day and booked her into our jail,” Sills said.
Victoria Marie Lacuesta, 44, of San Antonio, Texas, is being held without bond in the Putnam County Jail on charges including 12 counts of felony theft by deception.
“This is one of those rare occasions in the world of scams that we’ve actually been able to make an arrest,” Sills said. “Usually the money is taken via gift cards or Bitcoin or sent to a fictitious account that goes overseas and just evaporates. But in this case, it was wired to a bank in Texas, and we could trace it.”
The transfers were made between October 2025 and January 2026. Sills said the victim, who is over the age of 65, was led to believe they were investing money in one of Elon Musk’s corporations.
Sills said Lacuesta was out on bond in Graves County, Kentucky, where she is accused of committing a similar crime.
“I spoke with the district attorney up there after we got her here, and they’re going to be revoking her bond up there,” he said.
“So now there’s a separate victim in Kentucky, and I’ve got a strong suspicion we’re going to find other victims somewhere else along the way. If this has gone on between Texas and Kentucky and Georgia, and she was on her way to Nigeria, that is a hotbed of fraud activity there, always has been; there’s bound to be other victims.”
The case, along with recent speaking engagements on fraud, appears to have heightened Sills’ concerns about the growing number of scams targeting residents.
“This upsets me; it’s the most upsetting thing we deal with now,” he said.
“In the past 29 months, just 29 months in this county alone, more than $2.25 million has been stolen from people in scams. And those are just the ones that were reported. It is endemic; it is a cancer that’s metastasizing.”
Sills cited another recent case in which a victim was scammed out of $600,000. During the 29-month period he referenced, he said the sheriff’s office received reports of 71 scam-related fraud incidents. Only three arrests were made, he said, because the money or phone calls could not be traced.
“They use burner phones, which cannot be traced, and they tell their victims to go buy a gift card,” Sills said. “Why on earth would you go buy a gift card and send it to someone who says they’re with an investment company or says they’re a law enforcement officer?!
“Just hang up the phone and call us. Hang. Up. The. Phone,” he added, emphasizing each word.
Sills also warned that the sheriff’s office phone number can be “spoofed,” meaning it can appear on a caller’s caller ID even though the call did not originate from the sheriff’s office.
He said the tactic is frequently used by scammers posing as sheriff’s deputies and claiming a person must pay money because they failed to appear for jury duty.
“That’s the most prolific type of scam right now,” Sills said. “They’ve gotten people to pay anywhere from $1,000 to as much as $34,000 for failing to appear for jury duty. I have worked law enforcement for 52 years in multiple judicial circuits and grew up in the courthouse. Never ever have I seen anyone fined for not showing up for jury duty.
“Never.”
Sills said that if someone fails to appear for jury duty, a deputy will serve another summons at the person’s home.
“No one will call; the deputy shows up at your door,” he said. “You aren’t arrested; you aren’t fined; you are simply given a different date to show up and talk to a judge.”
Another scam increasingly targeting residents involves a caller who sounds like the victim’s child or grandchild and claims to be in jail and in need of money.
“Again, hang up the phone and call (the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office), and we’ll check that out for you,” Sills said. “Just hang up the phone, call us, and talk to us and let us handle it.”
The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office can be reached at 706-485-8557.