THOMASVILLE- Thomasville Police Department recently received multiple calls regarding solicitation and are now asking residents to think twice before giving their money to someone when approached. 

According to Lt. Toby Knifer, TPD had received reports that a family, claiming to be refugees, were knocking on car windows at busy intersections asking for money. 

Knifer, along with other officers, performed a brief surveillance and learned the family was not who they claimed to be and found the operation to be a ruse. 

They then charged the father, Ionel Catalan, with solicitation. 

After charging Catalan, other officers on surveillance in a nearby area watched the wife of Catalan, along with their child, walk to a nearby location, where the family was found to have a car. The wife reportedly met up with an additional couple, who were performing similar actions in a different area, to bail out Catalan. 

“The were found to have two vehicles and were traveling from intersection to intersection asking for money,” Knifer said. “These individuals are not who they claimed to be; they were not refugees, this was their full-time job, so to speak.” 

Knifer said he had seen stories in the past where people will use solicitation as their form of “employment,” which is illegal. Catalan was a prime example of someone who was using solicitation as their primary form of employment. 

Since the arrest of Catalan, Knifer has been contacted by other local law enforcement agencies saying their solicitation cases match Catalan’s almost exactly, leading Knifer to believe there may be a group of individuals conducting these scams. For this reason, he encourages residents to stay vigilant of who they are giving their money out to.