Retired 911 Dispatcher From Hardy Charged After $45,000 Cash Pickup In Baxter County Scam Sting

MOUNTAIN HOME, Ark. — A 73-year-old Hardy woman who spent 21 years as an emergency dispatcher is charged with felony theft after investigators say she drove to Mountain Home in July to collect $45,000 from a man she believed was an elderly scam victim in a wheelchair.

The man was a decoy, and the cash was fake. Patti Lynn Dunlap was arrested July 22 during a three-day operation by the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office, Mountain Home police and Homeland Security Investigations, working with Trilogy Media, a YouTube channel that baits overseas scam call centers on camera. The channel’s video of the sting, posted Saturday, shows the handoff, the traffic stop and part of Dunlap’s interview with investigators.

Dunlap is charged with theft of property of $25,000 or more, punishable by five to 20 years in prison. She spent 27 days in the Baxter County jail before a bail bond company posted her $50,000 bond Aug. 18, court records show.

According to a probable cause affidavit by Baxter County Investigator Kenneth Looney, Dunlap drove from her home to the Town and Country grocery on East 9th Street on instructions from men posing as Federal Trade Commission agents. She was told to look for a man in a blue shirt and brown pants in an electric wheelchair and to confirm the pickup with the password “golden egg.”

Dunlap pulled into the parking lot about 3:27 p.m., took a package holding $45,000 in decoy money and drove away, the affidavit said. Deputies in unmarked vehicles followed her out of town and stopped her on U.S. 62 East, where they recovered the package.

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In the video, Dunlap is in tears at the roadside and tells a deputy she was sent by a friend named Henry whom she had talked with for about a year and a half but never met. “I was scammed on my computer,” she says.

After waiving her rights at the sheriff’s office, Dunlap told investigators she had been instructed to take the money home, keep $10,000 for herself and hand the remaining $35,000 to a second courier who would come to her house that evening, the affidavit said.

Dunlap said her involvement began around March 2025 with a pop-up on her computer, after which men calling themselves “Mark James” and “Henry Control” and claiming to be FTC agents told her she had been scammed and that they would help her get her money back, according to the affidavit. At their direction she opened a bank account to receive deposits, which she converted into Western Union wire transfers and Apple gift cards bought in Salem, Hardy and Highland and in Thayer and West Plains, Mo.

She acknowledged moving more than $10,000 through the scheme and keeping $3,000 to $4,000 for herself, the affidavit said.

About two weeks before her arrest, First Community Bank flagged her account for fraud. At Henry’s direction she closed it and opened a new account at Centennial Bank in Highland to keep using, Dunlap told investigators. She said the Western Union receipts, the gift cards and the laptop she used were in a filing cabinet in her laundry room.

Dunlap told investigators she worked 21 years as a dispatcher handling police, fire and ambulance calls. “Despite her extensive experience in emergency and criminal reporting procedures, Dunlap never reported the fraud to any law enforcement authority, continuing instead to collect financial compensation for acting as a money courier,” the affidavit said.

In the recorded interview, Dunlap says the scheme began while her husband, a retired firefighter, was in the hospital, and that she hid it from him and from her daughter because “he told me not to tell anybody.” Her husband died last year after 42 years of marriage, she says.

“I was just wanting my money back,” she tells an investigator. “That’s all I could see.” The investigator answers that she was once a victim, “but now you’re creating victims.”

The video also captures the scammer calling the decoy back after the arrest to report that “Patty” had been caught by police. “She is such an innocent woman,” he says, before blaming the decoy for the failed pickup.

Sheriff John Montgomery said in a news release that the July 22-24 operation produced six arrests: Dunlap, two other suspected couriers arrested the next day after trying to collect a second $45,000 package, and three men accused of trying to meet children for sex. The Sharp County and Carroll County sheriff’s offices assisted.

It was the third such operation in Baxter County in a year. Stings in August and December 2025 each produced three courier arrests. A similar weeklong operation with Trilogy Media in Miller County in September ended with two couriers charged in Texarkana.

Trilogy Media said of the Miller County operation: “Our experience with the Miller County Sheriff’s Office was better than we could have ever imagined. Every member of their team ran this operation with the utmost professionalism, and they’re showing the rest of the country what it looks like when local law enforcement treats cyber crime and elder fraud as crimes worth pursuing, not cases to write off. They’re showing the entire country what it looks like when law enforcement refuses to let cyber criminals prey on the elderly, and every agency in America should be paying attention. They made us feel at home from day one and lived up to everything Arkansas has come to mean to us. We can’t wait to release these videos and show the world the work they’re doing, the hospitality we experienced, and how beautiful Miller County is!”

Dunlap appeared for arraignment Aug. 17 before Circuit Judge Andrew Bailey, who changed her bond from cash-only to allow a bail bondsman to post it. Triple R Bail Bonds of Ash Flat posted the bond the next day. Her release conditions bar her from contacting any victim, witness or co-defendant and from possessing weapons or alcohol, and require her to report to a court officer and submit to drug testing.

Deputy Public Defender James Wallace of Mountain Home represents Dunlap. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Kerry Chism is handling the case for Prosecuting Attorney David Ethredge. A status hearing is set for Nov. 9.