An edition of the Littleton Independent
WEEK OF JANUARY 16, 2025
VOLUME 24 | ISSUE 7
$2
Scam phone callers use threats of arrest warrants Sheriff’s offices offer tips to identify scam calls that impersonate official agencies BY NINA JOSS NJOSS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
perloop Pod competitions that ran from 2015 to 2019. The teams won awards for best design (2016), best innovation (2017), best engineering (2018), and third place for speed (2018). The EPFLoop team also took third place overall in 2018 and 2019. The competitions ended but in 2019 Tudor and fellow engineer Cyril Dénéréaz incorporated Swisspod Technologies with the goal of making hyperloop transportation a reality. Two years later they were building a one-quarter scale test loop in Lausanne in cooperation with EPFL and the School of Engineering and Management Vaud, a branch of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland. That same year, Swisspod announced a partnership with Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (now MxV Rail) to build the full-scale test track at the PuebloPlex. The first steel tubes were installed in October 2023. Meanwhile, various tests began at the Lausanne track in 2022, and the capsule
In November, Sandy Barber received a phone call from a number she didn’t recognize. When she picked up, a man on the line told her he was an officer with the Arapahoe County Sheriff ’s Office and that there was a warrant out for Barber’s arrest because she didn’t show up for a court hearing. Barber, who had recently received news that a loved one had passed away, was already emotionally distraught and became confused about the caller’s claim. She said she hadn’t received any notification about a court hearing, but the man insisted that they had mailed a summons to her former address. “I just kept saying, ‘I don’t understand,’” Barber said. “And he kept pushing me.” The man told Barber she had to go to the Arapahoe County Sheriff ’s Office, and that she would be arrested once she arrived. He told her not to hang up the phone and not to tell anyone about the situation. Then, he told her she needed to bring $4,500 in cash and he asked her which bank she was going to withdraw the money from. “Finally, I went, ‘I’m not talking to you anymore,’” Barber said. “I said, ‘I’m headed to the sheriff ’s department and I will find out what’s going on. I don’t believe you.’” When the man swore at her after that, she said she knew she had made the right decision. “At that point, I was absolutely convinced it was a scam,” she said. Barber, who lives in Aurora, is one of many victims across the metro region who have been targeted by scammers that pretend to be members of law enforcement agencies and convince people they have a warrant out for their arrest. These scammers will often say the victim missed jury duty or a court date. The scammers also tend to ask victims to pay “fines” or “bonds” in the form of gift cards, prepaid cards or sometimes cash.
SEE HYPERLOOP, P14
SEE SCAMS, P16
A view of the interior of Swisspod’s hyperloop test track that’s under construction at the PuebloPlex. When completed in 2025, the 1-mile, 43acre test site will be the world’s largest hyperloop testing faciltiy. PHOTO BY MIKE SWEENEY / SPECIAL TO THE COLORADO SUN
Denver to Pueblo in 11 minutes?
Hyperloop tests start soon BY SUE MCMILLIN THE COLORADO SUN
Imagine slipping into a sleek capsule at a train-like station in Pueblo and arriving in Denver 11 minutes later. Regardless of the weather. That’s the vision that drives Swisspod Technologies as it works to complete a one-mile, full-scale hyperloop test track on the grounds of the former Pueblo Army Depot in southeastern Colorado. In November, Swisspod unveiled 25 steel tubes atop concrete pillars stretching across 218 yards of prairie. You could look through the tunnel-like structure from one end to another. Seemingly, pretty basic stuff. But they are the first pieces of an elliptical test track for an intriguing, futuristic mode of high-speed transportation in which capsules carrying cargo or people would levitate through vacuum tubes. “As fast as a plane and as convenient as a train,” Swisspod CEO Denis Tudor said
as onlookers peered at or clambered into the empty tubes. While enthusiasm for hyperloop technology fueled a decade ago by design competitions sponsored by Elon Musk and SpaceX has cooled significantly, Tudor and his company are unabashedly forging ahead. He expects to begin testing at the Pueblo track in late 2025. The 43-acre hyperloop testing facility is part of another dream too: the conversion of the former Pueblo Depot into a sprawling complex of businesses and industry to provide jobs in Pueblo County. “Swisspod’s hyperloop test track falls right into our research and development plans,” said Chris Bolt, vice president and chief operating officer for PuebloPlex, the redevelopment authority for the former Army post. Swisspod’s vision
Tudor was 25 years old when he began working on hyperloop technology in 2015. A student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), he co-founded the rLoop and EPFLoop teams that competed in the Space X Hy-
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