Nephi woman arrested after posing as a federal official and threatening city workers, police say

SALT LAKE CITY — A woman in Nephi was arrested after police said she made threatening calls to city workers while impersonating a federal officer.

Nephi police were first called to the city building on Tuesday by city treasury workers who said they’d had several phone calls from someone claiming to be a federal agent from Nevada. The caller said they were investigating a case, and that the city workers owed her money, according to police documents.

City workers said the caller also claimed that everyone in the building was under arrest following a federal investigation.

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Police traced the call to Bobbie Joe Sorensen, 53, who they later found at a residence in Nephi.  She reportedly admitted that she called the city building.

Sorensen has previously been arrested for making bomb threats to the Central Valley Medical Center in Nephi in 2023 and for making similar threats in Nevada. Police said she had an active arrest warrant for calls she made in 2025 in Nephi and Spanish Fork.

Sorensen has not been charged yet, but KSL legal analyst Greg Skordas said it is likely she will face misdemeanor charges since the threats happened over the phone.

“It’s not like she produced a badge to somebody on the street and threatened to arrest them or something like that. It was a telephone call,” said Skordas. “So there was not an immediate threat, not an immediate fear for the people on either side that they were going to be arrested.”

Skordas said it’s important for people to remember it is easy to trace a phone call these days.

“We’d hope that people would learn that there’s no anonymity anymore on the phone,” he said. “You can’t just make phone calls and hope that you’re never going to be caught. Law enforcement can trace phone calls pretty easily these days.”