COUNTRY MUSIC SCAM RESULTS IN ONE ARREST.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

ACTON - Sheriff's deputies spent hours searching for country singer Reba McEntire's tour bus in what officials concluded was a scam instigated by a woman who had convinced an elderly man she got him a job with the star.

First the man, then the woman, called sheriff's deputies Saturday night to report that McEntire's bus was on its way to Lancaster but was having mechanical trouble somewhere north of Pasadena, then that it had broken down around Acton.

``I think it was basically to stall the inevitable discovery she didn't have the connection,'' sheriff's Lt. Patrick Nelson said Monday. ``It got deeper and deeper and deeper.''

Deputies said the woman befriended the 77-year-old Lancaster man and apparently misrepresented herself as an employee of McEntire. She convinced him that she got him work as a security employee for McEntire, deputies said.

The man quit his job as a community service assistant at the Lancaster sheriff's station and may have given the woman an undisclosed amount of money and property as a condition of the fictitious employment, officials said. His name was not released.

The 38-year-old Lancaster woman, identified as Michelle Egberts-Green, was booked on suspicion of drunk driving and elder abuse, records show. She was arrested Saturday night after driving to the Lancaster sheriff's station, where deputies concluded she was intoxicated.

Egberts-Greene was jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Detectives suspect other people may have been victimized by the woman and have not come forward out of fear or embarrassment. Deputies said anyone with information about the incident or similar incidents involving the suspect were asked to call Detective Brad Feehan at [phone].