I almost had a heart attack today ! I was called by our local "police department" (the number even matched) telling me I had an outstanding warrant out for my arrest and that I needed to turn myself in by 11 am tomorrow morning or I could settle with this company called US Legal Support. They gave me a case number and phone number to call stating I was being sued due to past credit card debts. I thought it may be true because my ex husband had taken out numerous credit cards in my name when I filed divorce due to domestic violence back in 2014. He maxed them out.. and I been dealing with credit card companies coming after me ever since.. so why not something like this ? I mean afterall bad luck loves me I got majorly freaked out.. I called the number give to me and gave them the case number. They stated I owed over $2,988.64 in debts and I could pay some off today and they would give me proof to the police so that the warrant would disappear and I wouldn't have to go to jail. Sounded okay right? Well.... I majorly have to admit I almost fell for it and freaked the F*ck out. my heart started racing and I had a nervous break down. I called my parents and freaked. My mom had me come over At their house I spoke to my dad who asked me questions about it. Like who was the police officer who called me ? Right there was flag one.. I did not recall a name Second... why would I have to "turn myself in ?" for a warrant? wouldn't they show up at my door? and why on a weekend? Sooooo.. we called the local non-emergancy number of our police station.. and spoke to a friendly lady there. I asked if indeed there was a warrant out for ... Thank god there is not. And I learned I can even search this anytime I want online .. Also.. that this is a KNOWN scam going around targeting people and she told me next time they call to scream to whistle loudly into the phone. That police officers NEVER call you to tell you about warrants and that this scam is going around badly locally and nationwide SO PLEASE PLEASE be careful everyone this is not the only scam going around right now.. there are a few others as welll these scammers ARE good and they will try to get you If it doesn't seem right.. your something in your gut tells you its wrong.. it probably is
OMG! The things people come up with! Heard on TV yesterday that there's a new type of scam going on in Sweden now. They call (or send letters to) people who already been scanned, claiming to be from a government office, offering them help to get the money back from the previous scam. Not sure how they get any money out of it, but I assume they need bank access to help them or something. Apparently, they keep some sort of register over the people they've mamaged to scam earlier.
Our local phone/cable/internet company put out an alert on their FB page that a scam is going around using their actual phone number asking you to update your ACH or credit card payment information. It also said to let them know if you get this call so they can keep alerting the FCC about it. I'm sure many people would fall for that since we are a small community and the provider has been here since 1895 starting out as a phone company. They stated they leave an automated message to contact them then when you do, they do a safety verification before asking for any information. I have my phone on DND and the only phone calls I get are those on my contact list. When I see I have had another call I google the number which 90% of the time I get conflicting information on the name associated with the number. Just yesterday, a number showed multiple people with that number, none of which I knew since it was in another state. And, I get the "we're going to disconnect your account" voice mail messages for Direct TV or AT&T all the time. I've never had either one... And just wait until you are getting close to Medicare age... that's when I had to turn DND on. I was getting 3 or 4 calls every day from companies trying to sell me a supplemental plan. The funniest one though was a local number that I didn't recognize. It came up as a local florist that I had not had any contact with (when I need a florist, I use a different one). Then I saw there was a voice mail from that number so I listened to it... it was from my tax preparer saying my taxes were done!
Caller ID is almost useless these days ... I'll get a call from Smith, John at the office, answer it and SURPRISE it's Google wanting to update our business listing. Or it's dead air for a few seconds, then there's a bleep and I quickly hang up before I'm connected to who know what. Recently I had a call from Cox ... guy asked if we'd experienced any loss of service (phone/internet), yes we have. He explains that they've been working on the cables which is causing the periods of loss service, so in order to make up for them they are going to up the speed of our internet service for free for three months ... NO, NO, NO ... our speed is fine (when it's working, and it usually is), plus I'm not interested in dealing with changing back in 3 months. Told him ABSOLUTELY NOT, then hung up on him. This was actually Cox b/c my father/boss has been getting service emails from Cox warning of outages caused by the construction up the street ... there's a huge multiplex community being built ... commercial and residential buildings.
There are so many scammers out there, and their techniques are getting more sophisticated (e.g., spoofing a phone number, so that it looks like the call really does come from the police department, the IRS, the bank, the credit card company...). And the scam call catches you unexpectedly, and is cleverly designed to elicit a sense of fear, so that you're not thinking straight, not asking the right questions. Thank you for the reminder to be careful, @dotcomkari! And well done you for reaching out to your parents: that was your gut instinct telling you that this was not right
A similar thing happened to my 17-year-old daughter last summer....and she fell for it. Someone had called her workplace and told her it was the Sherrif's office (the phone number on the screen seemed to confirm that) and that they had her boss detained because of tax fraud (or something like that) and that he needed her help. She believed them, they had specific details about his family. They convinced her to go to her bank, transfer almost ALL of her savings (she'd been saving her money for years and had THOUSANDS - saved for college) into checking, and then go and get prepaid money cards...and once she got the prepaid cards they convinced her to send the codes over the phone (this whole time they had her on the phone - over 4 hours!). After missing from work for a couple of hours, her boss called me and asked if there was an emergency since she had left abruptly (they told her not to tell anyone - YES, she was super gullible - but she literally thought her boss (which is also family friend) was in trouble)... Obviously, we start freaking out a bit, she's not the type to sneak off...we called everyone we thought she might have contacted. It was over an hour and a half after that phone call before she finally answered our phone calls...at that point, she knew something was wrong and was freaking out. Thankfully she made it back safely. She learned a very HARD lesson, but I guarantee she'll never get duped again. After this (after calling police and filing a report), we went straight to her bank and asked why they let a minor (I'm also on her bank account) come in two different times and transfer thousands of dollars each time out of her savings into her checking (all while on the phone with these people). They told me that 17-year-olds come in and do that all the time and withdraw cash to pay for college. WHAT!?! No way I believed that. Then, of course, we were upset with the different department stores that let her purchase thousands of dollars of money cards (there were several). That should have been a red flag. Either way, I realize it was my daughter's mistake but there were so many red flags for others along the way that could have put a stop to it. We really tried to think of the things to be thankful for over this. Our biggest takeaway was that it could have been worse...she could have been asked to meet the scammers and who knows what could have happened. So we kept thinking that maybe it was protecting her from something worse that could happen in the future. She'll definitely be smarter from now on. Also, since you all are just my scrapbook family I will tell you that her boss quietly replaced all the money she lost. We were humbled and beyond grateful. They are an amazing family. They also gave her a couple of weeks off and when she was ready to come back to work, he was sure to be there every time she worked to watch over her. This is the type of scam she fell for. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/pers...jP7v5_FN5if_Zl2gQbuwRwphDaq-MgJKULTvJ5zH-r_JU Also, my hubby just told me of a new type of scam. AI voices mimic loved ones' voices. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...c-voices-of-loved-ones-in-financial-distress/
God love your daughter's boss, that is above and beyond the call of duty, and just really decent of him. These scammers take advantage of human trust, of honest people who couldn't even imagine such a scam, precisely because they are good, honest people
