It's a scam. There's no such thing as United Legal Processing. The main thing to remember is that anytime someone calls you demanding money to prevent your arrest, it is ALWAYS a scam. No debt collector (let alone criminals posing as debt collectors) have the authority to have anyone arrested for anything. (And it's illegal to them to threaten such a thing.) And since these foreign dirtbags routinely impersonate law enforcement, it's also important to remember that American law enforcement officers aren't in the business of debt collection. (Debt is a civil, not a criminal, matter.) The bottom line is, these are criminals trying to steal your money; ignore their phony threats.
Here's some background on this scam that should be helpful in reporting it to federal and state law enforcement. The calls are from a sweatshop phone bank in India working on behalf of a group of American criminals. The American crooks illegally provide consumer contact information and Social Security numbers to the overseas crooks for the very purpose of extorting money from consumers with a myriad of false and illegal threats. They alternately pose as debt collectors, federal and state law enforcement officers, lawyers and bankers. They use any number of phony names such as US National Bank, Federal Investigation Bureau, US Legal Investigation Bureau, Hopkins Law Office, United Legal Processing, Morgan Associates, White Collar Crime Unit and many more. These crooks often use caller-id spoofing software and/or VoIP to disguise their real location and to make it appear that they are calling from American area codes.
There are some reports on 800Notes that have suggested that the crooks behind this offshore scam are also the crooks behind the notorious Bass/Ellis Crosby & Assoc./States Predisposition scams in Florida and Georgia. The interesting thing is that the number of complaints on here about the US National Bank/US Legal Investigation/Federal Investigation scam skyrocketed *after* April 7, 2008 when Florida obtained a $1.3 million judgment against Ted Ellis Crosby, shutdown his operations and barred him from ever conducting debt collections in Florida (Read
http://myfloridalegal.com/newsrel.nsf/newsrel ... 5257424005858A6 ) There's certainly a good chance that the crooks placing these calls from India are doing so on behalf of the American crooks behind the Crosby/Bass/States Predisposition scams.
Here's the contact information for the phone bank in India:
IntellisOurzE BPO
701, Sapphier, Nr. Cargo Motors,
C.G. Road Navrangpura,
Ahmedabad - 9. (Guj.) INDIA.
E-Mail: info@intellisourze.com
Website:
www.intellisourze.comA check on the domain name "intellisourze.com" shows that the website and name registration was created on May 8, just one moth *after* the Crosby scams were shut down in Florida:
Domain Name: INTELLISOURZE.COM
Registrant: Pragra Infratech Pvt. Limited.
Email: ankur.ranpariya@pragra.com
908, Aksaht Tower, Nr. ICICI Bank
Opp. Rajpath Club, S.G. Highway
Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India 380054
Tel. +91.7926871353
Creation Date: 08-May-2008
Expiration Date: 08-May-2009
Domain servers in listed order: ns5.znetindia.com ns4.znetindia.com
(Source:
http://whois.domaintools.com/intellisourze.com )
Though scam calls from these crooks have been going on long before May 8, the frequency of complaints about these calls increased considerably after Crosby was shut down in early April.
This is conjecture, but appearances suggest that Crosby and company were originally running a two-pronged payday loan scam operation -- with some calls being made from Jacksonville, Florida and other calls being made from a phone bank in India (and possibly other countries); then, after the Florida Attorney General shut down the Crosby scams in Florida, the Crosby transferred most of their scam efforts through the India phone bank.
If you are targeted by these criminals, be sure to report them to all the following federal and state law enforcement agencies (most of which you can do online or over the phone):
1) The U.S. Secret Service is responsible for protecting the country's financial infrastructure and payment systems from international and domestic threats. Call or write your local Secret Service field office to alert them to the details of this attempted extortion. The addresses and phone numbers for the local Secret Service field offices are listed at
http://www.secretservice.gov/field_offices.shtml or in your phone book.
2) Alert the FBI at
https://tips.fbi.gov Be sure to tell the FBI that you are being targeted by extortionists over the phone who are posing as federal law enforcement. Be sure to give as many details as you can.
3) File a complaint with your local police. Most police departments will take a report over the phone. Be sure to tell them that you're being targeted by an extortionist and give them all the details.
4) File a complaint your state's attorney general, the contact information for whom is at
www.naag.org5) File a complaint online with The Federal Trade Commission at
https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01If these crooks call back, promise them nothing, pay them nothing and tell them nothing other than that you know they're a scam and that you've reported them to law enforcement. (And be sure to report them to all the agencies above each time they call you.)
By the way, here's just a small sample of numbers used by this particular group of scammers. Read the reports and you'll see the same pattern time and again -- phony organization names, thick foreign accents, and oddly worded threats that are so melodramatic and ridiculous that it's laughable:
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-925-262-1327http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-678-954-6346http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-341-4004http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-856-831-0640http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-949-743-1140http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-410-505-8128http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-917-464-2534http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-210-858-6602http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-775-2121http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-949-743-1156http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-214-245-1402http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-214-245-0922http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-214-723-5572Hope this helps.