951-468-5357

Several harassing calls; attempts to intimidate me.  Last message said I would be in trouble and end up "behind the bars;"    Indian or Pakistani accent but says his name is John Dickinson.

lady call me to harrasss me off somthing i had nothing to do with ..indian or Pakistani name  is nick fleck

Called me at work asked if I had a attorney some arab

They have been calling me and telling me I got a loan from cash advance America, and the are sueing me for false information.   And I will go to jail for six months and my pay checks will go to them.  I have never gotten a cash advance from them, I looke one time to see about it, but at 600 percent interest, there is no way I am that stupid.  I can't get rid of these guys. My guy was Damon Marshall.

These people said basically the same things to me, I better get a lawyer and I was going to jail for six months and my money would be going to them.

This has to be a scam,I have got mean with them two times,they treaten jailtime,lawsuit,want me to call there sargent,I have prepaid cellphone ,something needs to be done to this outfit to stop makeing false claims,and harressing calls

A Damon Marshall called me at work. Threatening me with jail saying I got a payday loan I never paid back. He is full of !@$%. How do you stop this?

These [***] keep calling me too & let me tell you I know that guys name was NOT John Smith!! We all agree we have the same issue but what can we DO about it??!!??

They called me too. Some arab claiming he worked for the US governement & gave me an address in Los Angeles with an Ontario zip code.

I got a call from this number yesterday and they said ...they had a lawsuit against me...I called this number at 6x for a Mr Marshall and they called 3x to tell me to call in him 2  or 4  as he is in the car and a very busy man. I finally got a hold of Mr Marshall and I told him if he had this lawsuit ....I wanted to mail all paer by mail so I can go over the papers. He said "do not ever call this number again" and hung up. Well about 5 minutes ago this number called me and stop the call within a  second.

I received phone call today stating I have outstanding legal convictions.
Provided name of Damon Marshall to contact regarding my case. I don't even have a speeding ticket... Very rude and demanding attitude. No return call from me.

I received A phone call yesterday from the "Senior Supervisor" of Jessica Smith Law Office. Stating that I have 3 criminal counts against me (my SS #). They were Indian or Arab whatever.  I was questioning him and he put like 3 different people on the phone all saying the thing.  I knew this was a scam.  He told me to call Police Officer Damon Marshall and he would read me everything about my case.  And he gave me a fake case #, (CSI924) ha a lil ironic, csi!!  So I googled Jessica Smiths Law Office and called her it was a different #.  They said they have a police investingation right now trying to find these people.  That office gets at least 1 call a day about this.. It is a scam and dont fall for anything they say.  Report it!!!

Hahaha this guy Damon Marshall is a funny dude. My wife was in panic and I called and listened on speaker. Once I informed him that I was an attorney he told me "you can both suck my ****" and hung up.....

LOL report it maybe they will get nailed.

I told the first hindi caller that he was being scammed...and he wasnt gonna get paid. He was totally ignorant to the whole thing. Let the first caller know they are being scammed too.

Got 4 calls in 5 minutes told them I looked them up and they have a "hot sheet of reports from other people you have harassed" 5th time after I hung up they left me a message saying I was going to jail and that my attorney better contact them in 20 minutes or the local authorities will be at your door. Well, MY attorney did call them and no one answered the phone obviously they have caller ID. THEN the jackdonkey called MY CELL PHONE, whereby I scrolled the list of messages and said I was in conference.They haven't called back yet but its only been about 30 minutes since I left the "in conference" message that is preprogrammed into my phone. My local police said contact the credit bureau one of the 3 they will then inform the other 2 and file a report with the FBI in your area, they send it to the FBI in the ara code you're being called from. I did both these, and then went fare enough to call the 951 area code FBI myself to make sure they KNOW
and are notified. Had similar call last week, we did the same for them.

Someone with a foreign accent called me several times today from this number. The caller threatened legal action if my attorney did not call them right away and advised me not to ignore the call and that if I did something bad would happen to me. I am sure this is a scam. I did try and return the call...it rang 5x and then I got a beep as if to leave a message however there was no voicemail message.
I looked it up on line and it appears to be a scam.

I just recieved the same call today except my guy was Bob Miller! I live in GA who should I call they keep harrassing all of our numbers.But the number was 9514685357

Got the same call just a few minutes ago...I had a lady that could not speak a bit of english... I told her she was calling a govt agency and this call was recorded...she hung up..and called my cell...

I got the same call as Ash who posted from the 14th about the Jessica Smith Law Office. They usually call my cell phone 15 time in 1 day. Good thing I never answer numbers I do not know that call my cell. But today they called my work number, luckily I answered the phone at work and was able to screen to see who was calling me. I googled this number and found yall being harassed by the same person.

He was very rude and unprofessional and harassing

Phantom Debt Collectors From India Harass Americans, Demand Money

By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , CINDY GALLI and MATTHEW MOSK (@mattmosk)
June 7, 2012

Hundreds of thousands of cash-strapped Americans have been targeted by abusive debt collectors operating out of overseas call centers suspected of links to organized crime in India, law enforcement officials told ABC News.

The calls are part of a massive scam, one that appears to target struggling Americans -- especially those who have gone online to apply for payday loans. Armed with personal information from those pilfered applications, the threatening callers, who claim to be debt collectors poised to initiate legal action, have managed to pry loose millions of dollars from their victims -- even when the victims never owed money in the first place.

"This is what we call a phantom debt collection scam," said Jon Leibowitz, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. "It's a very pernicious and innovative new fraud."

Working through call centers in India, the commission estimates that the criminals have dialed at least 2.5 million calls, persuading already cash-strapped victims to send them more than $5 million. Some have reported receiving dozens of calls per hour. They are victims like Cindy Gervais, of New Orleans, who went online for a quick loan when her husband's car was hit by a driver who didn't have insurance.

Even though she paid the loan off, the so-called "phantom" debt collectors with Indian accents began calling to say she still owed money.

He more or less told me that if I didn't pay, they were going to have someone on my doorstep to arrest me," she told ABC News. "And that they were going to contact my place of business, and tell them what kind of person I am."

At first, she said she resisted. Then the calls became more frequent, and started to ring on her cell phone, and at the grocery distribution company where she had worked for 27 years.

"I was more or less was in panic mode because he told me there would be someone before noon at my place of business to arrest me and take me to jail," she said tearfully. "So I agreed to pay him."

After receiving scores of complaints, investigators with the FTC said they began tracking the calls, and following the payments. They alleged the payments led them to a California company run by an Indian-American named Kirit Patel, and that such scams would not be possible without American front men.

"I would say that all roads of this scam, or many of the roads of this scam, lead back to Mr. Patel," said the FTC's Leibowitz.

ABC News tracked Patel for weeks, from the suburbs of San Francisco to Austin, Texas.

Patel refused to talk. But his lawyer, Mark Ellis, said he believes it is far too early to pass judgment on his client. Ellis, a Sacramento-based attorney, told ABC News that Patel was hired for a nominal fee to set up an American shell company, and had no idea what the call centers in India were doing.

"I can tell you, he was as snookered by the people in India as anybody," Ellis said. "He's a 69-year-old man who is nearing his retirement who thought all he had to do was set up some corporations and everything was on the up and up. He's completely dismayed that he has become the lightning rod of this entire problem."

A close friend of Patel's also defended him in a brief interview at his home, saying Patel was not trying to defraud anyone -- he was just an unwitting, bit player in a larger scheme.

"If Mr. Patel was just a cog in the wheel he seems to have been a pretty big cog," Leibowitz said. "It is clear that Patel was integrally involved with this scam."

Leibowitz points to thousands of pages of financial and phone records gathered by the FTC and filed as part of a civil case brought against him in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento last month. When FTC lawyers sought to freeze his assets and prevent his business from continuing to operate, Patel responded by invoking his rights against self-incrimination. His lawyer told ABC News he has had to be careful in how he responds to the allegations in civil court "because there is a potential criminal action," but that Patel maintains the allegations against him are false.

Federal investigators said the phantom debt collection operation that allegedly benefitted from Patel's assistance was one of several that all trace back to the same small town in Western India called Ahmedabad. Callers use technology to make it appear that the calls originate inside the U.S. Victims provided ABC News with recordings of dozens of the calls, and many of the thickly accented callers appear to be reading off a script.

"Subpoenas have been readied, and Monday morning you're going to be picked up from your home," one caller says on a victim's voicemail. "And you have children. Don't worry about your children. We have a childcare department to take care of the children."

"You will be behind bars for six months," said another caller. "And once you go behind bars, you will lose your job. Once you are behind the bars, you won't get a single drop of water."

William Peerce Howard, a Tampa attorney who represents victims of harassment from debt collectors, said it takes an especially twisted criminal to use threats and coercion to pry money from someone who is already struggling financially

"These guys really are the most visible villains in America today," he said. "They make a living scaring people."

Mark Merola, of Florida, said he just panicked when the caller told him he might be arrested at the deli where he works in a Florida retirement community.

"I was nervous. I didn't want to embarrass myself, my family," he said. He used his debit card to pay the collector $576.

Afterwards, he says he realized "how stupid I was."

"It just happened so fast," he said. "I got scared."

Leibowitz said he hopes with more attention, future potential targets of the scam will recognize red flags before they turn over any money.

If callers say they are from the police, consumers should know that law enforcement officers do not collect debt for private parties. If the caller is speaking with a thick Indian accent, but calls themselves by a names such as Officer Mike Johnson, that should be a tip off. And if they're calling 40 times in two hours, that's another red flag. "Legitimate debt collectors, legitimate pay day lenders don't do those sorts of things," he said.

Merola said he would like to see anyone involved in the scam prosecuted aggressively.

"There's no place in society for these people," he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/phantom-debt-co ... 16512428&page=2

My husband and I applied for a payday loan before vacation about two weeks ago. We didnt accept any of the loans due to the interest rates. I have been getting calls non stop every since. The most disturbing of them all was the one I JUST received AT WORK : \ They said that I need to get a lawyer because that have 3 charges against me. I have no idea what these guys are talking about and everytime I ask for "Mark Davis" (the guy who left the message on my office home) they never allow me to speak with him. I don't have a lawyer at the moment but I will be getting one soon. I will be filling my own law suit for harrassment because this is ridiculous! There is no way these people should get away with this. On the other hand I am extremely relieved to know that I am not the only one they have contacted and that this is merely a scam.