Top Health Robocalls

Ridiculous. You signed up just to tell us that? How long have you been in the employ of Top Health?

I agree with FAKE POSTS! and the reason is I highly doubt  these are  all real call recipients,  who all just happened to show up in a matter of minutes of each other to post about this one scammer outfit.
15 people within an hour of the thread being created??
Here is the Timeline for just the first page:

Quote:

2019-09-11T15:26:19Z - bigtex (First post)
2019-09-11T15:38:49Z - WTS
2019-09-11T15:41:01Z - Leslie
2019-09-11T16:08:42Z - Andy
2019-09-11T16:09:59Z - Liz
2019-09-11T16:13:37Z - Diane
2019-09-11T16:16:08Z - Ann
2019-09-11T16:19:12Z - Don
2019-09-11T16:20:10Z - Kris
2019-09-11T16:20:20Z - Lucy
2019-09-11T16:24:59Z - TamD
2019-09-11T16:26:23Z - SelM
2019-09-11T16:28:55Z - SelM
2019-09-11T16:29:25Z - Terri
2019-09-11T16:35:48Z - Andrea Johnson

I don't doubt the "Top Health" is a scam outfit robo calling, I am doubting the validity of most of these posts as genuine individual people reporting about their call. One or more people purposely posted "extra" additional reports to over inflate the reports and/or frequency of the calls.
The spammed link to some "Law Suit" program to sue harassing callers was removed, but it seems clear enough it had a lot to do with the creation of this Topic.

to everyone who has posted about Top Health or any other company that keeps calling you. This is a scam and they want your information only to scam you and its not for health insurance. if you push #9 or #2 you are just getting yourselves to receive more calls because now they know its a legit number.  they are not telemarketers, they are scammers, they do not care about the do-not-call list because they are thieves using an internet base phone dialer that just randomly calls phone numbers to find legit people to scam. they "spoof" their real number. this means that you cannot track them even you tried. they are thieves so they don't care. One person said she called FCC and they told her not to "answer the calls" and she was mad. FCC is right, do not answer the calls, do not call them back.  Its sad to say but its true, its frustrating I know because I get spoofed calls as well but from local numbers. I even got a call from myself because they used my "own" number to hide their true phone number. I have had a lady call me (local number) to tell me to stop calling her. when I told her that I hadn't called her and that these thieves spoofed my number she was shocked and apologized for yelling at me.  Block them if you have a smart phone and its not a bad idea to report it to FCC. So far as I know there isn't anything on the market that can block these calls. Maybe in the future there will be. Good Luck everyone.

Dialing any number will not help you, cause that will make the problem worse.  And changing your phone number doesn't solve anything, cause they will start all over again!  "Oh, boy!  There's one born every minute!"

I highly doubt you're "Ms. Barnum" or you would know that quote was falsely attributed to PT. Not that you got the quote right anyway.

I'm getting verbatim messages except they are calling themselves "Whitestone Health" now

A Washington Post item from eleven days ago snowshoes a lot of ground regarding legislation, law enforcement, and victim impact surrounding the health insurance broker calls, and by extension illegal sales calls in general. There is good enough confirmation for me that a single entity is burning through mostly generic aliases like "Top", "Executive", and "Whitestone" and likely will keep chugging through the Medicare enrollment window.

Suspicious robocalls pitching health insurance surged in October. Now, the feds are scrambling to act.

As discussed in these parts before, why these spam blitzes are hard to punish is reinforced briefly:
    "[Federal agency] probes are hard enough to carry out in the first place, and chasing scammers over complex telephone networks — and across country borders — is never easy. Adding to the agencies’ headaches, federal officials sometimes are required to issue warnings to the initiators of the calls before they can even consider levying fines ..."

Yes, the smarter actions pierce meathooks into the lawbreakers' assets before they can vanish. Broadly, though, fraud runners have a habit of spending their dirty income almost the minute they get it, I guess not always on property ripe for seizure. No one ever mentions drug testing of fraud shop executives during investigations. Not that I'm drawing lines, it's just something I've noticed.

Later we hear from the government's unofficial phone spam analyst, YouMail:
    "In October, YouMail discovered that a single originator may have placed an estimated 288 million robocalls about health insurance. ... YouMail then shared the information with USTelecom, a trade group for the industry that tries to trace such campaigns to stop them. USTelecom since has provided information under subpoena to the FCC, an official at the organization said."

Aaron Foss has also chimed in, so at least separate data piles are helping to sketch the spam source:
    "USTelecom, the industry trade group, said it is aware of the person they think is placing the calls but declined to identify them or connect them with The Post, citing numerous concerns, including privacy. “With respect to this health-care scam, we have been responsive to government requests,” said Patrick Halley, the senior vice president of advocacy and regulatory affairs."

Well, that's just irksome. I can understand the desire to avoid fingering the wrong party, but I think the mystery spammer kingpin lost his right to privacy the first day he began to deny privacy to every American with a working phone. Throw a hint, UST, there are maybe a few hundred of us who will gladly seek our own payback.

Of course, referring to prior discussion on 800Notes, I'd suggest we do this responsibly:
    "In Franklin, Tenn., a local health staffing firm called Whitestone Healthcare now displays a warning prominently on its website that it isn’t Whitestone Health — the group that appears to be calling consumers incessantly. Mark Hampton, the director of business development, estimates that Whitestone Healthcare fielded 3,000 calls just over the past three weeks from people who mistakenly found his company through Google searches.

    Whitestone Healthcare said it reached out to the attorney general of Tennessee, whose office said it lacked jurisdiction, as well as the FCC and FTC. Neither federal agency responded, according to Hampton, who added, “We’d like to see them enforce the fact robocalling is illegal.”

There ya go, a victim of trademark smearing did all the right things in response and got one big shrug. On the other hand, you Junior Woodchuck detectives out there really need to "measure twice, cut once" before hassling the first name in your search hits.

Hi Res!

Excellent post!  Appears the "responsible" govt agencies are denying responsibility, and are depending on "somebody else" to solve the problem.

With an increasing number of scammers / spammers using spoofed numbers to display in the Caller ID, blocking methods are becoming less effective, and we are still awaiting a full / working / free method provided by the Telecoms.

The Federal News Network is optimistic that an anti-robocall bill will get to the President's desk this year ... but, as history has proven, legislation is not sufficient to stop criminal activities.

I guess the responsible parties are still engrossed in intensive acronym creation, such as SHAKEN/STIR, which seems to have been "successfully" welcomed in May, 2018, and TRACED (The Senate's version of a similar bill, introduced in January, 2019).

And, let us not forget  H.R.3375 - Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, which is now in the Senate.  Upon passing (if it does), it  "shall prescribe ... regulations" and "clarify descriptions".

Adding to the post by Slim

Quote:

With an increasing number of scammers / spammers using spoofed numbers to display in the Caller ID, blocking methods are becoming less effective, and we are still awaiting a full / working / free method provided by the Telecoms.

The biggest issue in the world of spoofing is the increased number of calls displaying the same area code and prefix as the number they are calling. While I have experienced this myself, it is nothing like the calls my mother has received. Sadly it goes to show just how desperate these telemaggoter operations have become. I am just glad that she ignores calls she is not familiar with.