This would work if the calls were from Pakistan which is predominantly Muslim. India, of course is largely Hindu (and Sikh).... so if they give you that line about "Only God can help you now" ask them "which one? Shiva? Vishnu? Ganesh?"
Voice mail from 914-612-7261, which shows as a New York number. Caller said he was Rick Foster and that myself or my attorney should call the minute I got the message. If I didnt call back, he wished me good luck with what was about to happen to me. Called the number back, got a John Anderson, same voice, same accent. Said that there were 3 charges that were going to be filed against me if I didnt pay $500. Said that if I didnt pay, the sheriff would show up at my place of employment and serve me papers. Knew my email address and place of employment. Told me to get Walmart prepaid money card and fax info to 206-339-6737, which is a Seattle Washington number. Gave me his direct number of 626-239-3144, which is Monrovia California.
i got a call yesterday from a company claiming to be called providence, i got a message left by a woman named patricia jackson telling me to call back 888-736-0879- she was from the summons and complaints department and i was being investegated for intention to commit fraud as well as check fraud. at the end of her message she said if i did not call back they would call my employers, neighbors,etc- and told me "good luck in court"
i called back and the SAME woman answered and said her name was tanya simon- i got the whole b.s. saying i was owing a debt from loan point they needed a credit card or checking acct today or i would be charged with a felony- for a minute i almost fell for it because they are so awful- i got transferred to the supervisor who sounded like a felon himself and he was calling me a liar and saying they were going to haul me away. i called loan point and they said there is a scam going on, and the collector that has my loan is a different company- loan point got in some trouble a few years ago and i am in ca and they are not even supposed to loan here.
i called the other company but no answer, as far as i am concerned i paid that loan off- i got into the cycle in 2007 and had to close my bank acct- any payday lenders i owed i just sent money orders, including loan point and i have the receipts to prove it. anyway these people scared me to death and the manager said he was looking at his "FDIC" website and indeed he could tell i had a checking acct somewhere in the US. thank god my senses were with me because i still wouldn't give him my new acct info. the way they find new info is when you apply for a payday loan with your new acct. don't do it! i called my bank and they said there is no FDIC website like that and that people cannot access your account unless you authorize it and give them the info. i did a little research online and it sounds like this company used to go by allstate mediation or something. they are awful, do not give any info, loan point themselves told me it was a scam. still scary though!
and PS- i forgot to say in my last message- these people all had AMERICAN accents, so it is not just India- there are American people that are in on the scam so even if they don't have an Indian accent please do not give your info!:)
While it is still a minority, India has the world's 3rd largest Muslim population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_IndiaThe mention of Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh don't make sense in this context.
Mike Jones who? mike jones still tippin
I got calls from these guys saying I never paid back my payday loan. They had very thick accents and I am SO bad at understanding accents! It just happened to be during a time I was dealing with identity theft by my ex so I was ready for a fight. I had been working with the District Attorney and his detective closely so I used them as threats to these guys.
I told them I was working with the District Attorney's Office (true, I was a victim helping nail the scum ex)
and that if they called again I would make sure my phone was set up to record and of course I would let them know first it WAS being recorded. I told the guy to call the DA's office and gave them the number of my Detective ( I was shooting him an email as we spoke to let him know what I was up to).
Sure as hell the idiot calls back the next day. I say "please hold the line, I need to connect an assistance device on my phone". He actually waits. So I then say "now I told you yesterday if you called me again with this con I was going to let the District Attorney listen to this call and to make sure I am doing this legally I have to inform you I am recording this call for prosecution purposes". The guy is like "what did you say"? I said "oh I am sorry you did not understand my English, but why don't you go ahead and tell me what you are calling about...again be aware you are being recorded" He gets all flustered and said " wrong number". Never heard from them again! Let me get out a LOT of frustration and focus better on sending that con artist of an ex to prison for 2 years!
I got a call today told to call (623)3212864 to settle a debt from 5 years ago. Can't believe they would do this around the holidays!
Hey Dan,
The same exact thing happened to me, number and all. It was at 6:30am cst,and i was getting ready for work, my daughter was still asleep. The exact numbers and the person name John Anderson, he got his name mixed up and said he was John Smith on the voice mail he left me. I was petrified to have the sheriff come to me job and go to jail. I tracked down the cash place and the representative told me that i had taken a loan out in 2005 for $350, but it has been paid in full and i don't owe anything, and that it is a scam. I pray these thieves get caught.
The number that called me was 619-500-4379
They just called me twice and two different people identifed themselves as Mike Watson. They told me that I borrowed 781 dollars from a place called Payday America, and that now I was on the hook for paying 8500 dollars. They told me that tomorrow, the supeona was going to be sent to the courthouse for my arrest. I asked them for a copy of all the documents that they had against me and they said that if they sent that to me they would lose thier job, but if i were to pay 100 dollars today, that I would be able to get all the documents sent to me. I listened to them politely and told them that in order for me to take any of this seriously, I would need to see everything that they had in writing. Thats when he said that he was going to end the call because he had more people to call that would work with him, and I was wasting his time. Oh, also, I hung up on them at one point and they immediately called back and asked why I hung up on them. I noticed that a different person than who I was speaking to the first time was on the phone, but oddly he had the same first and last name, Mike Watson. As soon as he brought up what he called an "OCS" or and Out of Court Settlement, the amount I was in for, 8500, magically turned into the original amout that I supposedly borrowed, 781 dollars. Now he wanted me to set up a payment program to pay them at 100 dollars a day for 8 days, and told me that he had a recording of me saying that I aggreed to pay him that. Once I called out all his lies, he gave up and told me he was going to end the call.
Thanks for making my day!! These truly made me laugh!
Resident,
Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for a good post. I would also like to add that technology may offer some relief for those targeted by these creeps. As I have said before, Google Voice is free, and can be a good shield against harassing callers. Other options are call blocking telephones and VOIP providers who have effective call filtering as part of their offering. Finally, for the tech heads out there, PIAF/Asterisk can be fun.
Personally, if I ever get one of these calls I am going to offer to pay them by assigning my Global International Lottery Winnings to them. All they will have to do is send me a small filing fee out of the check I will send them, and all 47 million Euros will be theirs. Seems fair, don't you think?
Right, I must have won close to a billion from potentates of troubled nations who have somehow found little ol' me to be a more worthy cash mule than several million of my neighbors. The thugs can have all they can eat ....
Almost every junky caller category has a share of people who stand behind call blocking and filtering. I've often said that a phone is yours to answer or ignore, but I also feel that even a complex method of ignoring calls is not really a strategy and not killing the weed at its root. Blocking I think is a refuge of last resort when direct countermeasures fail or cannot be used, (often the sad case with these overseas PDL thugs) given that most call blocking systems are a purely reactive response and quickly outgunned by the volumes of ever-changing numbers available to the unwanted callers.
I say all this both as a great supporter of PhoneTray, and as a longtime silent fan of your work on this site. I don't reject the concept of blocks and filters, but caution against reflexive use of those tools. G-Voice has been praised by many, and I can see how its design could make a fine defensive tool. It's the parent company I distrust, the "Don't Be Evil" people who have proven repeatedly that they value revenue from all possible directions over the privacy of individuals who feed them data traffic.
The thing we can never forget is that security is not a technological problem, but a social one. We don't as a people give away copies of our house keys to everyone we meet, yet we routinely hand over other hard-to-replace entrance keys to our private affairs, such as phone and account numbers, to people we barely know or will never meet. In most cases they do not strictly need all our keys at once to do business with us. For some it's an invitation to break-and-enter, as with the payday loan industry. Until that lack of caution is addressed, the abuses will only flourish.
A huge part of the problem, which is rarely discussed, is that the NANPA plan gives us too few numeric combinations to effectively alias our phone numbers the way we can our email addresses. I have found in the email universe that making every shared alias address both disposable AND unique to each entity renders the user almost as invisible to frauds and come-ons as the "real" address being aliased. An invisible target is one which attracts few if any bullets. A viable "Sneakemail for phones" would do wonders to help defeat the unchecked trafficking of valuable contact data we are now forced to endure.
Here is another number to add to the list. 718-732-0135 called me yesterday and this morning using the same script about a being sued. Wow if anything they are persistant to try to get money.
This is a serious issue that nobody is really acting on. Does any of the muling or laundering things he was asking you to do concern the FBI. Oh maybe the guy is a terrorist.. just the voice of reason putting that out there.
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