Threatening Phone Calls

Yea,pretty standard stuff.The "IRS" called me and said they were coming for me, some guy with with a Jamaican accent.I told him to bring it.

Right OnTojo72! ! 

   What I fear is those folks who are a little shy on the point of these and what they think the Govt. would do. They do not know how this stuff actually works.

I remember a story a few years back where a gentleman received one of those scamming phone calls telling him his information had been turned over to the local sheriff for his instant arrest if he didn't fork over the demanded sum.

He strung the caller along for a while, while that threat was repeated several times. Finally he asked the caller: "Do you know who the local sheriff is?"

Of course...it was him.

Tanker-Builder

My phone rang. It was a familiar number so I answered it!

 

Tanker-Builder

How many of you have experienced this?

   

Same thing happened to me.

I didn't bite either.

Ditto any wish to confirm Medicare claims.

Yep seems just about everything these days is nothing but a giant scam. I just let folks leave a message and do not answer my phone.

Keyserj

I noticed about a year ago that scammers will use a phone number that has my area code or it is the number of someone I know.

Apparently the technology exists for the scumbuckets to display a local area code, even if they're calling from the other side of the world. I've gotten to the point that I almost never actually answer my phone when it rings. If I recognize a voice or story on a message, then I'll call back.

Pretty sad state of affairs, really....

I have a recording of the play Hamlet performed in the Klingon language. Yes, I am not kidding. When I get a scammer call  I answer the phone and play Hamlet. Usually, the scammer tries to carry on a conversation with the recording.

I dropped my LAN line and only use my cell phone now. So, when I get a call that I don't recognize, I let it go to voice mail. If they don't leave a voice mail, the number gets blocked.

Used to get about six to ten a day at one point. Finally just started answering and speaking either Russian  or German. They always hang up pretty quick and pretty much stopped calling.

My scam calls have gone down by 98 percent. When they get my machine they hear,"Thank you for calling Cactus in the butt. All representatives are currently busy inserting cacti. If thi is a sales call, we have no money, you will have to accept a cactus in the butt. If this a call soliciting donations, we still have no money but we will give you a cactus in the butt." They hang up and never call back again. Problem calls solved.

When the Covid-19 pandemic first started the phone scammers went away. However, they seem to have returned starting last week.

I have gotten those phonecalls too.  A guy with a thick Indian accent called to tell me that I hadn't been "paying your taxes properly, and there is a warrant out for your arrest.  We have also placed a lien on your Social Security number".  So, as a guy who does contract work for several Federal law enforcement agencies, I told the last guy a half-truth.  I said to him "Well, it just so happens that I do contract work with the FBI, so I have them on speed dial.  Why don't you hold on the line and I'll get an agent on a conference call with us both so we can get this all straightened out.".  I heard a brief moment of silence on the other end, and then "click".  LOL.  For some strange reason, they have never tried to call me again.  Of course, I wouldn't have wasted that agent's time with that non-sense, but he did get a good laugh about it when I told him about it a couple of days later.

I get several of those calls every day, if I do not recognize the number or it is out of my area, I simply answer and immediately hang up.

I have a neighbor that received a call supposedly from Social Security telling then they had an old card and that SS was issuing new cards and offered to expedite their new card if they could have the existing Medicare number, guess what? the medicare number on you card is your SS number. My neighbor hang up.

Once I received a call from a woman saying, in very deep voice, that she was from Microsoft Tech Support and that my computer was infected with a bad virus and I needed to call a number to get it fixed immediately, I answer by telling her that she most be mistaken, because, I did not have a computer!

It was a lie but she did not know that and hang up.

Joe

I got one a few months ago stating that the Chinese ambassador wanted toknow where the information I was holding for him was.

I had forgotten that I had such high contacts.  Well, it's been a long time since he contacted me I forgot 

When Covid-19 started, the same scammers called multiple times a day every day.

I have noticed that scammers have started to go towards recordings rather than actually talking to people.

If you have a preschool age child in the house, give the phone to them...

As we are both retired we still do 'old school'. We have a landline, when the phone rings we leave it to take an answerphone message, if it's dodgy and there are a lot here, even more so now Covid-19 is here they don't leave a message and don't call back!

The worst type are car accident insurance/tax requests/ changing solicitors numbers when selling houses/ and dating agencies using fake ID's. 

Also these are the most common with what we call anti-social media, facebook/twitter/instagram etc.

We have a mobile phone each that they call 'dumb phones' these funnily enough are for us to make calls, we don't give out those phone numbers!

Bogus calls have been going on for decades. Around 1970. I worked nights in a factory part time. There was no office staff on so one of us would answer the phone if it rang. There were three llines with successive numbers. A call came in on the lowest number. A moment later on the nest number. Then on the third and I laid into him.

These days, if it's not contest season, and I don't know the number, I let it go to voicemail then block that number. To be honest, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people whoo get taken, elderly or not. Some would consider my 70 years as elderly and even I know enpough not to engage if I do answer. You're wasting yur time and energy letting them talk. 

The same with emails. Never click a link unless you are sure of the sender. Comcast on my phone shows the real address while Gmail filters  out spam. The email that I always laugh at is the bitcoin extortion that claims to have hacked my computer and camera to record me, ahem, having fun. It's quite a trick, since my desktop dopes not have a camera attached to it. 

Nor do you do what's claimed.

Yes, scammers call telling your they are from the I...R...S...Internal Revenue Service (with the obligatory Indian accent) and your social security number has been suspended.

Others scams are that the police are on their way to get you and you must send $500 in Apple gift cards to a "sheriff" in order to not get arrested.

During the War on Terror, "grandsons" were calling grandmothers that they needed money to get home. This one happened to my mother-in-law. She knew immediately it wasn't her grandson even though she had two grandsons overseas.

All umpteen of her grandkids call her "granny", not grandmother. My son was in the Army in Afghanistan and my nephew was in the Marines in Iraq. The caller said he was "the one who is a soldier in Iraq." He missed it by that much.

We get scam calls many times a day, unfortunatly with my wife's mother being in a nursing home, we havt to answer all calls, one never knows which nurse may be calling about something important. 

Tanker-Builder

…I seriously worry that some folks with Mild Dementia or emotional issues, would spill their info not realizing they had been both Phished and Scammed.

I have an app on my phone that blocks the robo/weird numbers so my ring count has gone from several a day to 0. They display as missed call or it goes to voicemail. A while back I had a voicemail saying the IRS will raid my house unless I submit payment in the form of gift cards lol.

Once in a great moon if I feel like messing around I’ll pick up and do my Mrs. Doubtfire routine repeating in a monotone voice ”I am job”. I say this several times and the scammer is basically speechless and hangs up. The other day a telemarketer called and I answered in broken English “hello” multiple times but slowly. The lady on the other side got pissed and hung up.

We get a call like those once every two years or so.   I guess we're lucky.

My business telephone number, which isn't used much by outsiders for anything other than sales calls now:

We have a SF Chinatown sub area code. On the edge although now mostly on the cloud. 35 years of great business lunches but that might be a story for another day, gave a few eulogies to passed friends at banquets.

We get calls all the time in Mandarin.

I recorded a few and sent them to a Mandarin speaker associate.

"This is the Chinese Goverment. You will be deported immediately unless you pay us a fee to take your case to court".

Imagine that??!!

Bill

Rob Gronovius

Yes, scammers call telling your they are from the I...R...S...Internal Revenue Service (with the obligatory Indian accent) and your social security number has been suspended.

Others scams are that the police are on their way to get you and you must send $500 in Apple gift cards to a "sheriff" in order to not get arrested.

During the War on Terror, "grandsons" were calling grandmothers that they needed money to get home. This one happened to my mother-in-law. She knew immediately it wasn't her grandson even though she had two grandsons overseas.

All umpteen of her grandkids call her "granny", not grandmother. My son was in the Army in Afghanistan and my nephew was in the Marines in Iraq. The caller said he was "the one who is a soldier in Iraq." He missed it by that much.

 

My mother got a simular call, but he was in jail and needed bail money sent.  However, this scammer was about 98% accurate in his bio info.  What clued her that it wasn't her Grandson was that the scammer called her nanna, not grandma.  Nanna was what he called his other grandmother.  How the scammer got so much information to host such a convincing scam?  Facebook and Twitter.