The average American commits three felonies a day. That’s the estimate from Boston civil-liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate, who says the nation has so many vague laws, that honest people are constantly breaking them without even knowing it.
So when scammers posing as employees of the FBI, IRS or U.S. marshals call people on the phone and tell them they’ve broken some law, who knows, it may even be true.
However, regardless of whether the person receiving the phone call has actually broken a law, the real FBI, IRS and U.S. marshals don’t call people up and threaten to arrest them unless they immediately follow instructions to pay thousands of dollars with a prepaid debit card.
Law enforcement officials have described these calls as highly intimidating. The scammer typically begins by advising the targets that there are federal charges against them, and then threatening legal action and arrest. If questioned, the caller gets more aggressive, warning of frozen bank accounts and confiscated property.
I had a guy pretending to be an IRS collection agent call me. So I played along with it for a few minutes as he worked his way to me giving him my cc info. I got tired of it though and finally told him to fuck off, I wasn’t paying. He threatened a SWAT raid and I just had to laugh. He hung up.
When I had rentals and used Craigslist, I swear 2/3 of the respondents were scammers. Some of the scams were pretty creative.
Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a government that used its resources to go after these people, rather than, you know, taxpayers of a different political persuasion? I mean, this kind of thing has only be going on for a dozen years or so. Still, I assume that might interfere with the president telling Christians to “get off their high horse” and advising us of his March Madness picks, and we can’t have that.
My Christmas wish list for 2016 will with any luck be fulfilled on 17 Jan 2017.
Hi, I’m Rachel from Cardholder Services. I think just about everyone I know has gotten a call from Rachel.
Some observations regarding call scammers.
1.) No matter how tempting it is, NEVER answer your phone if you do not recognize the incoming number.
2.) No matter how tempting it is, NEVER try to reason, argue or ask to be removed from a list with a scammer. Just avoid talking to or acknowledging them altogether.
3.) No matter how tempting it is, NEVER pickup the receiver and hang up or if on a cell phone, swipe away or reject a suspected scam caller. Doing so only confirms that the number is active, you will receive calls at a greater frequency.
4.) No matter how tempting it is, NEVER call back a missed scam number to see who it is. In fact there is a scam going around where your phone rings only once with a local number. When you call it back you’re connected with an international gay sex line for $99.95 the first minute plus toll charges to Kenya.
5.) Avoid ever giving your number out for anything promotional. If you want to try and win the sweepstakes boat package, fill in your address and fudge your phone number. So what if your snail-mailbox gets spammed, usually they won’t because postage fees are prohibitive, robocalls are cheap. If you happen to win the boat package and it’s legit, they will get a hold of you at your home address.
6.) Regarding items 1-4 above, I do not have a landline. Yes it is inconvenient sometimes to just let my phone ring, people look at me like, answer it already! But once the ringing stops, I simply add the number to a contact named Telemarket Bullshit. I then reject all calls for this contact, this is different than hanging up on them. Instead the phone will not accept anything incoming from one of those numbers, it basically tells the robot that number is no longer active. Inactive numbers are typically purged, because while cheap to robocall, it still costs something and scammers aren’t keen on losing their own money.
I got a phone call from one of these a-holes saying I owed a fine for missing jury duty. When I called the local police to report it they didn’t care since I hadn’t been stupid enough to give them any money. Didn’t even want the phone number for the jerk. Sometimes I wonder if someone actually put a little effort into tracking these perps down if it would all just go away. They know that as long as they spread their victims out and keep them below a certain dollar amount no one is going to bother to come after them.
“4.) No matter how tempting it is, NEVER call back a missed scam number to see who it is. In fact there is a scam going around where your phone rings only once with a local number. When you call it back you’re connected with an international gay sex line for $99.95 the first minute plus toll charges to Kenya.”
DAMN!!! That’s all it costs for a direct line to Obama?
I usually ask if they would like to perform fellatio on me. But then they just get one of their buddies to call back for a “gag”.
I’ve been bothered by robo scammers before. I find a very effective deterrent is to keep the scammer on the line, go off to a quiet place (maybe outside), and SCREAM into the mouthpiece. Then hang up. Only needed to do it once, haven’t been bothered since. Short, simple, legal, cheap, and Ohhhhh so satisfying. hehehehehehehehe
I sometimes use the opposite approach –
“You’ll have to speak louder, I’m very old and my hearing is not very good.” followed by an endless series of “What?” “Beg pardon?” “Excuse me?” Repeat until they hang up.
Good times….
I got a call from these scammers a while back but being a contractor at the time I knew the IRS very well and there was one major glaring problem with the caller – he was calling on a Saturday. IRS employees never work on Saturdays.
These ARE really intimidating–and I’m reasonably savvy about what is BS. Last year or so I got a pop up on my computer that froze everything if I tried to navigate away from the screen. It said I had been caught viewing pornography and that if I wanted to avoid arrest I would need to send X amount of dollars to whatever destination.
I was sure it was a scam but they really do threaten like no one else and when I called the police I was told straight away it’s a scam and DO NOT pay the money. I couldn’t get anything moving on my computer (even after manual shutoff and restart) and had to get help getting past that thing–Apple knew exactly what to do so they’d gotten these calls before, I’m sure.
The advice above to not answer the call if you don’t recognize the number is SPOT ON and should be heeded, including the part about letting it ring, don’t lip to “reject.” They’ll just keep calling back.
Shoot, they hardly work monday thru friday either!
Badum Tiss!
Thank you, Thank you, I’m here all week.
Try nomorobo.com. It doesn’t work on all phones, but it is free and effective.