Saturday I got a call, and the caller ID says PLAISTOW TOWN, and a local number. Plaistow is a nearby community, but nobody calls it Plaistow Town, so my spidey sense immediately goes off. But my curiosity overcame my wariness, and I answered the call. A guy answers, and identifies himself as “Tommy James” a local process server who has some legal papers to serve me. He is in my area serving other papers, and will be at my house in 30 minutes. He says, “Let me pull over here, I will tell you who is serving legal papers on you.” Now, it is obvious he is using some kind of voice modulator, because he sounds like a cartoon impersonation of Barry White. Uh huh.
Anyway, he continues, saying, “Do you know what this is regarding”," and he is required by law to give me a telephone number (an 877 number) to call to find out what this is about. He cannot give me any more information, besides the telephone number and the name of the party serving the papers, identified only as “AFI”. At this point I am pretty sure it is a scam, so I told him to serve the papers, I will be waiting. He repeats that I should call the number so that I will know what this is about before he arrives. Uh huh.
So he hangs up, and I immediately google the local number he called from. UH OH. It is the local number for the Plaistow District Court. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I am getting sued; mind starts racing, trying to figure out who “AFI” is. So I google the 877 number he gave me, and breathe a sigh of relief when I find the following on a telemarketer log site: “AFI Financial Process Server Scam - Dont fall for it - there is no court case”. Needless to say, I did not call the number.
Ten minutes later, I get a call from “Sloan M” and an 864 area code number (Anderson, SC). Knowing this is a scam, I answer, just to see if I can trip them up. This time, the voice is modulated way up, like Betty Rubble from the Flintstones, and “she” says she is calling from AFI, and that they were serving legal papers to me. She says the process server called her and said it sounded like I didn’t know what it was all about, and did I want her to explain it? So I said, “Oh, I know what it is about.” She pauses, and says, “You do? Do you want me to explain it further?” I reply, “No, I know exactly what this is all about. I am just going to wait for the papers to be served. OK?” She says, rather confused, “OK, thank you” and hangs up.
Needless to say, no one ever served me with any papers, and they haven’t called back. There were so many red flags, it is hard to believe that this kind of scam actually works. “Tommy James?” Where are the Shondells? And the generic “legal papers” was a pretty obvious tip-off. And the land line in his car. On the other hand, it was pretty sophisticated for the genre. They were able to spoof the caller ID to make it look like they were calling from the local District Court (but he implied he was in his car serving other legal papers, and the number in the caller ID was a land line exchange). They were using voice modulation technology to disguise their voice. They had an 877 number to receive the calls from marks, and they were (presumably) spoofing the number in SC. I will admit, when I googled the local number and saw the District Court pop up, they had me going for two seconds, so I guess I can imagine others falling for it.
Should I report this to the district attorney? If they are spoofing the number of the district court, they are probably pulling this on others in my area. Isn’t that criminal impersonation of an officer of the court?