For the past three days I’ve gotten voice mails on my cell phone, obviously a recording, from a guy saying that he is “Location specialist Jackson” trying to contact me about a pending claim which will become a matter of public record, leaving a phone number to call, and saying that he will come to my home and job with papers for me to sign if he doesn’t hear from me. This is obviously some kind of scam, isn’t it? I have not called the number, and don’t intend to.
The only reason I paid it any attention at all is that it mentioned a “pending claim,” and I have recently filed a car insurance claim relating to a minor accident I had, so at first I thought the call might be about that. The other curious thing is that Location Specialist Jackson did use my name. Or tried to. It wasn’t actually my name, but my father’s name. My father, by the way, died in 1983.
This is someone trying to pull something, isn’t it, using my father’s name (which they seem to think is my name), and something nefarious will happen if I were to call the phone number they left?
I post this message largely as a warning to other folks who might be receiving such calls.
I would continue to ignore it. It doesn’t sound legit to me. If someone unknown shows up at your house or work with papers you need to sign I would be surprised. If there are papers, I’m sure it’s a form asking for all of your personal/banking information that can then be used to go after your bank account or house. You can try reporting it to someone, but I’m not sure anyone would take it seriously.
I did search the phone number just now (being an old person, I never think to do such things. ). No hits for that number specifically, but a lot of THIS IS A SCAM warnings for very similar numbers.
It’s definitely not related to my car insurance claim; their number is already in my contact list, plus I have an app which alerts me every time there’s some activity regarding the claim. I shall put this down to a scammer, and block the number. I will also be very surprised if anyone shows up. Not to mention, I am not my father, so if there are, by some miracle, any actual legal papers involved, I can genuinely claim that I am not the person they’re looking for.
They are just playing the odds because many people do have pending claims. If you call up enough people telling them the same thing eventually you’re going to run across someone who has a claim.
Interestingly, Location Specialist Jackson never mentioned a “lawsuit” or anything along those lines. Just “a claim that will become public record.” Also, if he had to come to my job to get me to sign, my manager or supervisor would also need to “witness the signature.” Nice way to amp up the veiled threat–your boss will find out that you’re in legal trouble!
I guess that’s the thinking behind the “location” part of it - to make it sound like they are working for a debt collection agency that specializes in finding where people live and work. What scumbags.
Off-hand, if it is a collections call they are limited in what they can say without confirming someone else does not have access to the messages on that phone number.
I always leave cryptic messages for people from whom I need an imminent response, and also mangle their name as a way of keeping people off balance. I find that this limits pointless small talk and unwanted familiarity, and also leaves people unsure about whether they have fully satisfied my request and are therefore prone to working harder to demonstrate that they are worthy of my attention.
As for the question of the o.p., I don’t know what a ‘location specialist’ is (it sounds like a euphemism for a corporal who can’t shoot or tie his boots but has an unnerving ability to know the exact distance to the mess tent and latrine from any point in camp) but in my experience process servers—who are generally the only people tracking you down at home or work to deliver legal papers—do not call you up and give notice of their intent to serve.
I suspect if you call back on the phone number you are soon going to find your name disseminated as a ‘lead’ for a variety of special investment opportunities by a succession of vice presidents of real estate development companies and head investment managers for an innovative bespoke portfolios for asset backed securities. See this documentary as an example.
Is MrAtoz’s insurance claim already a matter of public record somehow? Like when you get a new car loan or a mortgage and the mail/email spam starts flooding in.
I can see if this info is somehow public, or knowable outside of the parties involved, scammers getting the info and immediately trying to capitalize on the situation.
Yesterday and today - this is Feb 17th 2023 - I got a voice mail from “Location Specialist Jackson,” and I did a google search about that to see if it’s a scam, and this thread came up. Really grateful for it! I was pretty sure it was a scam, but this certainly helped to solidify. One tip off, was that the phone number showed up as 111111111111.
Anyway, thanks for being a help. I wanted to respond here because it’s obviously coming around again.
The problem with searching numbers these days is, scammers spoofing numbers has become incredibly common. I’m convinced that at some point, every phone number in use will be reported as a scam number, because the scammers will have run through them all.
I had a period of about a month last summer where I kept getting calls from real people asking me why I’d called them, because some scammer was using my number as their spoofing number. These calls came from all across Canada.
I haven’t heard from Location Specialist Jackson in awhile now, ever since the call where he threatened to (but did not) come to my home and workplace with papers for me to sign.
I’ve found that one sure way to get these spammers to hang up on me is to ask them what company/agency they work for. They’ve been carefully instructed not to give the name of an actual law enforcement agency, and if they say something like “I’m an insurance investigator” I simply ask them which insurance company. For some reason they don’t seem to be prepared for any pushback from the spamee.
It also means they have number that connects to an actual person, a number that can be listed and sold to other scammers…and no matter how good you think you are at putting them off, they know that they can still con enough people to make it worth their while.
). No hits for that number specifically, but a lot of THIS IS A SCAM warnings for very similar numbers.