I’ve been getting calls from people claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency and that I’ve had a lawsuit filed against me because of tax evasion. Oddly, they don’t greet me in English and French, opting instead for English with a heavy Indian accent. I played along for fun, and got far enough along in the process to annoy the Indian gent, whose name is apparently Douglas, to suddenly decide no one was there and that he was just a recording.
Clearly a scam, but what’s the scam? All they did is tell me that I’ve had criminal charges filed against me (“thanks for letting me know. If you need me I’ll be at the airport. If I’m not there, wait for me.”) and that I should get a good lawyer. I couldn’t figure out what the scam was, though. At no point was I asked for information or money. I guess Douglas turned into a recording before he could get to the good stuff.
My sister, who’s just over 40, fell for the “I’m calling from Windows” scam, and let them have access to her computer. They encrypted her files and held them for ransom, demanding a few hundred bucks to unlock them. I couldn’t believe she fell for it.
You should have strung him along to a point of being ready to give a credit card, but then told him that under Canadian law it’s illegal for you pay unless he repeats his demand in both English and French.
My husband’s former boss got the IRS scam call a couple of weeks ago. He played along with the caller a bit, until he couldn’t contain his combination of laughter and outrage any longer. Apparently, the IRS was going to send someone to arrest him if he didn’t pay up, immediately.
Jimmy: “So you have a warrant sworn out for me?”
Scammer: “Ummm, yes! You pay now, or you’ll be in jail.”
Jimmy: “OK, when the warrant division gets the paperwork, they know where to find me.”
Scammer: “See? They know you. You don’t want more trouble, do you?”
I’m pretty sure I heard about this scam on CBC. I believe that if you had indicated the appropriate degree of gullibility, “Douglas” would have kindly offered to lift the criminal charges provided that you paid your “tax debt” immediately, and such would be the urgency that I imagine that Western Union would be the only way that “Douglas” could see his way clear to accepting.
ITunes gift cards seem to be the current method for paying debts to the CRA, based on the news articles I’ve seen. Maybe I should go buy a bunch just so I am ready if they find something wrong with my taxes.
I kept getting calls from Jamaica that ran for YEARS, they kept claiming I had won a lottery and all I had to do was to send them $250 to process it. I told them right up front that they were scammers, and I didn’t believe a thing they said, but they persisted. They eventually got really abusive, and when my elderly mother answered the phone, they were profanely abusive to her, threatening to rape her. I tried calling the police, the FTC, the FCC and the California Attorney General’s office, but they all told me they couldn’t do anything about it. They always asked for “Meester Reeshard”.
About 3 years ago they were calling my mother and talking for an hour a day, and then calling morning noon and night, and then calling her up to 50, yes, 50 times a day. They did something to her phone where we couldn’t call out. The police showed up and talked to them, and my cousin with his cell phone to the telephone company, and me on another cell phone to the bank to cancel her account. The scammer freely admitted to me he was a scammer calling from Jamaica, and they convinced my mother to go to a drugstore and buy $400 of Visa gift cards and give them to someone who would meet her there. She did this. And I found a check in her purse she wrote out for $1000 for cash she was going to give to someone the next day…All this started from The Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, may Ed McMahon roast in hell. You get on a sucker list and it expands from there. It was a nightmare.
When one of these low-lifes (does anyone honest end up doing this work as a last resort when they can’t even do customer support?), let then finish with their pitch, and say enthusiastically, "Hey! That sounds great! I’ve been looking for something like that! Let me get paper and a pencil!
Then put the phone down and walk away (however this would work with a cell you have implanted in your hand).
Do this as a public service - the longer the creep stays on the phone, the fewer people who get called by him.
My dear, old, 1980 forever, landline and answering machine (are those still made?) are quite effective at screening out scammers.
I’ve found a new wrinkle - when the phone connects, a voice (young and female) call out my first name as if it is a personal call.
Everyone by now knows that you identify yourself first - if I am screening, I will not pick up until I know who is calling (no Caller ID here).
(and I don’t go by given name - people who know me use a nickname)
definitely, do this for all cold-callers, not just obvious scammers.
If you have the time and inclination for it and can tie up their day as much as possible then you’ll be doing everyone else a favour.
If the person on the other end of the phone gets fired because of it then so much the better. They aren’t a bad person but they are doing a shitty job that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
Even more fun with the old answering machines. I used to play the first few seconds of this first on my greeting. Messed up robocallers and others I didn’t want to talk to. Friends and family knew after the first few times to wait it out. Also they knew they’d have to leave a message by that point. Now with my calls going to VM with the “your call is being transferred …” happening first, I can’t do that. Thus the damn autocalls fill up my mail box and I can’t skip them.
I once got an email that really was from my bank, with instructions to call the number on the back of the credit card. They were worried, with some reason, about a couple of charges from Hawai’i when I didn’t have either hotel or transportation charged (it was my son’s treat and he had covered it all). That is the only time I have responded to an email from a bank.
BTW, I am 79 and I think I am immune to all these scams.
The only thing I’ve got is one time I received a text on my phone that was an authorization code for some online game. A few minutes later I got a call from a blocked number with a kid asking me for the code because she had accidentally put in the wrong phone number when ordering time or whatever it was for the game.
Yeah. Not gonna let you bill your online playtime to my cell phone.
And one call from Rachel with card services that didn’t last long because she didn’t want to play ‘What are you wearing?’
My husband and I are both retired. Lately we’ve been getting calls from people who claim to be from Dell. They have a check for us… a couple hundred dollars, but first they will need to take control of our computer. My husband has some fun by playing dumb about how to even turn on the computer. The last time they called though, we both happened to pick up on different phones. I quickly repeated everything my husband said. “Hello, this is Dell” Hello" Hello" “We have good news for you” “Really?” “Really?” This crazy conversation went on and on. Finally the guy got frustrated and hung up on us. So we had a few laughs… but honesty I hate these scammers. I wish there was a quick, effective way to get rid of them.
Consider configuring your parents’ phone to use the Nomorerobo. It’s a service which automatically hangs up on spam callers. Your parents will hear one ring and that’s all.
It only works on some phone services. It needs the simultaneous ring service. Many VOIP services work with it, as well as some traditional phone providers.
If your parents can’t answer the call, they won’t be taken in by the scam.
I miss out on all the fun - I just don’t answer. I do get aggravated at the messages left by the “IRS” threatening me, mostly because I’ve got a pay-as-you-go phone plan and it costs me a dime every time I listen to VM - and I can’t delete without listening, dammit!
I got a couple of crap calls at work - the ol’ toner scam - but I just hung up on those bozos. And thankfully, my 82-y/o mother is smart enough not to deal with scammers - if she doesn’t recognize the CID, she doesn’t answer the phone. I talked her thru a Craigslist scammer, so she knows that game, too.