I got a call like that once. It never got as far as him telling me to do something with my computer.
I just told him I didn’t have a computer, hung up, and went back to surfing the web.
The “stuck overseas” or “need bail” scam is pretty common. When I did computer security at a university, I saw a lot of email accounts get compromised, usually by phishing, and the scammer use them to try to get money out of anyone in the contacts list.
Enright3, I’m glad your in-laws didn’t fall for it.
My elderly parents have been getting a different kind of scam call recently. The caller poses as a representative of a Catholic charity. My parents are devout Catholics, but that’s not uncommon in their area, so I don’t know if the scam is targeted specifically at them. Anyway, while I was trying to help them, I learned that a lot of phone carriers offer a call trace function. Right after you get the call, you can dial a code (usually 57) that alerts the phone carrier that the call was abusive, threatening, etc. The carrier won’t give you the location of the caller, but you can call the cops and reference the trace, and the cops can get the information. And maybe they’ll go catch the scammer.
*probably not, especially if the scammer is calling from another country, which is likely.