Scammer phone call: how bad did I do?

Of course I was blindsided. Isn’t that always the case?

The short of it:
I gave the scammer my first and last name, which as a combination is fairly uncommon. They had dialed my mom’s phone. These scammers now have my mom’s name, my name, our relationship, and her phone number— probably her address. Is Mom more or less likely to get hit up again?

On the plus side, she refused to give any account information whatsoever. On the minus side we did verify name and phone number and provided my name and relationship.

**
Particulars for those who might be interested:**
I live next to my mom who turns 80 this year. 20 minutes ago Mom sent my younger brother (who has Downs Syndrome) to get me. He said, “Mother wants you about the phone call. It’s very important.”

So I went over to Mom’s. When I walked in, She was speaking into the phone, “Here’s my son. I want you to tell him exactly what you’ve told me.” She handed me the phone.

I said, “Hello.” And of course the first thing out of the caller’s mouth was, “Who am I speaking with?”

I identified myself and asked who I was speaking with.

She said, “Rosa from National Medical out of NY” in some sort of SE Asian accent.

It was clearly a scam. She wanted Mom’s bank account numbers and credit card numbers to enroll her in a Medicare program. . . . blah, blah, blah, blah.

I tried to bluff her by saying we were tracing the call. But she didn’t fall for it. Which left me a bit flustered. I know that was stupid. I’m not going to con the con. But I kept saying that I was going to keep her on the line until I called someone else on the other line. But she knew I didn’t know what I was doing. Because really, who do you call? What do you do? I was a bit surprised she didn’t hang-up on me, but maybe she thought that if she continued to hold that I would believe that she wasn’t a scammer. But she was correct in one thing, I wasn’t going to be able to figure out who to contact while on the phone and out of my element. So I hung up.

That’s it. If Mom had given me just the smallest heads up that she suspected the caller to be a scammer, I would have just said, “We don’t give out that information to unsolicited callers,” and terminated the call. But when you are embroiled in a conversation getting angrier knowing that this asshole is trying to steal from your mom, you start thinking, “Isn’t there something I can do to catch this crook?”

Well, you can’t un-do what you did so I would stop worrying about that part.

I don’t think knowing your names, phone number and addresses is such a big deal. If someone wants that info they can get it. Even if you’re not listed in the phone book, if you own the homes you are in the public tax records.

Everyone did well by not giving account info and by alerting you.

That being said, you need to prepare for if/when it happens again. Educate mom AND your brother about not giving account info over the phone. They can help each other out if they overhear one or the other on a suspicious call.

Tell them that they can tell anyone who calls that they will not give any personal information out to anyone that calls them. The caller can provide a call-back number. Your family then can come to you with the call-back number and you can decide together whether or not to call back.

You would also be wise to get Caller ID on their phone line. This way, when the scammer doesn’t provide a call-back number, you can still report them. Or, if your family doesn’t remember who called forgot to get a call-back number, you can check the Caller ID log yourself.

Heck, I did this with my not-quite-60-years-old parents a few months ago. They were in the process of switching phone carriers, and they got a call from someone asking for their phone company account number. I was standing right there and told my dad to tell the caller he didn’t have his info handy and would call him back at a later time. I was 99% sure this wasn’t a scam (it wasn’t) but I took the opportunity to share a lesson with them - never give account info to someone who calls YOU.

Did you get the number they were calling from off of caller ID? You could have searched it on-line and also reported it others as a scam.

Thanks for the reassurance. I am hoping that knowing names and phone numbers won’t be such a big deal either. My concern is having Mom pegged as someone who will engage in conversation with them. I did tell Mom to be on the look out for more of these type calls. I also told her to be wary of cold phishing calls in the middle of the night. You know, the “GrandMa? I’m in trouble and I need help thing.”

Mom doesn’t have caller ID. I’m of mixed feelings on that.

An article on that scam. And one from AARP. And another.

I’d be surprised if caller ID would help. We have it, and many junk calls have their numbers masked, sometimes as 999-9999.

I agree that you don’t have anything to worry about, since it is clear to them that you are on to them, but I would report it to the local police.They can’t do anything about it directly, but if a lot of these calls are coming to your town they can publicize the scam and try to keep people from falling for it.

Unfortunately, caller ID can (and usually IS) spoofed by the scammers. Either the number is blocked entirely, or it is faked. “Heather from Account Services” is notorious for this - I’ve done lookups on the number that shows on caller ID and it’s typically a disconnected number.

The only way to be sure that scammers don’t get through to your mom or brother is to have a phone service that lets you set up a white list of phone numbers. Basically, you set the number up so that everything goes to voicemail unless the incoming number is on the list of safe numbers that you’ve created.

That may sound tedious, but if you think about it, there probably aren’t more than a dozen or so people that mom really cares about talking to. If you happen to overlook someone who doesn’t deserve doing time in voicemail hell, you can always modify the list in real time.

I don’t know how many providers offer this service. I don’t think any of the land line companies to. Here is the VOIP service I use - https://www.itpvoip.com/. They have this feature as part of their basic service. All that’s required is a broad band connection and a converter box that translates from ethernet (IP) to RJ11 (std phone line).

I would go so far as to say that even if mom doesn’t have any need for broadband, I would get it for her just to get a VOIP provider that offers that sort of service. If she already has a landline, adding something like DSL should be relatively inexpensive. And you can drop the existing phone service and have just DSL.

On the other hand, if you think mom is pretty sharp and isn’t likely to fall for any scams, then its a moot point. However if I’ve read between the lines correctly, you seem to feel that there is some danger.