I’ve gotten two phone messages in the past couple of weeks from a woman saying she’s from the law office of Joan Collins or something like that (insert Dynasty jokes here), regarding “an important business matter” and leaving a number with a 610 area code. If I needed confirmation that this was phone spam, I’m pretty sure the two messages sounded identical.
What’s the scam they’re running in this particular case?
look up the number. There’s a number of phone scam report sites. Usually someone has written a note on the number and what it’s trying to do.
That sounds very much like the bill collector calls I used to get for people with very similar names to my own.
Put the number in 800notes . com to see what it comes back as. You might quickly find out that it’s, as aktep said, just a bill collector trying to get you to pick up. FTR, I think saying you’re an attorney or from an attorney’s office (assuming you’re not) when attempting to collect a bill is illegal.
As for what that scam is, without any more info that that it’s nearly impossible to say other than they’re trying to find someone willing to believe they can get a whole bunch of money if they just give this person a little bit of money first. IOW, they want some of your money, how much and in what form is anyone’s guess.
If you own a business, have some debt in arrears, own something that someone might (legitimately) want to buy, it could be real. But I’d start by looking up the number, maybe seeing if the law firm is real…then probably still ignoring it.
Also, you said that phone calls came from a 610 area code, but you didn’t tell us if that was local to you so that doesn’t really tell us anything. Keep in mind that debt collectors will routinely use recently disconnected area codes for dialing in that area. So I can pick up a phone call that shows a local area code, caller ID might even say a regular name or “Cell phone Wisconsin” and it’ll be a debt collector or someone selling toner, and the searching online for the number gives me nothing because they’ve probably only been using the number for a day or two.
From the sparse details I’ve been able to find, it seems this guess was right. Collection agency, and a comment saying that it was calling a month old business number, so obviously not legit.
(I have gotten an actual genuine collection request for a bill that was somehow returned to sender from my legit street address on multiple occasions. I think it was through the mail, or at least had personalized details.)
As a warning to all, they called again today, and it turns out that the number on my caller ID was different from the one they requested you call. That one is 239, 7147, with the above area code (altered for mobile). Looking up THAT number got me a LOT more confirmation of a debt collection scam (not to mention just listening to the end of the message, which I generally didn’t do).
They are often legitimate debts, owed by a person who used y our name and phone number to obtain crecit. I’ve had several of those. The caller was very cooperative when I answered and gave me full particulars on the party that had used my identity. Where I live, my surname is common enough that people with the same surname look me up on the phone book, and go to the emergency room at the hospital, use their first name and my number. Then when they don’t pay, I get the call from the collector.
Well, my name is quite unusual, and I’ve got an unlisted number, so…
Okay, since the last post, the calls have continued, once a week. I still have not gotten a single piece of mail correspondence about any debt. It’s getting to the point that I’m thinking of just answering next time, because while the online mentions of this Joel Cardis law firm aren’t favorable, they don’t seem to be out and out scammers.
What do you all think?
Since they are clearly just going to keep calling you either way, answering but only telling them to stop calling can’t hurt, although it might not help.
I see quite a lot of negative info about that law firm on 800notes*. My suggestion is that if this is a cell phone just block it in your phone, either with your phones built in ability to block numbers one by one or with an app like Hiya that had a constantly updated table of ‘spam/scam’ numbers that it blocks for you. If it’s a landline, you can hook it into a modem (if you have one) and run an app on your computer to do the same thing. I use Phonetray (Traysoft?, something like that). I still have a free version, I’m not sure how much it is now that it’s not free anymore, but, at work, it’s well worth it. It probably zaps 30 calls a week. Personally, I hang up on junk/spam calls within seconds, no problem. But my regular employees, and I don’t blame them, will sit and listen to the entire spiel and then go around trying to figure out who’s in charge of ‘the printer supplies’ or what model our fax machine is.
TLDR, leave it alone. Google that name, I don’t see anything good coming from it.
*To be fair, I’m sure plenty of legitimate collection agencies making legitimate calls to the correct people that really do owe the money still have those people running around on the internet saying ‘SCAM’ and the same nasty stuff everyone else is saying. That’s why I mentioned earlier that if you do owe money, that’s different than if you don’t. I don’t care one way or the other, but it you have some old medical bill from 8 months ago that you’ve been ignoring, of course collections agencies will be calling you and no, it’s not a scam.
You might try looking at your credit report first and seeing if you spot anything legitimate (or mistaken) that has gone to collections. If there’s nothing there, you may as well just keep ignoring them. It sounded like you found some evidence that they were a scam group at one point. I think once they make contact, they’ll just keep after you even harder.
ETA: What Joey P said. Don’t talk to them unless there’s good reason to do it. Ignore them.
Thanks for the input.
The complicating factor is that I did once have a debt go into collections, years ago, when a legitimate bill was sent repeatedly and returned by the post office for no reason I can fathom. But I’m 90% sure I found out about it through mail, and as I’ve said, I haven’t gotten any debt related mail.
I’ve had significant trouble getting my credit report in the past, but I do/did have free credit monitoring, because of a security breach in a company I dealt with, and I’ve never gotten any notification that anything was amiss (though I don’t know if that just checks for fraud or not).
Update: I got my credit report from TransUnion. OK’s as far as the eye can see. I have two satisfactory accounts (my credit cards) with no other or unexpected or unusual listings.
OK, they called me again today. Given what I’ve reported above, is there ANY chance there’s a debt in collections that would NOT be on my credit report, especially one old enough for these people to have been calling me weekly for over a month? I just want to make absolutely sure there’s nothing out there that necessitates picking up the phone for these people.
Well, there’s a chance, sure. Most creditors report to all three of the big credit reporting agencies, but for various reasons some creditors choose to report to only one or two, so you might have something on your Experian report that doesn’t show on TransUnion, for example. There are also some businesses around that don’t report to ANY credit agency, although the number of legit businesses that don’t has been dwindling for years.
Do they use your name in the phone messages? If not, they might think they’re calling somebody who used to have that phone number, or wrote their number down wrong accidentally or on purpose, etc.
Could be that some old, uncollectible, debt has been picked up a third party. Which is now trying to collect on the phantom debt.
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/expose-a-fake-debt-collector-by-asking-these-three-questions/
Nope, always the same prerecorded message.