Posted on 08/22/2008 12:08:12 PM PDT by big black dog
Scammers masquerading as debt collectors and law enforcement officials have terrified consumers with threatening phone calls and bilked them out of thousands of dollars, officials with the West Virginia Attorney General's Office say.
Prosecutors said that the scammers, who speak with heavy foreign accents, are known for repeatedly calling people at home and at work and threatening them with arrest if they don't repay supposed debts -- debts that, according to West Virginia officials, don't actually exist.
The scammers operate under names such as U.S. National Bank, Federal Investigation Bureau and United Legal Processing, said West Virginia Assistant Attorney General Norman Googel.
The callers also have invoked the names of actors Denzel Washington and Steve Martin, people who've received calls tell ABCNews.com.
Googel said that the scammers have been impossible to track down, but ABCNews.com spoke to one man who claimed to be associated with U.S. National Bank. The man said he works for Financial Crime Division, a company he said provides services for USNB.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I had a woman with an eastern european accent accuse me of failing to pay my cable bill for over a year.
Idiots.
They look upon Fraud as a greater Crime than Theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with Death; for they alledge, that Care and Vigilance, with a very common Understanding, may preserve a Man's Goods from Thieves, but Honesty has no fence against superior Cunning: and since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual Intercourse of Buying and Selling, and dealing upon Credit, where Fraud is permitted or connived at, or hath no Law to punish it, the honest Dealer is always undone, and the Knave gets the advantage.
--Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
For scumbags that scam other people, I could go for the death penalty.
I had some goober try this with me a couple of years ago, alleging that I owed two years on an AOL account (I’ve never been an AOL subscriber) and claiming to be a debt collector in an official-looking letter. I politely wrote back, reminding him that under US law (provided the relevant portion of the US Code), no debt is due unless the creditor can provide detailed documentation proving that the debt is owed, and notifying him that fraudulent claims of debt can be prosecuted both criminally and civilly. Never heard another peep out of him.
I love that quote! Thanks for posting it.
I get these all the time from an outfit called Reiman Publications, which claims I have subscribed to their magazines. In fact, I’ve never even seen their publications before.
Play along with the scam artists.
Tell them you’ll pay whatever it is you owe.
Get precise payment instructions, tell them you can use Western Union ‘Quick Collect’ (a standard collection tool used by legitimate bill collection agencies).
After getting all of the information possible from them, call up your local FBI office and pass the information on.
If you have call block, then use it to block any future calls.
If not, next time tell them to go eff themselves, and hang up.
But I thought you couldn't cheat an honest man?
That goes for telemarketers that call old people, too. Sprint hired some Pakistani/Indian firm to give away “free” cell phones, and the caller talked long enough to my lonely Mother-in-law to get her to agree to take the “free” phone. (She has Alzheimer’s.)
Only catch - they said she signed up for a three year contract. Took me a year to find an english-speaking reasonable person at Sprint to agree to take the phone back and promise to kill the contract. We sent the phone back with their authorized return slip, but I got a call about the past due bill as recently as two months ago - over a year from when the phone was sent back.
Trouble is that these slugs are only marginally less honest then your normal credit card companies.
The group has targeted consumers who took out payday loans through Web sites years ago
Holy Moses, some people are born with "Kick Me" signs on their backs, aren't they?
You got that right. Have a great weekend.
Get used to it. Sprint conned me with something similar. They promised reception in my area; surprise! No bars. I told them our contract was null and void since their coverage area (that they advertised and promised would work in writing) was not valid. They agreed, said to send back the phone with their return slip and no harm no foul; contract canceled. That was 7 years ago. I still periodically get collections bills pertaining to that account and that phone. I kept all paperwork and send back copies of the phone’s return and canceled contract to the collections agency. Yet Sprint still shops the old dispute around.
A few years ago, some guy with a foreign accent called me and told me I had just won a free trip to Hawaii. All he needed was my credit card number...
Ha! You’ve got me beat. I’ve stopped arguing long ago. I just tell them she’s not paying. (She doesn’t live with us any more.) It’s fun to hear them sputter.
I did get an offer (not Sprint) sent to my grandmother the other day, though. She’s been dead a long time, and they are still trying to sell her Medicare gap insurance in the mail. As a matter of fact, she was dead several years before we moved into this house - go figure!
Ping.
Try calling customer service sometime. Time Warner Cable outsourced its customer service to the third world. You never know who you're going to speak to, India, Puerto Rico, French Canada, Malaysia. You gotta be multilingual to understand them. It's a true disservice to the customers. I can understand how some people can be scammed by someone with a foreign accent.
I was harrassed by one of these fake debt collectors before. The collector claimed I owed money to UPS. I didn’t even have an account with UPS.
“I’m sorry sir, Mr. Doe passed away last month. His entire estate was bequeathed to a local chapter of the Hell’s Angels, would you like the number of their attorney handling the estate?”.
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