I too received the "You're the lucky grant winner from the Fed!" call, and even with laughably bad and obvious scams, I tend to placate the caller in hopes of finding out some useful information to report to the authorities.
They're apparently nailing some incredibly naive people with this tactic, getting them to head to Western Union and make a "security deposit" of a couple hundred bucks to a US Government affiliate in... India. Yes, of course. We've outsourced our legitimate jobs there, why not the con artists as well. I'm not sure I'd call them artists - this hoax was more like finger painting.
I received a call saying I was selected to receive a $7000 grant, tax free, never needing to be repaid.
I was given this number to call, along with a "money ID" number, and a lady's name to speak with to have a certified check sent to my home address. The initial call originated from a local number. I checked with my Congressman's office, and they said it is a SCAM. My call was the third one today to them about this. I called the number to gather more info on the scammers, and msg said it is a Magic Jack number, their box was full and they could not accept more msgs.
There is one thing true about this. They are really on the behalf of our Government! Other wise they would be busted by now. This is going on for how many years?..1000000000
No its not.. It is a scam operation. A lot of these scammers doing this are in foreign country's and out of our reach.. Exaggerate much?
To report the fraud, go here:
http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/support/general-support/grant-fraud.html
Their number is listed , along with an email address, at the top of the page.
Also here:
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0113-government-grant-scams
No. It's a scam operated by Indians and various call-centers throughout India. Been going on for years. They can't be busted because they are in India and the Indian government doesn't really to a good job in shutting them down.