One gentleman calling himself Steve Johnson, Department of Financial Investigations, New York, New York, had called me at my new job. I asked for a specific name and also the name of the company. I asked him not to contact me at work. He asked for my home number, and said he sent emails reagarding my account. He even gave me an account number
I have been getting repeat phone messages from phone number 347-416-5175 Claiming to be an Officer Brown of the Department of Investigation (didn't say from which organization and wouldn't tell me after multiple requests) ...
First he left a barely understandable message saying that he I was under investigation for not paying back a paycheck loan (which I looked into online ONE time in my entire life and never went through the application nor received any funds) and for owing money to the gas company. When I called back the first time, I asked him what the call was about. He said I knew very well what the call was about. I said no, I didn't. (I work for a government agency, so feel kind of embarrassed that I even let it get this far, but they were VERY convincing.) He proceeded to tell me that I owed money to the gas company (which I confirmed with my gas company that I didn't) and when I asked him "oh yeah? well what's the name of my gas company" he again avoided answering and said you very well know the company is -- LPG (which is a TYPE of gas) ... again, very convincing ...
I received two more phone messages from them within the same day ... the second even more threatening than the first. This time they claimed that I was being investigated for committing fraudulent activity (again, I work for a government agency where it takes a significant background check to even get your foot in the door) ... but this time it scared me because he knew my correct social security number. They threatened to "send in their cops" and that I was "in big trouble -- that they would come get me at work" -- pretty scary stuff when you think about it!
Whatever you do -- DO NOT VERIFY ANY INFORMATION THAT THEY HAVE ON YOU!!! I have talked with local state police and they said they try to get you to talk as much as possible on the phone so that they can use voice verification to try to steal your identity and get credit cards, loans or whatever else in your name using voice verification! Also, the REAL state trooper I spoke with said not to call the number back, to ignore the calls and voicemails and if they get worse, to call your phone company and get the number blocked (which is what I'm going to do). If they do get any information, be sure to notify your credit bureaus and banks. You might even have to get your phone number changed. What a pain -- I don't know how these people sleep at night, but I hope it's in some disgusting shantytown somewhere where they have to poop in a hole in the ground.
These people are total scams! Do not give them any information. They called my job some days 20 times and said awful things to the person who answered. I was afraid of losing my job but talked to my attorney and he told me if that happened I would have a very good law suit against the company I work for if they fired me because this is not my fault. The best thing to do with these people is blow a whistle into the phone when they call, they will soon quit calling. Another thing we did was tell them I no longer work there and they asked for another number and we gave them the number to the local police dept.
Whoever these pepole are they need to quit calling our office looking for one of our employees every five minutes, have tried to make this guy understand the person he is looking for is in a Truck driving he is not in this office he is a truck driver but he will not quit calling and getting crappy with our office help.