These people called me claiming to be a government agency that handles government grant money.
They have called me 3 times today, and the caller always has a very thick hard to understand Indian or Arab accent. I called them back to gather information about the caller because I get phone calls from the government sometimes. (real ones) Important calls that I cannot afford to miss...
I really wish that someone would stop these type of people. It has become almost impossible to answer your phone or open a E-mail without some type of scam artist claiming to be the government. I do Computer repairs and I have seen numerous computers come in locked claiming that they have been locked by the federal government. They give you the option to FedEX them money to unlock the computer. I have had to wipe peoples computers on several occasions because of things like this.
It is UNACCEPTABLE that these people are not in jail.
No one (your U.S. govt, phone vendors, etc.) is ever going to do anything about these scammers outside our borders.
Block them and/or have some fun with it. Tell them your name is Jack Me Hoff or Sponge Bob Square Pants.
Set your phone down by a speaker and crank up some Slip Knot or Metallica or Hank Williams.
Here's my story, please tell it to all your friends and family to use, use it yourself if you have some time to waste and
want to F**K with unsolicited phone scammers, collection gargoyles, etc.
I received no less than 10 calls in one hour from 718-395-9477 and did not answer. Eventually I did answer and got the "we have $5,000 yadda yadda yadda for you" . . . I informed them I was contacting my state Attorney General, the US Attorney General (yep Eric Holder), the Better Business Bureau, The Justice League and some other official sounding watchdog groups & for them to remove my number from their call list. The $#@%&#?! laughed and hung up.
Received about 6 more calls from them. I answered in an extremely broken English accent basically saying YES I want the $, what information do you need over and over and over and over again - the human reject on the other end of line was getting quite frustrated and his English got progressively better and better and better. Got information about the company, his alleged name, addresses to write or send my $, locations, etc. indicating I was in and would be sending him my life savings I had acquired since arriving in the United States, working various odd jobs. Baited him for about 15 minutes and then without missing a beat went right into my redneck Bible belt voice and gave him a Marine Corp Drill Instructor welcome to boot camp tirade that would have made Gunnery Sgt. Hartman from the movie Full Metal Jacket blush. The reject started into a very pissed off tirade of his own. I hung up. I wish I could have seen the human reject's face. Only got a couple of calls from them after that. Blocked.
Related short story - got a similar spam e-mail asking for money be sent to some address, not a Western Union wire transfer which I found odd. There was a phone number attached to mailing, called the number to verify the address. Got some individual I could barely understand on the other end to confirm that was a good address to send good old American cash! He hit the friggin' jackpot, he was excited, he had a sucker about to send him tons of $. I promptly went outside scooped up a couple generous portions of one my dog's crap piles, Ziploced it and sent it to some address in NY (with a funky return address on the package), then blocked the e-mail. Yeah, I was out the money for postage and probably violated some US postal rules, but just knowing that whomever opened it had to think what the . . . ? still makes me laugh.
I called back after receiving two calls. I'm not an angry person, but a great actor. I told the first sand n that, "the f you're the US gov. I'm going to find you and kick your phone up your a." He asked why I was talking to him like that. I asked, "where did you get this number? Who the f do you think you are bothering me?" Then I called back a few times, just left the phone down and didn't say anything. I can hear them asking, "Why are you calling if you won't speak?" And I laugh and laugh and laugh until they hang up and I call again. I'm still messing with them, I can't wait until the threats start so I can laugh some more.