I first received a voice mail while I was shopping at Walmart. I decided to wait until I got home, and check here first.
The message was from a Mark O'Neil who claimed to be an investigator, and it was important that I call him immediately! So when I saw that no one else reported the number, I called.
A man answered, and I asked for Mark O'Neil. At first, he didn't seem to know who I was talking about. I asked him the name of his agency, and instead asked me mine. He put me on hold for a few minutes while he looked up my "folder". Finally, Mark comes to the phone, and I said that I wouldn't discuss anything with him until he identified himself, his position and the name of the agency/company for who he represented. He couldn't describe who he represented, but said it wasn't a company or agency.
So I asked him what kind of investigator he was, and he said, financial crimes.
So I said if he couldn't tell me who he worked for, the conversation was over, so he said, OK, I'll just have to issue a warrant for your arrest, and hung up!
I called back a second time, starting to ask him what this is about, and he hung up again!
Finally, I called my State Police, to report a phone scram, told the officer my experience, and unfortunately, because the caller was out of state, there was nothing he could do, but agreed with me that it sounded like a scam, and not to worry about it!
I first received a voice mail while I was shopping at Walmart. I decided to wait until I got home, and check here first.
The message was from a Mark O'Neil who claimed to be an investigator, and it was important that I call him immediately! So when I saw that no one else reported the number, I called.
A man answered, and I asked for Mark O'Neil. At first, he didn't seem to know who I was talking about. I asked him the name of his agency, and instead asked me mine. He put me on hold for a few minutes while he looked up my "folder". Finally, Mark comes to the phone, and I said that I wouldn't discuss anything with him until he identified himself, his position and the name of the agency/company for who he represented. He couldn't describe who he represented, but said it wasn't a company or agency.
So I asked him what kind of investigator he was, and he said, financial crimes.
So I said if he couldn't tell me who he worked for, the conversation was over, so he said, OK, I'll just have to issue a warrant for your arrest, and hung up!
I called back a second time, starting to ask him what this is about, and he hung up again!
Finally, I called my State Police, to report a phone scram, told the officer my experience, and unfortunately, because the caller was out of state, there was nothing he could do, but agreed with me that it sounded like a scam, and not to worry about it!
Sarah,
Unfortunately, I never gave him a chance to pull whatever con job off on me, because he knew I was on to him, and that's why he threatened me with the warrant for my arrest, and hung up!
At any time during your conversation with him, did he ask you for money?
If you didn't write any bad checks, I don't think you have anything to worry about! LOL
No debt collector can issue a "warrant". That would come from real law enforcement, the police, the DA, and signed by a judge. If one were issued, they certainly would not call you up, they would simply pick you up. It sounds to me as if you need to learn how debt collection is supposed to work, not how criminals try to use it to extort money from people.
Criminals masquerading as debt collectors attempt to extort money from people by scaring you into believing that you will be criminally charged (they use the bad check or hot check claim a lot) and go to jail, lose your driver’s license, have wages garnished without actually being sued or going to court, be sued, and a variety of other variations on this, all for an alleged or nonexistent debt. One of the tricks they use is to call your family, friends, neighbors and/or places of employment (past or present or both) to create panic and embarrassment so that their intended victim calls them and they can scare that person into paying their extortion money. They also use the “process server” ruse who calls and claims he is going to serve you, but then says you could avoid it by calling another number where they will ask for money to “make it go away” (this is actually the same place, they work in teams, one pretending to be the server, and the other usually pretends to be a lawyer). Process servers do not ever call ahead so that you can dodge them. Process servers get paid to serve papers, nothing else.
Read up on your rights here and also make a complaint at this government site: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/
Also file a complaint with your State Attorney General's office.
List of State AG’s offices: http://800notes.com/faq/attorney-general