Got a call from 310-573-8030 today, from a James Standley Law Offices, claiming I owe a back amount on a US Bank account that I had a few years back and if I didn't pay (what amounted to about half my monthly income) within 24 hours or start a monthly payment plan immediately that I would be taken to court.
The caller's name was Hector Chacon and he gave me the number 888-203-5017 to call him back at.
At first the call was friendly enough - he claimed to have called before, but nobody had. Then he claimed there was a voicemail left, but there wasn't. Then he claimed they sent letters to two of the addresses they had on file (one of which was NOT an address I'd ever lived at) but I know for a fact I never received any mail to the one address that was a previous address.
Since I did have a US Bank account I was a little shocked and kept thinking "Christ, did something happen when I moved out of state and maybe I had a bounced check or something?" but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
Hector kept demanding money but tried to play the "nice guy" and said he would check with his attorney and see if the amount could be lowered - two seconds later he said the attorney denied his request.
I told him repeatedly that all I wanted to do was check them out online, get some documentation and proof of my debt from them, and if it ended up that I owed the money I'd absolutely pay them.
However then I was told that he couldn't mail anything to me because the time it would take to mail me documentation would exceed the time he was allowed before taking me to court.
I told him that really, they're going to take me to court for a measly amount of money - and waste all of their time and money doing that? Please.
So I gave him my email address and asked for documentation to be emailed to me - still waiting for it.
Then Hector demanded I give him my current address and I declined, pointing out the fact that he *still* hadn't let me get off the phone, get the documentation that was supposedly going to be emailed to me, and I told him: I don't know if this is a scam. No offense, but you're calling me and demanding I send you X-Amount of dollars immediately or you're going to sue me and now you want my address? I'm not comfortable giving that kind of personal information out over the phone.
Then Hector really flipped - called me nasty names, said that they already had my social, my old banking information, and my phone number - "and NOW we have your email address too!" - and that soon they'd have my work address, home address and for me to be looking forward to the wage garnishments.
I told him "I don't understand why you're being so aggressive - I just want to check this out before I give you all my personal information" and he basically hung up on me.