I got a call from a guy with an accent who claims he is from the US Government Grant Department and that I won a grant that amounted to $9200 and that I could use it towards anything. He gave a confirmation number and this phone number 315-636-0795.
I called the number. I asked him what particular grant did I win and how did I qualify. He said I won a December drawing from 1700 applicants and that I qualified because I didn't have a criminal record and that I paid my taxes on time(even though I never filed because I never held a job before) and that they were calling to verify my identity since all they had was my name and phone number. He then asked me for my name and address (he just said they had my name) and while doing this I googled up this supposed department and found red flags all over it.
He then asked me what form would I like to receive my money and I mention Visa or MasterCard and then he asked me for my MasterCard number. That solidified that this was a scam and I told him that I wanted the money in PayPal. He pushed for MasterCard so I gave him the info to a defunct college debit card that I had laying around.
He pulled up a fake confirmation number and said that if I didn't call his manager right away that I would lose my grant. I called his so called manager who goes by "Brandon War" according to the guy and got a message saying that he was busy and that his inbox was full. I would later on call the guy who started this and got a inbox full message as well.
I then reported the incident to the the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Inspector General through phone where the automated messaging pretty much said that they would never give grants in the way this guy tried, reaffirming that I was right.
After the reporting was done, I followed their advice to call and alert the bank of the card even though it was defunct. The bank confirmed that no activity has happened to the card and reaffirmed that the card was defunct and tied to no accounts.
From what I can gather from past reports, these scammers would gather card numbers and then charge them and the person would never received a dime. Do not give them any card info, unless like me you are using a dead card. They just want to steal money and with college students pressing hard for money, its easy to prey upon those needs.
A female with a strong Indian accent called my personal cell phone stating that I was "randomly selected" for a Tax Relief check of $9,200 from the Treasury Department. I listened to the lady who was nice enough but stated that this "once-in-a-lifetime-offer" would require me to phone back another phone number.
After quickly checking the phone number through some sources of mine and also discovering the above post I called the lady back. I allowed her to continue trying to justify how lucky I was in a very similar way to the post above by Deepak.
Then I asked her about the number coming back to a fraud/scam. She immediately became belligerent and rude. I asked her where she was calling me from and she stated that she was calling from "Mother F****r". I found this to be entertaining since I called her back from a work telephone number I immediately put the phone on speaker and me and two other co-workers then began acting like a red neck family. Quite entertaining for us to listen to her try to call us names.
Not saying you have to be rude back to her, but I don't tolerate these scammers and enjoyed laughing at her call me names over the phone because we called her out on the scam.
I just received a similar call from an unknown number to my cell phone from someone claiming to be with the Grant Department offering me a $9200 grant, free of charge that never has to be paid back.
The lady was nice on the phone, insisting I call back this number (315) and giving me a grant number that I would need to have. Knowing all too well (No I have never fallen for one) that this was a scam in the making I did not bother calling back and simply started googling for similar incidents. Sure enough I have found this page, among many, stating that all have received similar calls.