There is a continues stream of calls coming from this number. I'm talking 20 to 50 a day. The calls are being placed to an 87 year old woman. The caller is harassing this woman and leaving messages on her answering machine. Often the caller just ties op the line and says nothing. I call this number and hear a message that the number is "not a working number". This is a life threading situation. This 87 year old has "Life Alert" and needs to have her phone un obstructed by crank calls in the event that an emergency call to life alert needs to be placed. Any assistance you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
There is a continues stream of calls coming from this number. I'm talking 20 to 50 a day. The calls are being placed to an 87 year old woman. The caller is harassing this woman and leaving messages on her answering machine. Often the caller just ties op the line and says nothing. I call this number and hear a message that the number is "not a working number". This is a life threading situation. This 87 year old has "Life Alert" and needs to have her phone un obstructed by crank calls in the event that an emergency call to life alert needs to be placed. Any assistance you can provide will be greatly appreciated.
PLEASE CHECK HER BANK ACCOUNTS - it could be this scam
Scammers Use Fake Calls to Distract From Real Bank Scam
7 Jul 2010
If all of a sudden you are receiving a large number of phone calls, you might be under Telecommunication Denial of Service attack, or TDOS.
According to the FBI Special Agent, Christian Schorle, scam artists tie up your phone line to distruct you and block all incoming calls, especially calls coming from your bank, while empting your bank accounts.
"We're getting a lot of calls from consumers that are reporting receiving a large number of strange and unexplained calls on their mobile and land line telephones."
The FBI first learned of this scheme through their partnership with telecommunication industry. In November of 2009, there was a report out of St. Augustine, Florida where there was a dentist who lost as much as $400,000 from a retirement account from this TDOS.
According to FBI, the telecommunication partners are reporting a surge of this activity again: the attackers are using automatic dialing programs and multiple accounts to overwhelm the land line and cell phone lines of their victims with thousands of calls.
"We’ve actually got reports of victims from different states all across the country in the past few weeks as we start to look further into this", says Schorle.
FBI has determined these calls, or these TDOS attacks, are serving as a diversionary technique. During these TDOS attacks, the online trading and other money management accounts are being accessed by the perpetrators.
The perpetrators obtain account information of their victims in some way and then they will contact the financial institution to change the victim’s profile information, such as e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, or bank account numbers.
The purpose of the malicious phone calls is to occupy the victim’s phone number on record with the financial institution, so when the institution tries to contact the victim to notify them of the change, they can’t because the phone line is busy. Consequently, the victim has no idea what’s really transpired until it is too late.
If you suspect that you are being targeted by TDOS immediately contact your financial institution and harden the security on your accounts. This notification should include online trading brokers with whom you might have an account. Christian Schorle is also encouraging victims to promptly report the incident to the FBI, to a complaint filed on www.IC3.gov, which is the FBI’s online cyber crime complaint center.