OMG - I hope you google this while you are on the phone with these people. They will scare the hell out of you. My "DEA Officer's" name was Matthew Barnes badge number A3317. Called my parent's then called me and threatened to have me arrested on felony charges due to a recent bust of online pharmacies. He did not get very far because I got on the internet and found these posts, THANK YOU SO MUCH.
I assume he was going towards a money request because he mentioned I needed to be in New York on Monday. SCAM SCAM SCAM
This guy is an IDIOT.
I did not fall for his SCAM last year, so he's calling back this year?
Today he says his name is John Sullivan, DEA (guess he can't remember his name from last year..)
I bet if I called and asked for Joe Friday, he would say this is his name (Joe-Friday, Dragnet)
In fact, I think I will call him using google-talk, and I will give HIM a made-up name, too. If I can take up some of his time to prevent him calling someone else, I will gladly do it.
TO ANYONE READING THIS; IT IS A SCAM!! THE DEA HAS PUT INFORMATION ON THEIR SITE CALLING IT THE SCAM IT IS. THE GUY IS SCARY, AND HE IS A CRIMINAL; DO NOT PAY HIM ANY MONEY. DO NOT BELIEVE A WORD HE SAYS.
he also says he will accept payment in the form of CVS money-cards. WHAT DEA officer is going to do this? INSANITY. I hope nobody believes him,but if they were all smart enough, this idiot would not be callling ME,either!
Received a phone call from a man saying he was DEA agent Bruce C Balzano. He corrected the spelling of his last name almost immediately so that made me a little suspicious. said there was a warrant because a FEDEX truck with overseas medication was seized and had my daughter's and my name on the packages. gave me the website of greendotmoneypac to get a debit card to pay $4000 and everything would be fine. again suspicious. I told him I was uncomfortable with that over the phone and he hung up. When I went to snoops.com and put in the phone number it showed me that this was a scam.
I checked into a bunch of phone numbers behind these calls. Every single number is VOIP, an internet phone number. And every phone number belongs to YMAX, also known as MagicJack. The DEA does not use MagicJack. That would be laughable.
But international scammers sometimes use MagicJack, which they set up with false name and an internet connection wherever they happen to be in the world. They pick a US area code with MagicJack and make calls anywhere in the US for free, showing up as US calls on caller ID.
YMAX/MagicJack has records of the ips for these calls, but chances are these fake DEA calls trace to ips in the Dominican Republic, obviously since that's where he wants the money sent.
Here's a case of different scam, a Nigerian, using a MagicJack with an Alabama phone number.
These guys could spoof phone numbers that look legit, maybe spoof a listed DEA phone number, but the problem is that if they spoof a real DEA phone number, the scared target's return phone call wouldn't go back to the scammer, but to the spoofed phone number, the real DEA. So spoofing wouldn't work in cases where this scammer leaves a message demanding a call back, which is probably the case on most of the calls he makes. So he/they use MagicJack where they can get their return phone call in the comfort and safety of the DR, while appearing to call from the U.S.
Oops, forgot the link to the story of a Nigerian scammer using a MagicJack with Craigslist scam, creating the appearance that he was calling from Alabama.