I answered today, they asked for my child. I told them I was that person. they then rattled an address and asked for confirmation. I told them the address was wrong, they then rattled off 4 digits of a ssn and asked for confirmation. Told her she was wrong. She then became rude and told me that the name and phone number came up for that information. I told her she was wrong, that the name she said is one of the most popular names in the united states and she needed to do more research. I also told her if she called again, the next conversation she would have would be with my lawyer. she somewhat apologized and hung up. Will see if I get the routine evening call this evening.
They call 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.
This is a common ploy by criminals masquerading as debt collectors who are attempting to extort money from people by scaring you into believing that you will be criminally charged, go to jail, lose your driver’s license, have wages garnished, 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 work place, friends, or relatives repeatedly in an attempt to shame you into paying. 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. Please note that process servers do not ever call ahead. That way you can’t dodge them.
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
Calls continuously. I never answer calls from Bellevue, WA because it has been my experience that they are (A) scammers who claim to be Microsoft representatives and tell you that they had an alert that your computer was infected by a virus/worm and they need to do a repair to remove it...(at your expense, of course) or (B) they are unscrupulous skip-tracers looking for a debtor and will accuse you of lying if you say the person is unknown to you, does not own the telephone number they called you on and doesn't live at the address where you reside.
This phone number has been calling non-stop for quite some time now. It will call my house number and my cell. My numbers are supposed to be blocked from these types of calls and it has yet to stop. It's flat out annoying. Its been calling a number of times per day, never leaves a message, or responds if answered. I usually let it ring or give them the favor by picking up and hanging up.