A man stating his name is Neal Johnson called and left a message on my cell voice mail stating that he was trying to contact me because there was a law suit against my name and social security number. I am under investigation and that I need to call him back immediately at 508-407-7251 before things go wrong.
Before I even got this message completely herd he called me on my work phone. He as if this was a good time and I said no I was at work. He ask if he could call back at a better time and I said NO. He said that there was an arrest warrant being issued for me then, I told him to go ahead if he thougt he could and that I knew this was a scam then hung the phone up.
They just called me and for a minute I was getting ready to send them the money and then when they said I couldn't use my credit card I had to go buy a prepaid card I started to research I put the number in google and this popped up. Crazy
This is a man with a foriegn acccent sayin I'm under new york state law enforcment investigation and to call asap the number he is callin from is out of massachuetts ...and he. Keeps callin I work and I know dam well I haven't been involve with anything that's deals with law enforcment.....this really had me nervous for a minute and really had me thinking that I'm in trouble....this man needs to be dealth with because somebody could really be tooken avantage of like the elderly or. People that don't know better next time he calls I'm gonna tell his [***] what he can go suck on!!!!
Even scam artists are outsourcing. On Tuesday in its first crackdown on fraudulent telemarketing in South Asia, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it was shutting down two California-based companies that used a call center in India to defraud Americans out of more than $5 million over the past two years.
Workers in India made threatening calls to Americans getting them to pay money on debts that they didn't owe, the FTC charges. At an FTC press conference in Chicago on Tuesday, fraud victim JanLaree DeJulius explained that she had received a call from someone claiming to be an enforcement officer from the (phony) "Federal Department of Crime and Prevention," who threatened to have her arrested and have her wages garnished if she didn't pay a bill of more than $730. The scam artists had gotten her name and information from a payday loan her ex-husband had taken out in her name.
"It was very embarrassing," Dejulius said. "He knew everything about me so I agreed to set up an installment." She is not alone. According to the FTC, more than 8 million calls were made since 2010 and at least 17,000 transactions processed across the United States related to the global scam.
On Tuesday under request from the FTC, a U.S. District Court in Chicago stopped the international operation, charging Varang K. Thaker and two companies he owned, American Credit Crunchers, LLC, and an affiliate Ebeeze, LLC, with violating the FTC Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
"This is a brazen operation based on pure fraud, and the FTC is committed to shutting it down," said David Vladeck, director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau. "Consumers should not be pressured into paying debt they don't remember owing. Legitimate debt collectors must provide consumers with both written information about the debt, and instructions for protecting themselves if they don't think they owe the debt."
According to the FTC's charges, Thaker used Social Security numbers and bank account numbers obtained from payday lenders to identify the victims for his scam. He outsourced the work to an Indian call center, where workers made threatening calls to American consumers to pay fake debt or collect on bills for which they were not authorized.
Thaker was not available when contacted by telephone on Tuesday. A woman who claimed to be Thaker's older sister and asked not to be named for privacy reasons said he is working with the FTC to help the Indian government pursue the fraudster call center operators. She also said he was innocent in the scam. "He was being used by somebody. He didn't even know where they got the information," she told The Huffington Post by phone. She said that her brother got 10 percent of the earnings from the scam operation.
The FTC charges against Thaker are the latest in a series of police actions by the government agency to put an end to rogue debt collection operations that have become more frequent in the aftermath of the Great Recession. In January, the FTC struck a $2.5-million settlement with debt-buying company Asset Acceptance, LLC, charging that the company had falsely represented itself to customers, including making up phantom debts that customers no longer owed. Last October, the FTC filed a complaint against seven other fraudulent debt collectors, alleging that they had engaged in the same techniques -- demanding money from customers who owed nothing at all.
The growing number of Americans who are unable to pay their bills has meant there are more companies looking to profit from their economic difficulties.
Debt collectors have been taking more aggressive tactics as fewer people are able to make ends meet or are in a cycle of debt. More than 30 million Americans are in debt collection, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Since 2010, more than 4,000 complaints have been filed with the FTC and state attorneys general about fraudulent debt collection calls, the FTC said.
Charles Junitkka, a personal bankruptcy attorney who represents clients in the New York City area, said, "In the last few years, the desperation of the collectors and their efforts have intensified because of the economy."
This story has been updated to reflect comment from a woman who says she is the sister of Varang Thaker. Thaker himself was unavailable for comment.
First a Mr. "Mark Allen", clearly of Indian descent, phoned my cell phone three times back to back from 508-683-0014, leaving a message that I was being investigated by the legal department on a claim connected to my social security number. When I did not pick up he called me AT WORK and left two messages. I finally picked up after the second call and told him that I am fully aware that this is a scam, that if there is truly a legal matter pending then they may SERVE me and that I will be contacting the authorities and reporting them. Amazingly enough, he stopped calling.
THEN I got a call from 508-407-7251. I ignored it, knowing that area code already. She then called again. I picked up this time. She said she is with the Department of Law and Investigation. I asked for her phone number and address. She gave me the phone number in very halting manner. I then asked again for the address and she hung up. I called back. I asked WHICH department of law and investigation... state or federal. She said a "law firm". I asked WHICH law firm. She hung up again.
THEN I called her back twenty-six times in a row. She mostly just hung up straight away, but once was on long enough for me to say "I can do this all day until you listen to me..." to which she responded "Shut up!" I continued to call back until she stayed on long enough for me to tell her that if she ever called me at work again I would find out where she was and sick the biggest, meanest, nastiest attorney on her that I possibly could.