Elzeothis - There is a really good posting under number 213-784-4847 by LAMET. A good amount of background info and links to news stories covering these scam artists. Further down in the post are good instructions for filing complaints with all of the pertinent agencies and links to their pages. You could also try telling them that they are in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (full PDF copy here http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf) This is some long reading but does give you some leverage...with me they have pretty much violated all the rules about contacting a third party. I don't think they really care, since this is a scam and they are operating illegally anyway, but I think they are less likely to deal with people who know the law and are not intimidated by their ridiculous threats. And if you tell them they are in violation of the FDCPA maybe they will just give up. From what I've read with other people's postings it doesn't look good though - some people being harassed for over a year!! Educating the public is the best thing we can do - tell all of you friends and family what to look out for so they know how to recognize these scam calls and make sure they never give out any personal information or payment information to these vultures!
Received a phone call at work from this phone number last Thursday looking for a co-worker. This has all the hallmarks of the payday loan scams I've read about under different names and phone #s (Hudson Law Firm, Federal Investigation Bureau, etc.) Woman with heavy India accent asking me if I knew [co-worker's name] and that they had a law suit filed against their social security number for bank fraud. I told her that she was contacting me at my place of business and asked to speak to a supervisor. She started to re-read her script and I repeated that she was contacting me at my place of business and asked again to speak to a supervisor. I was then transferred to "James" who gave me the telephone # and said it was the Law Office of Shawn Woods. I didn't answer any of their questions but told them there were not allowed to contact me at work again. They called back several times in the next 30 minutes and I just hung up each time. I spent a good amount of time researching online to see if I could find any information for Shawn Woods the lawyer. So today again out of curiosity I searched again and LO AND BEHOLD, Shawn Woods has a website now! (http://lawofficeofshawnwoods.com/Online_Placement.html) This website is almost comical - spellings of "Newyork" throughout the page, Economic News links that don't actually link to anything, and pretty much the same information on all of the different pages. Now they do list an address - 101 New York Ave #204 Halesite, NY 11743 - it would be interesting if there is any legitimate business actually at that spot. The page claims that Shawn Woods "was announced to The Newyork Bar in May of 1992" however if you use the New York Bar's search engine there is no lawyer listed under that name...and I searched S. Woods and S. Wood just to make sure. I have not received any other calls from them since Thursday, however after reading everything else posted about this scam I expect this to be an on-going problem for awhile!
I didn't make it clear in my first post but I couldn't find anything about the Law Office of Sean Woods when I was searching Thursday but now 5 days later he has his own website.
I just recieved a note from someone at my office saying that Charles Taylor had called stating he was trying to reach me about the message I left him. I did not call anyone with that name and when I prompted my co-worker for more information she told me he had hung up. He called back about 20 minutes later and stated that he was with the law offices of John Wu and gave the call back number of 631-456-4041. I asked my co-worker to tell him not to call anymore and he hung up. I googled the number and saw that it is located in Ontario and the only 2 law offices of John Wu I could find were in California (Immigration Lawyer) and Oak Brook, IL. The California lawyer checks out, but the other "Lawyer" has no website and the only information I can find on the web directs me to the Main office at 104 Saint Francis Circle in Oak Brook, IL. I google street viewed it and it's a house in a residential area....
So these guys are really crawling up my butt, claiming there is a pending lawsuit against me in the state of New York. Again, everyone at their 'office' talks with a very, very heavy Indian accent - and one of their inbound calls showed up with a california number (714-408-4460, out of Anaheim according to reverse number lookup). They insist I now owe 667 dollars on a defunct payday loan from five years ago. I am not sure how to interpret this or even if I should take it realistically? Does anyone have any advice/suggestions? (Also, they told me the company that does their billing is listed as 'ACS' out of Canada... That sounds pretty shady, when combined with everything else...)
Elzeothis - There is a really good posting under number 213-784-4847 by LAMET. A good amount of background info and links to news stories covering these scam artists. Further down in the post are good instructions for filing complaints with all of the pertinent agencies and links to their pages. You could also try telling them that they are in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (full PDF copy here http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf) This is some long reading but does give you some leverage...with me they have pretty much violated all the rules about contacting a third party. I don't think they really care, since this is a scam and they are operating illegally anyway, but I think they are less likely to deal with people who know the law and are not intimidated by their ridiculous threats. And if you tell them they are in violation of the FDCPA maybe they will just give up. From what I've read with other people's postings it doesn't look good though - some people being harassed for over a year!! Educating the public is the best thing we can do - tell all of you friends and family what to look out for so they know how to recognize these scam calls and make sure they never give out any personal information or payment information to these vultures!