I just got a variant of the US Federal Grant Give Away scam. Lucky me, they wanted to give me $9,000, but said I needed to call the verification department at 646-804-7948, and gave me a 2 letter, 3 digit code to qualify. The caller claimed to be in DC at Dept of Treasury, but that # is "NWYRCYZN01 New York PUBLIC INTEREST NETWORK SERVICES, INC. - NY".
I think I disrupted her script focus, by acting ready to write down the number (she asked 3 times if I had pencil and paper; I didn't mention sitting at a PC) before she'd finished the script trying to qualify and hustle me. It was a female caller, who sounded Indian, with some several second audio dropouts, and sounds of boilerroom background noises. Claimed to be calling from DC; I generally don't trust usually forged CID via VOIP systems, but the callback number has to be real for the scam to work. She claimed the callback # was toll-free, which it sure doesn't look like. (Is there any good lookup to check for predatory huge toll rate small telco numbers? I thought most of those were offshore though, and this looks like a tiny oddball NYC company. Some scams are info harvesting or pay to get played, others just outrageous toll bills.)
The new twist on this is that when I called her out as a scammer, she said I was wasting her time, and then went into several rounds of repeating alternately "[***] off, [***] you", before hanging up. Usually I don't get that unless I ask a male who sounds like he's a Farsi or Hindi primary language speaker about how often his mother sucks elephant balls. Some of them even have the composure to say they're not allowed to respond and say what they really think of that suggestion. This female one went into that tirade merely over politely being called out as a criminal scammer, after being allowed to spend under 2 minutes trying to con me.
As if it matters, call was to a DNC listed landline, that's listed to a dead relative who died prior to 2010 (which usually draws the Medicare fake nonprofit help or back brace scammers, or generic lower interest rates (easy to recognize as scam when I carry zero balances), etc.). IOW, the quality of fake call lists is pretty poor, and my risk of being connected to real personal info lower than for some people.
I've also started to (when I don't just hang up; this one sounded like it might produce a real identifier which it did via a callback #) avoid saying "yes" or "OK" in such calls, due to the recent scams trying to record those responses and use them to "prove agreement" with various fake purchases and related scams.
800 Notes needs a "Scam" call type option, as this common scam pattern doesn't match any available choices. Also, maybe non-profit needs a variant, of fake non-profit.
I just got a variant of the US Federal Grant Give Away scam. Lucky me, they wanted to give me $9,000, but said I needed to call the verification department at 646-804-7948, and gave me a 2 letter, 3 digit code to qualify. The caller claimed to be in DC at Dept of Treasury, but that # is "NWYRCYZN01 New York PUBLIC INTEREST NETWORK SERVICES, INC. - NY".
I think I disrupted her script focus, by acting ready to write down the number (she asked 3 times if I had pencil and paper; I didn't mention sitting at a PC) before she'd finished the script trying to qualify and hustle me. It was a female caller, who sounded Indian, with some several second audio dropouts, and sounds of boilerroom background noises. Claimed to be calling from DC; I generally don't trust usually forged CID via VOIP systems, but the callback number has to be real for the scam to work. She claimed the callback # was toll-free, which it sure doesn't look like. (Is there any good lookup to check for predatory huge toll rate small telco numbers? I thought most of those were offshore though, and this looks like a tiny oddball NYC company. Some scams are info harvesting or pay to get played, others just outrageous toll bills.)
The new twist on this is that when I called her out as a scammer, she said I was wasting her time, and then went into several rounds of repeating alternately "[***] off, [***] you", before hanging up. Usually I don't get that unless I ask a male who sounds like he's a Farsi or Hindi primary language speaker about how often his mother sucks elephant balls. Some of them even have the composure to say they're not allowed to respond and say what they really think of that suggestion. This female one went into that tirade merely over politely being called out as a criminal scammer, after being allowed to spend under 2 minutes trying to con me.
As if it matters, call was to a DNC listed landline, that's listed to a dead relative who died prior to 2010 (which usually draws the Medicare fake nonprofit help or back brace scammers, or generic lower interest rates (easy to recognize as scam when I carry zero balances), etc.). IOW, the quality of fake call lists is pretty poor, and my risk of being connected to real personal info lower than for some people.
I've also started to (when I don't just hang up; this one sounded like it might produce a real identifier which it did via a callback #) avoid saying "yes" or "OK" in such calls, due to the recent scams trying to record those responses and use them to "prove agreement" with various fake purchases and related scams.
800 Notes needs a "Scam" call type option, as this common scam pattern doesn't match any available choices. Also, maybe non-profit needs a variant, of fake non-profit.