I have been receiving the same calls daily, telling me that I need to call TODAY, me or my lawyer to resolve a matter where my personal information has been compromised. Some of the calls are from an area 45 mins away from where I live in Arkansas, and the others are from Alabama, Colorado, and Tennessee with the SAME voice robotic recording, pretty much demanding you to make contact.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the nation's consumer protection agency, is warning consumers to be on the alert for scam artists posing as debt collectors. It may be hard to tell the difference between a legitimate debt collector and a fake one. Sometimes a fake collector may even have some of your personal information, like a bank account number. A caller may be a fake debt collector if he:
•is seeking payment on a debt for a loan you do not recognize;
•refuses to give you a mailing address or phone number;
•asks you for personal financial or sensitive information; or
•exerts high pressure to try to scare you into paying, such as threatening to have you arrested or to report you to a law enforcement agency.
If you think that a caller may be a fake debt collector:
•Ask the caller for his name, company, street address, and telephone number. Tell the caller that you refuse to discuss any debt until you get a written "validation notice." The notice must include the amount of the debt, the name of the creditor you owe, and your rights under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
If a caller refuses to give you all of this information, do not pay! Paying a fake debt collector will not always make them go away. They may make up another debt to try to get more money from you.•Stop speaking with the caller. If you have the caller's address, send a letter demanding that the caller stop contacting you, and keep a copy for your files. By law, real debt collectors must stop calling you if you ask them to in writing.
•Do not give the caller personal financial or other sensitive information. Never give out or confirm personal financial or other sensitive information like your bank account, credit card, or Social Security number unless you know whom you're dealing with. Scam artists, like fake debt collectors, can use your information to commit identity theft – charging your existing credit cards, opening new credit card, checking, or savings accounts, writing fraudulent checks, or taking out loans in your name.
•Contact your creditor. If the debt is legitimate – but you think the collector may not be – contact your creditor about the calls. Share the information you have about the suspicious calls and find out who, if anyone, the creditor has authorized to collect the debt.
•Report the call. Contact the FTC and your state Attorney General's office with information about suspicious callers. Many states have their own debt collection laws in addition to the federal FDCPA. Your Attorney General's office can help you determine your rights under your state's law.
Called my phone saying the same thing. They called my job and when asked what loan company they represent they hung up. Called police they said it was a scam have had numerous complaints about this number and gave me a number to call to report it. They ran me in the computer and said there was nothing anywhere I was being charged with or it would be in the data base. Idiots think they are so slick. Get a life.
They called me again on my business phone. I'm busy and tired of getting these scam calls. So I took 15 minutes and called them back repeatedly. Can you believe one of them said "quit calling us!" WOW. I told her, let's make a deal, you quit calling me and I'll quite calling you! Besides being annoying, it's nothing more than a phishing scam. DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY! They will not give you a mailing address because THEY ARE CROOKS! I say we bombard them with phone calls tying up their lines. Or, get an airhorn and blast it in their ear when they answer!
My husband and I have been receiving simultaneous threatening call from this numbet and two others saying I have two charges of fraud, today Now I have officially been notified apparently, this has been going on for two weeks and is getting old, they change numbers but its the same message, these peiple need to be stopped!!!