Be Aware of a Crazy Scam

[Ryan&Amber2013]

I share this because it even took my wife and me about 10 minutes on the phone with these people to finally realize it was a scam.

So I'm out back cleaning up the yard, my wife comes out saying this is the craziest phone call and needs help. We live in South Carolina now, but moved from Florida about 4 years ago. There's a Florida number that called, and she doesn't normally take those calls, but it said public service, so she figured why not just to see what it was about. It was a person on the line that stated they were from the police department, and it had to do with a jury summons, that the form was signed stating that she was going to be there, and never showed up, so they had to begin the process of legal action. I mean, the people on the phone were so authentic and real, they were transferring us to the supposed commander, they asked us to call back a number to verify that this was real, they were trying to be compassionate and helpful. They were trying to tell us that somebody might have forged her name by accident for jury duty and it now needed to be taken care of before a warrant was actually issued.

It was just so crazy how real it all seemed, but the longer we were on the phone with them the more we were picking up on red flags. They started talking about how we can pay $450 to get the case frozen, and things like that. My wife was doing research when I was talking to them, and we found out that this is a real scam going around the nation right now. The two things are that in such a case there would never be a phone call, it would all be handled by mail, and the other is that nobody would request payment over the phone.

But all this to say, be careful, because there are some really tactful criminals out there right now.

 

[Eyedoc84]

I've had this call before. Anytime someone calls me and asks for information, I say, "You called me, so any info you need you should already have, otherwise I'll call you." And when they say they are from the police/sheriff office I say, "if you need me you can send an officer out to talk or you can send me certified mail," and when they ask for info, I default to my first response.

 

[gdoug]

I had a similar call several months ago. Having my full name, DoB, address, and social security number read out to me gave me quite a scare; they had me going for a bit before I realized how sketchy it was and hung up.

 

[SojourningSøren]

It’s terrible how frequent these sorts of things are getting. I hate it. I’m glad you were able to avoid the trouble!

 

[DNM300]

I have recently had folks scam calling me, pretending to be from my bank. Crazy thing is, they were able to make the caller ID show on my device as the actual bank name AND phone number. Spooky stuff.

Thanks for putting this on our radar!

 

[lunarWood]

My default is to just not answer any caller that I do not know, and force them to leave a voicemail.

If the call is somehow real, they will call you back.

 

[hammondjones]

These types of information-heavy scams are quite serious, and evil, especially when they target the older of us. My mother has received a call impersonating me (asking for money urgently). With AI it is increasingly easy to replicate a person's voice.

 

[jhcampbell]

My default is to just not answer any caller that I do not know, and force them to leave a voicemail.

If the call is somehow real, they will call you back.

It is the practice of the majority of scammers to continue calling a number day by day until they get a response. Just because a number calls you back doesn’t mean it’s real. I know this by experience

 

[Frisian Gardener]

For entertainment purposes only

 

[Edward]

It's not wise to bait a scammer. They may decide to SWAT you.

Some of the other common scams

Text about unpaid tolls.
Nephew / Cousin / Grandchild in trouble in a foreign country
Anything asking you to go buy Amazon or other gift cards.
Check overpayment scams

Everyone should know about the Nigerian Prince scam by now. At least you get a pretty stamp with that one, and it only works on the greedy.

And the biggest one is run by local governments. Red light camera tickets. You may well lose but make them work for the money.

 

[lunarWood]

It is the practice of the majority of scammers to continue calling a number day by day until they get a response. Just because a number calls you back doesn’t mean it’s real. I know this by experience

Interesting. I suppose you get some persistent scammers down there in Texas. I haven’t had many of those up here.

 

[RamistThomist]

I recommend the youtube channel Scammer Payback.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Yeah, it's crazy that happened. My wife and I were just talking about how in the past couple years the scams have become so much more sophisticated.

 

[Theoretical]

A law school friend trolled a scammer for a full year, leading the guy on to build a 10 foot pyramid in his backyard, get arrested in Chad crossing borders for a meeting, get a giant tattoo on his chest, and still more. The scammer was impersonating an orphanage and my friend’s rage hit very high levels.

This same friend carried on a different counterscam as a Polish pig farmer selling Kosher pigs…

 

[Ryan&Amber2013]

May God have mercy on them. They are heading straight for destruction. Those people live daily life trying to lie, deceive, and steal as much as they can. I was even telling the guy over the phone that we live in another state and have four young children, and no family in South Carolina to help us out right now, so if the call was real that would put us in a really bad situation. Rather than just apologizing, there were more fear tactics and even threats of detainment from local law enforcement if she got pulled over. I mean that is extremely sick. It makes you wonder how those people even sleep at night. If they don't repent judgment day is surely coming.

 

[Theoretical]

They may decide to SWAT you

This is a big concern.

My friend to do his counterscamming used a burner phone number and counterattacked someone else’s reported scam. Even that’s very iffy if they get mad enough.

 

[Theoretical]

May God have mercy on them. They are heading straight for destruction. Those people live daily life trying to lie, deceive, and steal as much as they can. I was even telling the guy over the phone that we live in another state and have four young children, and no family in South Carolina to help us out right now, so if the call was real that would put us in a really bad situation. Rather than just apologizing, there were more fear tactics and even threats of detainment from local law enforcement if she got pulled over. I mean that is extremely sick. It makes you wonder how those people even sleep at night. If they don't repent judgment day is surely coming.

There’s also a sizeable number of them held hostage or semi-hostage in trafficking situations.

 

[Taahanni]

My brother-in-law had this happen to him a few months ago. The “police department” called my sister saying that there was a warrant out for his arrest because he didn’t show up to a court hearing for some minor crime he never committed. They read out a lot of his identifying info (DOB, age, address, etc), and the man read out his “badge number” and gave a lot of credentials, and my sister was having intense anxiety over this because they sounded legitimate. When she told me about it, I told her she needs to contact the sheriffs department herself and tell them what is going on. Sure enough, the sheriffs department said more scams like that are happening.

 

[ZackF]

I throw every dodgy or unsure link or number that I get in an LLM or screenshot it in and throw it in. Never lets me down.

 

[Eyedoc84]

LLM?

 

[Theoretical]

Chat-GPT/Claude-ing it

 

[Edward]

LLM?

Large Language Model - fancy name for AI - can analyze blocks of texts, instead of working at the word level.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

My kids know that if they get a call or text involving money, debt, the government, law enforcement, or some supposed emergency, they talk to me before they respond to it. I think that is a good rule for families generally, especially because these scams have become much more sophisticated.

One thing people need to understand is that the incoming communication does not authenticate itself. A caller knowing your full name, address, date of birth, or even Social Security number does not prove anything. Neither does caller ID showing the police department, your bank, the IRS, or a courthouse. Caller ID can be spoofed, and scammers increasingly have enough breached or publicly available information to sound remarkably convincing. Federal courts specifically warn that scammers use real names of judges and officials, legitimate addresses, badge numbers, case numbers, and spoofed government telephone numbers.

The jury-duty scam in this thread is a particularly good example. Federal courts say that most communication with prospective jurors comes through the U.S. mail. They do not call or email prospective jurors asking for money or sensitive information, and they do not serve an arrest warrant over the telephone. If there actually is a warrant, it is served in person.

Debt collection is slightly different, but there is still a formal validation process. A legitimate collector generally must provide information identifying the creditor, the debt, the collector, and the means of disputing it during the initial communication or shortly afterward. If somebody calls demanding immediate payment, there is no reason to settle anything on that call. Get the information and independently verify it.

I would extend the same rule to apparently official emails. Do not use the link, phone number, or attachment in the message to verify the message. That is the trap. If Bank of America supposedly emails me about my account, I open the banking app myself or type the bank's known address into my browser. If the IRS supposedly contacts me, I go independently to IRS.gov. If a court calls about jury service, I look up the Clerk of Court myself and call that number. The FTC specifically recommends this approach.

Even the "From" name, logo, signature block, and professional-looking formatting of an email prove very little. Check the actual sender address, but don't rely on that alone either. Don't click an unexpected link just because hovering over it looks plausible. Don't open an unexpected attachment. Go around the message entirely and enter the organization's normal system through a path you already trust.

A few household rules eliminate an awful lot of this:

• Nobody pays an unexpected demand during the call or conversation that delivered it.
• Nobody gives out passwords, Social Security numbers, banking information, or authentication codes to someone who contacted them.
• Nobody approves an unexpected MFA notification.
• Gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, or "move your money somewhere safe" are enormous red flags.
• Urgency, threats, secrecy, and instructions to "stay on the line" are reasons to stop, not reasons to hurry.
• Hang up and independently contact the supposed organization using a number or website you already know is legitimate.
• For the "your child/grandchild is in trouble" scam, call that person directly on a known number. A family code word is not a bad additional safeguard now that voice cloning is becoming easier.

And use MFA on important accounts, preferably the strongest method available rather than SMS when possible. CISA recommends MFA and strong, unique passwords managed with a password manager as basic defenses against account compromise.

The habit I try to teach is simple: break the communication channel. The person who contacted you does not get to tell you how to verify that he is legitimate. Hang up, close the email, ignore the text, and independently establish contact through a channel you trust. A legitimate organization can survive five minutes while you verify who it is. A scammer is usually desperate to keep you from doing exactly that.

 

[DanSSwing]

They're doing that a lot in Greenville now, even using the name of a real police officer there. I recommended offering to meet them on the 18th green when the sprinklers come on.

 

[DanSSwing]

I throw every dodgy or unsure link or number that I get in an LLM or screenshot it in and throw it in. Never lets me down.

I recently put an app called Cloaked on my phone. Haven't had a spam call in two months. It blocks them every time. I had been getting about two per day.

 

[Andres]

I can't believe people answer their phones for any caller they don't recognize. If you're not saved in my phone, I'm not answering.

 

[ZackF]

I can't believe people answer their phones for any caller they don't recognize. If you're not saved in my phone, I'm not answering.

Or click on a link you don’t know!!! Thats so 1998.

 

[Gforce9]

I have a call blocker and its set to reject every call from any number not in my contacts. Maybe I miss an important call or two, but the political calls go straight to Sherwood Forest.......