Call­ing Out A Scammer

A few years ago I had just started a new job work­ing as a G.M. for re­gional rental com­pany. Hav­ing passed all the re­quired back­ground checks, drug screens, etc.

I had been at the new job for ap­prox­i­mately two weeks. I ar­rived at work one Thurs­day morn­ing, af­ter hav­ing the pre­vi­ous day off, to the fran­tic calls of my Dis­trict Manager.

It seemed that on my day off some­one claim­ing to be a fed­eral mar­shal had called also claim­ing to have a fed­eral war­rant for my arrest.

It seemed that I had ob­tained an on­line loan which I had never re­paid. And this, it seemed, con­sti­tuted a man­hunt by the U.S. Mar­shalls ser­vice. Know­ing this is the last call a D.M. wanted to re­ceive about his newest man­ager, I in­sisted he drive to my store immediately.

Once my boss ar­rived I gath­ered him and sev­eral other cowork­ers in the back of­fice, and called the num­ber left by the ” mar­shal”. The phone was picked up on the third ring and an­swered by a man with a very thick Mid­dle East­ern ac­cent. I iden­ti­fied my­self and said I was re­turn­ing the call from the pre­vi­ous day.

The man on the phone, who would only iden­tify him­self as Mr. Smith, said he had been look­ing for me. Luck­ily for me I had sev­eral years in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try and that had made me an ex­pert on F.D.C.P.A (Fair Debt Col­lec­tion Prac­tices Act) guidelines.

So I be­gan to press for information.

When I asked for the name of the com­pany which I bor­rowed the money from, I was told that I knew what it was re­gard­ing. Any­one who is fa­mil­iar with col­lec­tion laws, know there are sev­eral guide­lines com­pa­nies would never dare break. You can only call be­tween the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m.

Non­pay­ment of a loan is gen­er­ally a civil mat­ter, not a crim­i­nal one, and you never dis­close in­for­ma­tion to a third party. Mr. Smith had al­ready bro­ken two of these car­di­nal rules, by say­ing I had ob­tained a loan that had never been re­paid and that he had a crim­i­nal fed­eral war­rant. So I went on the of­fen­sive. Press­ing for more and more information.

• I asked for Mr. Smith’s full name, and was told it was irrelevant.
• A con­tact num­ber for the al­leged debtor so I could con­tact them di­rectly, denied.
• I asked for a num­ber for the field of­fice which Mr. Smith worked out of, also denied.

Get­ting some­what frus­trated, I de­cided to try an­other tactic.

I ad­vised Mr. Smith that it was not worth the has­sle, so I would just pay the ac­count and be done with it. Mr. Smith (ob­vi­ously ex­cited) said that would clear up the mat­ter com­pletely. I asked for an ad­dress, and said I would mail out a money or­der that day.

Un­ac­cept­able, Mr. Smith ad­vised, the ac­count had to be paid right then over the phone. I said I did not have a means of pay­ing over the phone and pressed for an ad­dress again. Mr. Smith said that would not do and he would just have to come and ar­rest me. Up un­til this time I had man­aged to keep my cool. I de­cided to let Mr. Smith have it.

I ad­vised him of my fi­nan­cial ser­vices back­ground, my knowl­edge of F.D.C.P.A guide­lines, and the fact that I knew he was a scammer.

When that did not get a re­ac­tion, I be­gan with a per­sonal at­tack that would make the most hard­ened crim­i­nal blush.

In the mid­dle of my tirade Mr. Smith be­gan to laugh. He ad­vised me that he was a scam­mer that he had been do­ing it for years, and he would never be caught. He said that he was in In­dia, and that he liked me, he said if I ever de­sired a ca­reer change come find him and he would make me rich scam­ming people.

Then Mr. Smith hung up the phone.

I im­me­di­ately called back, but my num­ber had been blocked. I hung up and called back from my cell phone, Mr. Smith an­swered, I iden­ti­fied my­self, click. Over the next week I con­tin­ued to call back with dif­fer­ent num­bers, al­ways with the same re­sult. Mr. Smith an­swered, I iden­ti­fied my­self, he hung up and blocked me. I typed the num­ber into Google and was bom­barded by post of peo­ple who had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences. Some who had paid, some like me, who had not.

I never did find out for sure how the scam­mers had got­ten my in­for­ma­tion. Prob­a­bly from a so­cial me­dia site, or some­thing I had pur­chased on­line from an un-se­cure site.

[rms] Ralf Skir­r’s com­ment: When I got the of­fer for this guest post, I asked my­self: How does it fit to In­ter­net Busi­ness Mastermind.com? It’s a re­port about a truly bold tele­phone scam. So, an of­fline thing - not what this blog usu­ally is about.

But there’s a com­mon thread in all scams, whether of­fline or online: 

The in­creas­ing dis­trust and fear of be­ing scammed.

• I’ve been sent in­voices for things I never or­dered, on­line and of­fline, many times.
• Peo­ple are sent to pay­ment pages, and, in the end, get noth­ing for their money.
• We are be­ing lied to on sales pages with fab­ri­cated in­come claims, and fic­tional testimonials.
• We buy soft­ware that does­n’t work as advertised.
• Lawyers are send­ing us in­tim­i­dat­ing emails.
• We’re emailed JV of­fers that re­quire us to wire large amounts of money to ob­scure locations.
• Huge dis­counts of­ten turn out to be bla­tant lies.

And the list goes on…

What does it mean for us as free­lancers or busi­ness owners?

We need to pur­pose­fully work on build­ing trust!

I have writ­ten about cre­at­ing trust within af­fil­i­ate of­fers be­fore. Now it might be time to look at the big­ger picture.

What are the steps we can take to make our brand­ing, our web site, our sales process more trustworthy?