A couple of friends of mine both got emails from the same scam, one that requires one of the scammers to actually meet with the scammed. They talked with lawenforcement at every level, including people from the post office and even treasury. They really wanted to help set up the person who would actually meet with the sap and were willing to take the time to play along. You can guess how much interest they got from the cops - the state police flat out told them not to communicate with the scammers and definitely not to try cashing the "check" that had been sent to them - even if they were to inform the police beforehand, because doing so would leave them open to prosecution.

So the police wouldn't lift a fucking finger to actually hit the assholes trying to get someone else in trouble, but they would definitely be all over someone who followed through with the scam in the interest of trying to bust the perpetrators.

My mom has recently set out on a campaign to nail someone who has tried to scam her and my dad similarly. She simply can't believe me when I try to make it clear this is a completely futile fucking effort.

And they wonder how some of us can get so bitterly jaded...

People have a really overblown idea of what government regulators and the cops will do for you. My calls to the Comptroller of the Currency, in hopes of exposing Bank of America's "security" measures that seem to endanger millions of their customers, have become almost comical. I talked to Kevin Mukri, the head of their press office the other day, after they transferred me from John C. Dugan's office (to get rid of me -- he's the head of the place). Mukri suggested I write a note to Dugan to get the complaint some attention. I'm a newspaper columnist, desperately trying to keep my head above water as newspapers carrying me are going out of business. Perish forbid somebody who works for the Comptroller might actually do something Comptroller-related.

> People have a really overblown idea of
> what government regulators and the cops
> will do for you.

Government regulation is discussed elsewhere, but the cops thing is right on. Especially with immigrants, specifically upper-class immigrants from distant cultures... In my experience, they think that since they're finally in a country where the cops aren't owned and operated by the local junta chieftain for Village Big Man, that they finally have their own personal plaything of muscular intimidation which they can deploy at will....

...OK, maybe I'm extrapolating too much from just a few experiences.

The authorities are no help, we have to help ourselves. Gregg is right. The way to shut down this marketing is to invest some time to tie up their personnel. Their operations depend on intelligent people not answering the automated call. Their auto-dialers probably call 100 people to get one gullible response. They depend on spending no human time talking to the thousands of people who they irritate and cannot lure into a transaction. From now on, I will always press 1 to talk to someone. Sometimes, I ask them to wait a minute while I turn off something, and lay the phone down for a few minutes.

Telemarketers with No Number or Location

Here's the rub.

Even if you COULD locate them, they're outside the US. Which means nobody is going to give a rat's ass about prosecuting.

You'll never get a warranty, by the way. If you do anything that makes them suspect you don't intend to make with the credit card number, they hang up on you. It's a phishing scheme, pure and simple.

They won't do anything even IN the US, Brian-

We busted a woman from a small company using my hubby's Visa number after he ordered machine parts from her company for his work. Seems she went shopping immediately after he hung up with her; one of the vendors she ordered from called him with a question (why the hell she gave his number we'll never know but are thankful for her stupidity) and he put the kabosh on it. The other vendors she ordered from never pressed charges. The credit card company did nothing. We tried to, but to no avail. She's in New Joisey, we're in Illinois. Cops wouldn't do anything on either end, they took the reports and told us point blank nothing was going to happen, the dollar amount wasn't big enough. We called her employer. No joy there either, come to find out, she works for Daddy. After a while, they stopped answering their phones.

It's an unfortunate fact of life these days, but telemarketers and collection agencies started using bogus numbers on their Caller ID years ago when Anonymous Call Rejection started to be offered. As a previous comment said, any PBX can be programmed to send out any number as the Caller ID number. They don't even need a PBX. A key system, T1 pipe, there are many ways to get around Caller ID. Caller ID is not the same thing as the number on the line.

If you get a call from a number you don't recognize, DON'T ANSWER IT. If they meant to call you, they'll leave a message. If they leave a recorded message just erase it and forget it. Do not call back the number that showed up. Chances are it's not the number of the outfit that called you. Chances are good that it's some poor schmuck who has no connection to it. Especially do not call back any 8YY number that shows up. 800 numbers are free for you to call them, but they are NOT free for the person who owns the 800 number. They have to pay for every call they get. So not only do these poor people have to put up with irate strangers calling them demanding they stop making phone calls they never made, they have to pay for it!

Even if it's not an 8YY number, it could be someone's cell phone and they get charged for the minutes on the incoming call.

If it's a fax, remember that any fax can be programmed with any number and any header. So do not harass some company just because you think the call is coming from them because of what's in the fax header.

The best way to deal with it, unfortunately, is to treat it the same way you would spam. We should all be savvy enough these days to understand that the worst possible thing you can do with spam is to reply to it. All that does is let the spammer know that out of the millions of emails they sent out, yours is a real one. It's the same thing with these phone calls most of the time. They use auto dialers and dial thousands of calls every half hour. They do not use the phone book or public phone listings, so having a non pub number doesn't spare you.

If it's a collection agency? If you owe the money, pay it. If it's a relative who owes the money? Give the damn collection agency their number. I'll never understand people who bitch and moan about rude collection agents calling them looking for their brother or their father. Either don't admit you know the person, or give them their damn number. Once they know you're related to the person they're looking for they'll never leave you alone.

Jaynie -

I'll never understand people who bitch and moan about rude collection agents calling them looking for their brother or their father. Either don't admit you know the person, or give them their damn number. Once they know you're related to the person they're looking for they'll never leave you alone.

They leave me alone and I will not give any asshole the contact info for my friends and family. If I don't know the person, I don't give out the information - period. And I make it absolutely clear that I will never do so. I have absolutely no reason to assume that the person calling me is a collection agent or a scammer - even if they know particulars about outstanding debts.

Someone who worked for one the lenders my brothers dealt with, took a listing of credit reports that had the social security numbers redacted and started trying to get the soci numbers by claiming to be a collection agent. He worked for a third party contractor who was vetting potential borrowers, which is why he had credit reports, sans soci numbers. That particular gent did get prosecuted, but only because his employer insisted and threw in charges of their own.