A New Phone Scam Is Making the Rounds

[c.d.]

For my American friends. A new phone scam is very big right now. I've gotten a few calls already. "The Social Security Administration" calls you to tell you that your Social Security number has been suspended due to suspicious activity. They want you to give them your number and information to verify your identity so they can reinstate your S.S. number. Don't fall for it.

c.d.

[Simon Wood]

I got one of these calls. "Holy Cow," I said, "let me get my SS card."

A minute passed.

"Okay, got it," I said. "Have you got a pen?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply.

"Good," I said. "Now stick it up your arse."

[Ginger]

For my American friends. A new phone scam is very big right now. I've gotten a few calls already. "The Social Security Administration" calls you to tell you that your Social Security number has been suspended due to suspicious activity. They want you to give them your number and information to verify your identity so they can reinstate your S.S. number. Don't fall for it.

c.d.

Honestly, those are so easy to steal anyway, that I'm surprised anyone would resort to such a clumsy method.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I got one of these calls. "Holy Cow," I said, "let me get my SS card."

A minute passed.

"Okay, got it," I said. "Have you got a pen?"

"Yes, sir," came the reply.

"Good," I said. "Now stick it up your arse."

[Svensson]

I got one of these calls. "Holy Cow," I said, "let me get my SS card."

Phew, as a German, I immediately thought of something else...

My bad....

[Simon Wood]

No, Trump hasn't got us quite that far. But he's trying.

[Gordon]

This robocall nonsense has gotten so bad that I don’t even answer a call from any unknown number any more. I just let it run to voicemail or the answering machine.

If it’s important, they’ll leave a message, right? Then I can judge whether it’s “important” or not!

I was intrigued recently by a number of robocalls in Mandarin Chinese, of all things! I can’t pretend to speak the language, but I could tell from the sound of it--a female voice singing “ing-tong, ing-tong, ing-tong.” What a giggle! What on earth were they advertising? Was it legitimate or not?

It turns out the answer was “NOT”! It’s some complicated scam--well, never mind the details, anyone who’s interested can read them here:

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10/609117134/chinese-robocalls-bombarding-the-u-s-are-part-of-an-international-phone-scam

I must confess, I’m disappointed in our Chinese friends. They’re a pretty decent bunch on the whole, so I would have expected more integrity from them. From some quarters of the world we do admittedly expect more dishonesty. Especially the poor, to whom robbery and fraud may seem the only way of getting ahead. In spite of which I have to question why Nigeria more than anywhere seems to spawn so many fraudsters

Nigeria seems to be the fraud capital of the world! So many scams seem to originate in Nigeria, “romance scams” especially, people posing as “lovers” on the Internet and conning men and women “desperate for love” out of their hard-earned life savings. It’s a huge industry. What’s so weird about it is that their sphere of operation isn’t limited to Nigeria. There are Nigerians working frauds in places as far afield as Australia and (would you believe) Malaysia--and of course the United States. Just the other day the Feds busted up a huge fraud ring run especially by Nigerians:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/massive-international-fraud-and-money-laundering-conspiracy-detailed-federal-grand-jury

Why is it always Nigerians? Why not Kenyans or Congolese or Brazilians or Indonesians or Russians or...? Well, you get the idea! It must be something in the air or the water of Nigeria that corrupts people and turns them into frauds. Or else there’s a Fraud School operating in Lagos or Abuja or wherever to which all aspiring con artists from other nations flock for training in their career of choice.

Although I’ve got better things to do than waste my time answering junk calls, I must confess to a certain curiosity about how some of these scams operate. One of the calls I keep getting is from some outfit that pretends to be from a company to whom I’ve subscribed for some computer-related service that’s now “gone out of business” and wants to give me a refund for the unused portion of my subscription. I know perfectly well this has to be a scam of some kind, because I don’t know of any such service. So I’ve never bothered to call them back. In spite of that I couldn’t help wondering how their scam operates. How could they rook their victims, if all they were offering was a refund? They couldn’t be asking for money in return for that, could they?

Fortunately this is one area where the Internet is a mine of information. I gather that what they’re asking for is the victim’s bank account number in order to deposit this supposed “refund” to the victim’s credit. Needless to say, “credit” is the last thing these robbers have in mind Well, silly me! I missed that one! I guess I don’t have a “criminal mind”! If anyone wants my bank account number, they can stuff it up their arse! Still, as long as we keep our eyes and ears open for anything “out of the ordinary,” that “doesn’t compute””--Gavin de Becker’s book The Gift of Fear. about the power of intuition, can be valuable--we can protect ourselves.