East Indian calls me and I can tell that he is speaking very poor English from a script, and he tells me that I am due a credit refund and he needs my Visa credit card number and Social Security number "for verification purposes". I can hear at least 8-10 other people talking on phones behind him. So I play along with his scam, stringing him along for about 50 minutes, giving him a random fake SSN number. I then tell him after 30 minutes that I left my Visa card at my other second home lol. I ask him if he can credit my refund back to my Diners Club card lol. Being in India, he still does not get it that I am playing with him. I then say, "Oh wait, I found my Conoco bank card lol, and read off 16 random digits. I hear him typing, trying to charge my fake credit card number, and he says it does not work. I tell him, "You typed it wrong! Here is my number again (16 random numbers), I can use my Conoco card all over the country." Finally, after almost an hour, he realizes that I was scamming his scam. More than 99% of all North America phone scams originate from crowded phone rooms in India that run numerous fraud, extortion, and money laundering scams every day ranging from fake pharmacies to posing as fake IRS officers collecting on "unpaid back taxes", fake bill collectors threatening you for overdue bills, pretending to offer fake health insurance or Social Security services, car warranty and credit card consolidation services, posing as Microsoft or HP to say that your software needs renewal or they detected a problem with your computer, falsely stating that they installed ransomware virus on your computer and you need to pay them money, etc, and the scammers try to obtain your credit card or Social Security number and personal information. Some scammers also try to gain your trust by looking up the name associated with your phone number and asking for a person by name when they call. Some India scammers also phone you with an initial pre-recorded robotic female voice speaking English to disguise their foreign call center, but then your call gets transferred to an East Indian scammer with a thick accent. India scammers do not care about the U.S. National Do-Not-Call Registry and asking scammers not to call does not work. I love to toy with these scammers and keep them on the phone by pretending to be interested in their scam because many scam victims are the senile elderly. You do these scammers a favor by yelling at them and quickly hanging up. But you ruin their scams by slowly dragging them along on the phone call and giving them fake credit card numbers and personal information. Never trust any unsolicited call because they are mostly scams, and most scam calls originate from India. No other foreign country is infested with numerous noisy sweatshops filled with phone scam criminals.

December 3, 2019