FAKE fundraising scam asking for donations that they keep for themselves. This is a fake charity fundraising scam! 99% of these unsolicited phone calls from fake charity fundraisers that pretend to raise money for veterans, police, firefighters, breast cancer, leukemia, diseases, autism, schools, NRA, PACs, political organizations, disabled, poverty, hunger, and other seemingly worthy causes are ALL SCAMS!! If you want to donate to these causes, do your own research and never trust unsolicited callers, research the Charity Navigator website, and you will find reputable charities that actually donate most of the collected money to the actual cause that they represent. All these other fake fundraising scams rotate through various charity causes every day and keep all of the collected money for themselves, some of these fake fundraisers purposely overcharge your credit card thousands of dollars and then disappear, and they all really ruin the trust that people have for the reputable charities. Anyone can phone you from anywhere in the world and tell you that they are raising money for some worthy cause, but charity fundraising fraud phone scams are extremely common, very easy to do, and your contributed money goes directly to the fraudsters instead. Many of these fake fundraising scammers use automated interactive voice response (IVR) software that sounds very human, but you are initially talking to a software robot who asks you some questions and responds based on your replies before transferring you to the real scammer who steals your credit card number under the pretense of raising money for many fake charities. The human scammer often says they will mail you an envelope so you can mail your donation in, but then they immediately still ask for your credit card number. The robot caller usually begins the call with either a pleasant female voice or a stern male voice asking, "Hi, this is (fake_name), how are you doing today?", "Hi, is the head of the household there?", or "Hi, is (your first name) there?" Scammers often use IVR robo-dialing to automatically match the name that the robot asks for on the phone call to the name that is associated with millions of phone numbers and addresses on phone marketing databases that anyone can purchase. Many of the thousands of India and Philippines phone scammers also use these same phone databases and they often ask for you by name to sound like a personal phone call to gain your trust. If you reply "No, John is not here" or "No, you have the wrong number", the IVR robot is programmed to say "Maybe you can help me" and still ask you for a scam donation. All of these IVR robot-based fundraising scams have been robo-dialing using the same IVR software voices and scripted dialogues for years now, just slightly adjusting their initial presentations for each fake charity. During the holiday months of November/December, these scammers may change their IVR recordings to say they are fundraising for cancer research, autism, veterans, etc. During other times, they pretend to raise money for police, NRA, PACs, political organizations, schools, etc. More than 90% of all North America scam phone calls originate from crowded phone rooms in India and the Philippines that run numerous fraud, extortion, and money laundering scams every day. Some fake charity donation scams are also run by American scammers. Like all the other Indian and Filipino scammers, these fake donation scams spoof thousands of fake Caller ID names and numbers so you can never call them back on the fake number that shows up on Caller ID. Nowadays, NEVER trust any unsolicited caller who supposedly represents a charity, a pharmacy, a Medicare or car/health/life insurance offer, a computer support person saying your computer has a virus, a fake robotic recording of a Social Security or IRS officer saying your Social Security has been suspended or you have unpaid back taxes, a fake debt collector threatening you for fake debts, a fake recording from Amazon/Microsoft/Apple/Verizon/AT&T/bank, anyone who phones you with any kind of sales offer (more than 90% of unsolicited sales calls are scams so your odds of saving money are very poor), any kind of legal or arrest threats, any claims of suspicious activity on an account, any claims of refunds or auto-renewed/auto-debited accounts, and any pre-recorded messages. Any unsolicited caller with a foreign accent (nearly always Indian or Filipino) should immediately be treated as a scam until carefully proven otherwise. Scammers usually use VoIP phone numbers or spoof fake Caller ID numbers that they frequently change every day. Legitimate businesses never use hundreds of area codes and tens of thousands of fake Caller ID phone numbers where you cannot call them back. They are all FAKE and they all try to steal your credit card or Social Security numbers, or they ask for your bank and personal identity information. Anyone, including you, can use telecom software or a third-party service to phone using fake names and phone numbers that show up on Caller ID. It is really very simple and easy to avoid phone and email scams - if you assume all unsolicited calls are malicious in intent, you will never be scammed and have thousands of dollars or your identity stolen from you. Sometimes I love to play with these scammers by pretending to be a gullible target and stringing them along on the phone call for 30 or 60 minutes so I can at least waste their time and prevent them from scamming someone else while I cook and eat and toy with them.

July 6, 2024

FAKE fundraising scam asking for donations that they keep for themselves. This is a fake charity fundraising scam! 99% of these unsolicited phone calls from fake charity fundraisers that pretend to raise money for veterans, police, firefighters, breast cancer, leukemia, diseases, autism, schools, NRA, PACs, political organizations, disabled, poverty, hunger, and other seemingly worthy causes are ALL SCAMS!! If you want to donate to these causes, do your own research and never trust unsolicited callers, research the Charity Navigator website, and you will find reputable charities that actually donate most of the collected money to the actual cause that they represent. All these other fake fundraising scams rotate through various charity causes every day and keep all of the collected money for themselves, some of these fake fundraisers purposely overcharge your credit card thousands of dollars and then disappear, and they all really ruin the trust that people have for the reputable charities. Anyone can phone you from anywhere in the world and tell you that they are raising money for some worthy cause, but charity fundraising fraud phone scams are extremely common, very easy to do, and your contributed money goes directly to the fraudsters instead. Many of these fake fundraising scammers use automated interactive voice response (IVR) software that sounds very human, but you are initially talking to a software robot who asks you some questions and responds based on your replies before transferring you to the real scammer who steals your credit card number under the pretense of raising money for many fake charities. The human scammer often says they will mail you an envelope so you can mail your donation in, but then they immediately still ask for your credit card number. The robot caller usually begins the call with either a pleasant female voice or a stern male voice asking, "Hi, this is (fake_name), how are you doing today?", "Hi, is the head of the household there?", or "Hi, is (your first name) there?" Scammers often use IVR robo-dialing to automatically match the name that the robot asks for on the phone call to the name that is associated with millions of phone numbers and addresses on phone marketing databases that anyone can purchase. Many of the thousands of India and Philippines phone scammers also use these same phone databases and they often ask for you by name to sound like a personal phone call to gain your trust. If you reply "No, John is not here" or "No, you have the wrong number", the IVR robot is programmed to say "Maybe you can help me" and still ask you for a scam donation. All of these IVR robot-based fundraising scams have been robo-dialing using the same IVR software voices and scripted dialogues for years now, just slightly adjusting their initial presentations for each fake charity. During the holiday months of November/December, these scammers may change their IVR recordings to say they are fundraising for cancer research, autism, veterans, etc. During other times, they pretend to raise money for police, NRA, PACs, political organizations, schools, etc. More than 90% of all North America scam phone calls originate from crowded phone rooms in India and the Philippines that run numerous fraud, extortion, and money laundering scams every day. Some fake charity donation scams are also run by American scammers. Like all the other Indian and Filipino scammers, these fake donation scams spoof thousands of fake Caller ID names and numbers so you can never call them back on the fake number that shows up on Caller ID. Nowadays, NEVER trust any unsolicited caller who supposedly represents a charity, a pharmacy, a Medicare or car/health/life insurance offer, a computer support person saying your computer has a virus, a fake robotic recording of a Social Security or IRS officer saying your Social Security has been suspended or you have unpaid back taxes, a fake debt collector threatening you for fake debts, a fake recording from Amazon/Microsoft/Apple/Verizon/AT&T/bank, anyone who phones you with any kind of sales offer (more than 90% of unsolicited sales calls are scams so your odds of saving money are very poor), any kind of legal or arrest threats, any claims of suspicious activity on an account, any claims of refunds or auto-renewed/auto-debited accounts, and any pre-recorded messages. Any unsolicited caller with a foreign accent (nearly always Indian or Filipino) should immediately be treated as a scam until carefully proven otherwise. Scammers usually use VoIP phone numbers or spoof fake Caller ID numbers that they frequently change every day. Legitimate businesses never use hundreds of area codes and tens of thousands of fake Caller ID phone numbers where you cannot call them back. They are all FAKE and they all try to steal your credit card or Social Security numbers, or they ask for your bank and personal identity information. Anyone, including you, can use telecom software or a third-party service to phone using fake names and phone numbers that show up on Caller ID. It is really very simple and easy to avoid phone and email scams - if you assume all unsolicited calls are malicious in intent, you will never be scammed and have thousands of dollars or your identity stolen from you. Sometimes I love to play with these scammers by pretending to be a gullible target and stringing them along on the phone call for 30 or 60 minutes so I can at least waste their time and prevent them from scamming someone else while I cook and eat and toy with them.

July 6, 2024

This is a fake phantom debt collection scam! This is what the Federal Trade Commission calls a phantom debt collection scam where the scammer pretends to be a debt collector, bank or credit agency, billing department, lawyer, or law enforcement and threatens to sue or arrest you using harassment (repeated phone calls), lies, threats, and intimidation to collect on fake debts that you do not owe. Although more than 95% of all North America phone scams originate from crowded phone rooms in India that run numerous fraud, extortion, and money laundering scams every day such as pretending to be fake pharmacies, posing as fake Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple representatives, and pretending to offer credit cards and student loan forgiveness, some of these phantom debt collection scams are committed by Americans, but many phantom debt scams also come from India scammers using text-to-speech translation software to generate a pre-recorded message without a foreign accent. Another version of these phantom debt collection scams is the frequent extortion scams perpetrated solely by Indians posing as Social Security or IRS officers threatening to sue or arrest you for fake unpaid back taxes. Either the recording or the India scammer may ask for you by your name in order to make the call sound like a personal phone call to gain your trust, but they are auto-dialing thousands of numbers. It is easy to acquire huge phone database listings of millions of names associated with phone numbers and addresses and have the autodialer automatically say your name and display the name that is currently dialed. The scammer may say "this call may be recorded" or "I am calling on a recorded line" just to sound official, but it is fake! The synthesized speech may also be recorded in Spanish or Chinese to target immigrants. The scammer then either mentions an unpaid debt and past due amount that must be paid immediately or says that they have frozen your account due to fraudulent activity. The scammer then asks for your online banking logon credentials, Social Security number and date of birth "for verification purposes", and either tells you that you can settle the debt by paying with a credit card or demands that you wire transfer the payment for the fake debt or asks you for your bank account and routing number. Here is how to tell the difference between a real debt collector and a scammer: A debt collector must tell you specific information about your debt such as the name of the creditor, the exact amount owed, and if you dispute the debt, the debt collector has to obtain verification of the debt. A scammer either avoids providing this information or says very vague or totally false information. A real debt collector will mention the name of the creditor on the first phone call. A scammer tries to sound very ominous and threatening, but never gives any precise details. A debt collector has to mail you a printed-on-paper "validation letter" within 5 days of first contacting you. If you do not dispute the debt in writing within 30 days, the debt collector has the right to assume the debt is valid. Scammers always pressure you to settle a debt immediately on the phone, often demanding that you make a money transfer from your bank that can be untraceable; this is very common with India scammers posing as debt collectors and fake IRS officers. A scammer may threaten to tell your family and employer about your debts, but a real debt collector can only ask other people about your address, phone number, and place of employment; they cannot tell others about your debts. Scammers will ask for your bank account and routing numbers and Social Security number, whereas real debt collectors will not. Ask the debt collector for their name, company name, street address, and a callback number, which all real debt collectors will provide. Every one of the thousands of India scammers will also immediately fail this test since all of the India scammers use spoofed fake Caller ID numbers or disposable VoIP numbers. If you suspect a scam, contact the creditor the debt collector claims to be working for and find out who has been assigned to collect the debt.

June 8, 2020