Fake phantom debt collection scam by madarchod criminals phoning from India. This is what the Federal Trade Commission calls a phantom debt collection scam where the scammer pretends to be a bank (often impersonating Chase, Credit One, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Bank of America, Capital One, American Express, or US Bank), debt collector, credit agency, billing department, lawyer, or law enforcement and threatens to sue or arrest you using lies, harassment, and intimidation to collect on fake debts that you do not owe. Debt collection scams are very common because many people carry debts, so it is easy for scammers to phish for gullible victims. And Indian debt collection scams have vastly increased this year to prey upon the larger number of people in debt. The India scammer asks for you by your name in order to sound like a personal phone call to gain your trust, but they are randomly auto-dialing everyone. The scammer may say "I am calling on a recorded line" just to sound official, but it is fake! The scammer 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 login credentials, Social Security number and date of birth "for verification purposes", and says you can settle the debt by paying with a credit card, prepaid debit card, or eBay gift card, or demands that you wire transfer the payment, or asks for your bank account/routing number. Or the scammer pretends to offer a "50% settlement" deal where "you only have to pay half" of your fake debt. About 55% of North America scam calls come from India and 40% come from the Philippines. India scammers run hundreds of fraud, extortion, and money laundering scams every day such as posing as a fake pharmacy, fake Social Security officer saying your benefits are suspended, IRS officer collecting on fake unpaid back taxes, debt collector threatening you for fake unpaid bills, fake bank/financial/FedEx/UPS/DHL scams, pretending to offer fake health insurance, car warranty, student loan forgiveness, credit card and debt consolidation services, posing as Amazon to falsely say an unauthorized purchase was made to your credit card or your Prime membership was auto-debited from your bank, posing as Microsoft/Dell/HP/Apple to say your account has been hacked or they detected a virus on your computer, fake "we are refunding your money" or "your account has been auto-debited" scams, fake Google/Alexa listing scams, posing as electric utilities, Verizon, AT&T, or Comcast, fake solar panel and home purchase offers, fake fundraisers asking for donations, fake phone surveys, and the scammers try to steal your credit card, bank account/routing number, Social Security number, and personal information. India scammers often rotate through fake Social Security, subscription auto-renewal, pharmacy, and pre-approved loan scams on the same day. Philippines scammers run more auto/home/health/life insurance, Social Security and Medicare identity theft, and fake charity donation scams. Scammers use disposable VoIP phone numbers (e.g. MagicJack devices) or they spoof fake names and numbers on Caller ID. Anyone can use telecom software to phone with a fake CID name and number. Scammers spoof thousands of fake 8xx toll-free numbers. CID is useless with scam calls unless the scam asks you to phone them back. CID area codes are never the origin of scam calls since scams use spoofed CID numbers from across the US and Canada, numbers belonging to unsuspecting people, invalid area codes, and fake foreign country CID numbers; e.g. fake women crying "help me" emergency scams often spoof Mexico and Middle East CID numbers. Scammers often spoof the actual phone numbers of businesses such as Apple, Verizon, and banks to trick you into thinking the call is valid. How can you avoid being scammed by phone calls? NEVER trust any unsolicited caller who: sells something (most unsolicited calls are scams so your odds of saving money are very poor); asks for your Social Security number; offers a free gift or reward; threatens you with arrest/lawsuit or says you need to reply back soon (pressure tactic); asks you to access a website, download a file, wire transfer money or buy prepaid debit/gift cards; claims suspicious activity on your account; says your subscription is being refunded or auto-renewed/auto-debited; and all pre-recorded messages. Recordings are far more likely to be malicious scams and not just telemarketer spam. All unsolicited callers with foreign accents, usually Indian or Filipino, are usually scams. Filipino scammers tend to speak better English than Indian scammers. Filipinos speak English with a subtle accent that may sound Hispanic. Scams often say that you inquired about a job, insurance, Social Security benefits, or that you previously contacted them or visited their website. A common India scam plays a fake Amazon recording. Amazon account updates are emailed, not robo-dialed. Many banks use automated fraud alert calls to confirm a suspicious purchase, but verify the number that the recording tells you to phone or just call the number printed on your credit card. India scammers impersonate AT&T DirecTV, Comcast, or a cable/Internet company, offering fake discounts or service upgrades. Indians impersonate the IRS and Social Security Administration. The IRS/SSA never make unsolicited calls and never threaten to arrest you; they initiate contact via postal mail. Real lawsuits are not phoned in, especially not using pre-recorded threats lacking details; legal notices are mailed/couriered. The police, FBI, DEA never phone to threaten arrest; they show up in person with a warrant. Scammers try to gain your trust by saying your name when they call, but their autodialer automatically displays your name or says your name in a recording when your number is dialed using phone databases that list millions of names and addresses. Scammers often call using an initial recording speaking English, Spanish, or Chinese that is easily generated using text-to-speech translation software to disguise the origin of their overseas phone room. Some speech synthesis software sound robotic, but others sound natural. To hide their foreign accents, some India scammers use non-Indians in their phone room. Scammers often use interactive voice response (IVR) robotic software that combines voice recognition with artificial intelligence, speaks English with American voices, and responds based on your replies. IVR calls begin with: "Hi, this is fake_name, I am a fake_job_title on a recorded line, can you hear me okay?"; or "Hi, this is fake_name, how are you doing today?"; or "Hello? (pause) Are you there?"; or "Hi, may I speak to your_name?" IVR quickly asks you a short question to elicit a yes/no reply so it hangs up if it encounters voicemail. IVR robots understand basic replies and yes/no answers. To test for IVR, ask "How is the weather over there?" since IVR cannot answer complex questions and it keeps talking if you interrupt it in mid-sentence. IVR usually transfers you to the scammer, but some scams entirely use IVR with the robot asking for your credit card or SSN. A common myth is IVR calls record you saying "yes" so scammers can authorize purchases just using your "yes" voice, but scammers need more than just a recorded "yes" from you - credit cards and SSN. Phone/email scams share two common traits: the CID name/number and the "From:" header on emails are easily faked, and the intent of scam calls is malicious just as file attachments and website links on scam emails are harmful. Scams snowball for many victims. If your personal/financial data are stolen, either by being scammed, visiting a malicious website, or by a previous data breach of a business server that stores your data, then your data gets sold by scammers on the dark web who will see you as fresh meat and prey on you even more. This is why some receive 40+ scam calls everyday while others get only 0 to 2 calls per week. If you provide your personal data to a phone scammer, lured by fake 80%-discounted drugs or scared by fake IRS officers, you receive even more phone scams and identity theft can take years to repair. Most unsolicited calls are scams, often with an Indian accent. No other country is infested with pandemics of phone room sweatshops filled with criminals who belong to the lowest India caste and many are thieves and rapists who were serving jail time but released early due to prison overcrowding. Scammers often shout profanities at you. Just laugh at their abusive language. Google "Hindi swear words" and memorize some favorites, e.g. call him "Randi Ka Beta" (son of whore) or call her "Randi Ka Betty" (daughter of whore). Scammers ignore the National Do-Not-Call Registry; asking scammers to stop calling is useless. You do these scammers a favor by quickly hanging up. But you ruin their scams when you slowly drag them along on the phone call, give them fake personal and credit card data (16 random digits starting with 4 for Visa, 5 for MasterCard), ask them to speak louder and repeat what they said to waste their time and energy.

May 15, 2024

As the previous excellently-written informative post explained, this is a phantom debt scam! My caller had a thick Indian accent and said that I needed to pay an outstanding debt from AT&T. I have never used AT&T either for phone or DirecTV service. And I have had my number for 15+ years so it was not like my number was recently used for AT&T service. On my call, the scammer asked for me and got my name right, but heck you can get anyone's name, number, and address from the Internet or marketing databases these days. Many companies sell marketing databases containing millions of names, numbers, and addresses, and some of these marketing CDs even contain your email addresses, whether you are a homeowner, retired, married, single, above a certain income level... probably even your favorite foods, considering how much data Google mines from your googling searches lol. So having a scammer call you by your name is just an old trick to try to sound like a personal call. I once worked for a legitimate home improvement telemarketer during one summer home from college during the 1980s, generating leads and setting up appointments for actual sales of siding, awnings, storm windows, carports. We manually dialed each local-area number (at least it was touch tone and not rotary lol) and we dialed using custom-printed marketing phone books that only contained names, numbers, and addresses of homes, with no apartments or businesses listed. I would start my call with a loud cheerful "Hi, may I speak to George?" as if I was a friend calling. George would then likewise reply cheerfully until he realized that I was trying to set up an appointment for our home improvement salesperson to meet with him. But using my friendly voices calling each person by their name, I still earned a lot of commissions each time that our salesperson closed a sale from my generated lead. Having previously worked for a legitimate telemarketer, I know all the telemarketing tricks that these India scammers now also use. The kindest thing that you can do to telemarketers or phone scammers is to yell at them and quickly hang up. But like a cat that toys with an insect without actually killing it, I like to act like a dumb gullible victim with these phone scammers, feeding them totally fake personal and financial information and dragging them along on the phone call to burn up their time and energy. Never actually tell them that you are playing with them. Just hone your acting skills and sound interested in their fake scam or sound concerned with their fake threats until they hang up frustrated 20 minutes later after they try to charge to the fake credit card numbers that you give them lol.

August 4, 2020

credence

June 1, 2020

Auto warrantee

May 19, 2020

They have the wrong number

February 12, 2020

Scam caller don’t lnow this caller!!!

February 5, 2020

Legal scam

February 3, 2020

Social security scam. It’s an automated recording

January 25, 2020

[deleted]

January 22, 2020

Keeps calling almost daily. When I answer nobody is there or they hang up. Never leaves a voicemail just silence.

January 21, 2020

They hung up on my bot

January 16, 2020

Scam call no message

January 15, 2020

They call a day!!!

January 9, 2020

This is a phantom debt collection scam by criminals phoning from India! This is what the Federal Trade Commission calls a phantom debt collection scam where the scammer pretends to be a debt collector, 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. 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 ranging from fake pharmacies to posing as fake Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple representatives.. Another version of these phantom debt collection scams is the frequent extortion scams perpetrated solely by East Indians posing as Social Security or IRS officers threatening to sue or arrest you for fake unpaid back taxes. The East Indian scammer usually references vague and fake financial accounts that are unpaid, fake names of the debt collector handling your fake debts, fake ID codes for your fake debt, and they often falsely say "our numerous attempts to contact you at your home and workplace have been unsuccessful and this is our final attempt", which is all false and intended to make it sound urgent. The scammer then asks for your Social Security number 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 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 provides false information. A debt collector has to mail you a printed-on-paper "validation letter" within five 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 the debt immediately, often demanding that you make a money transfer from you bank that can be untraceable; this is very common with East Indian 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 other people 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 East Indian scammers will also immediately fail this test since all of the East Indian 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.

January 9, 2020

Credence resource management

January 8, 2020

I’m not sure what the call was for. The person stayed silent.

January 8, 2020

I didn’t know what that is

October 1, 2019