Saturday, September 19, 2009

Is it wrong to punk a scammer?

Although I have placed all of my numbers on the "Do Not Call" some time ago, and I believe all of my numbers are unlisted, I still receive some really random calls. For a period of time I was receiving calls from who seemed to be concerned Russian parents who kept asking for Natasha (or Sasha). Nevertheless I think this may have been an honest mistake cause they left numerous long voice mails in Russian.

Most recently, I received calls from (800) 848-9380 and (614) 422-4215. I never pick up calls from unknown numbers so I let the call go to voice mail and looked up the number online. Initially, this number seemed to be registered to the CHASE collections department, but little did they know I spent the last 2 months dealing with their customer service. Upon further investigation, this is what I came up with. Basically, this is a scam.

Armed with this information, I decided to have some fun. What I did was so wrong, but yet so funny. When they called back with the same Caller ID number, I picked up the phone the line automatically connected me with another call and heard the voice of a lady who was obviously foreign. When she answered in broken English, I replied, "FBI." She immediately hung up.

About a hour later they called again, this time it was a gentleman with similar broken English. I give this guy credit, he had determination. When I answered with, "FBI" he insisted that he wanted to speak with *my name* for personal and business purposes. I responded, "No problem, you have just reached the fraud unit, we will start tracing your call to verify who you are while I connect you. Please stay on the line."

I guess that was too much for him because he hung up immediately.

Next time, I'm planning on giving them a fake social security number, fake bank info, and maybe even get them to send some money to me for my troubles. I mean, it's hard work coming up with this stuff!

Of course, I'm nowhere as patient or creative as the guys that did this.

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