[Vision2020] Serious Question: Weird Phone Calls?

[Saundra Lund]

Has anyone else been getting weird phone calls recently?  Before anyone
makes any snarky answers, please understand that this is a very, very
upsetting situation my family for reasons I'll touch on below.

The calls start with what I think is the kind of recording a collect call
would start with, but the recording never starts at the beginning, and the
part where the person would say their name is unintelligible.  The recording
then says something like, "To accept this call, press one; to send a
voicemail, press 2" or something like that.

We've gotten six of them in the last 24 hours or so.

Now, the reason this is so upsetting to my family is because this week, I
found out a much loved family member is quasi-MIA.  Both of his phones have
been disconnected, but in the hope that he might somehow have email access,
I've been trying to reach him that way, and on Tuesday afternoon, I sent him
an email basically begging him to call me collect if needed.

So, when the first call came yesterday afternoon, I probably made a HUGE
mistake by pressing 1 to accept the call, which promptly went dead.  The
second call came immediately, and they guy wanted to know who I was (yeah,
right!).  The gist of what he told me was that he was calling back a phone
number that had showed up as a missed call on his Caller ID.  I explained
that no one from my number (I didn't tell him what number he'd reached or my
name, of course) had called him, and he sounded as confused as I was
devastated that it wasn't my family member.

We missed the third call early this AM, but the fourth came around 8:30 AM.
Thinking it was my missing family member, my husband pressed 1 to accept the
call, and it was a woman who said her husband had missed a call on his cell
from our number, and she was calling to find out who had called.  Again, my
hubby didn't divulge any info, but the missed call supposedly was from (208)
991- and the last four digits of our phone number -- she said that she just
hit the "return missed call" option or whatever, and that's how she was
connected to us.

And, there have been two other calls like that today, but we're no longer
pressing 1 to accept the calls because this is just too weird and I'm now
suspicious that I've gotten us involved in some scam  :-(  I can only hope
that if my missing family member is able to call collect that we'll be able
to tell the difference between that collect call and these other mysterious
ones  :-(

Does anyone have any idea what could be going on?  I tried searching Google
& found a lot of scams, including collect calls originating from jails, but
nothing quite like this.

Of course this has to happen on a weekend when Verizon isn't available . . .




Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

Every individual matters.  Every individual has a role to play.  Every
individual makes a difference.
~ Jane Goodall