[Vision2020] Serious Question: Weird Phone Calls?

[Janesta]

Sandra,

If there is caller ID,  do a search for the number, as you would anything
else. If it is a scam, chances are, someone has reported in on one of the
many sites that report the phone number of the scam, as well as what kind of
scam it is.

Another suggestion - call the police in the town your loved one lives in,
and ask them to do a well check. They will only be to happy to do one for
you, AND you will know if your MIA is OK.

Janesta

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Art Deco <deco at moscow.com> wrote:

>  Everyone needs to be careful of this kind of scam.  Accepting a collect
> call can sometimes cost huge amounts of money, especially if the scam
> originates in the Virgin Islands, for example, $25.00 just for connecting.
> The charge appears on your next phone bill, and it takes a very major hassle
> to get the charges reversed.
>
> I hope the Saundra's MIA becomes un-MIA very soon.
>
> Saundra, is there a Caller Id with these calls?  In my experience, collect
> calls have the Caller Id of a legitimate phone company in the name slot.
>
> W.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Saundra Lund <v2020 at ssl.fastmail.fm>
> *To:* vision2020 at moscow.com
> *Sent:* Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:30 PM
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] Serious Question: Weird Phone Calls?
>
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
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