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<DIV><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>I hope the Saundra's MIA becomes un-MIA very
soon.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>W.</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=v2020@ssl.fastmail.fm href="mailto:v2020@ssl.fastmail.fm">Saundra
Lund</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Saturday, March 20, 2010 8:30
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] Serious Question:
Weird Phone Calls?</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Has anyone else been getting weird phone calls recently?
Before anyone<BR>makes any snarky answers, please understand that this is a
very, very<BR>upsetting situation my family for reasons I'll touch on
below.<BR><BR>The calls start with what I think is the kind of recording a
collect call<BR>would start with, but the recording never starts at the
beginning, and the<BR>part where the person would say their name is
unintelligible. The recording<BR>then says something like, "To accept
this call, press one; to send a<BR>voicemail, press 2" or something like
that.<BR><BR>We've gotten six of them in the last 24 hours or so.<BR><BR>Now,
the reason this is so upsetting to my family is because this week, I<BR>found
out a much loved family member is quasi-MIA. Both of his phones
have<BR>been disconnected, but in the hope that he might somehow have email
access,<BR>I've been trying to reach him that way, and on Tuesday afternoon, I
sent him<BR>an email basically begging him to call me collect if
needed.<BR><BR>So, when the first call came yesterday afternoon, I probably
made a HUGE<BR>mistake by pressing 1 to accept the call, which promptly went
dead. The<BR>second call came immediately, and they guy wanted to know
who I was (yeah,<BR>right!). The gist of what he told me was that he was
calling back a phone<BR>number that had showed up as a missed call on his
Caller ID. I explained<BR>that no one from my number (I didn't tell him
what number he'd reached or my<BR>name, of course) had called him, and he
sounded as confused as I was<BR>devastated that it wasn't my family
member.<BR><BR>We missed the third call early this AM, but the fourth came
around 8:30 AM.<BR>Thinking it was my missing family member, my husband
pressed 1 to accept the<BR>call, and it was a woman who said her husband had
missed a call on his cell<BR>from our number, and she was calling to find out
who had called. Again, my<BR>hubby didn't divulge any info, but the
missed call supposedly was from (208)<BR>991- and the last four digits of our
phone number -- she said that she just<BR>hit the "return missed call" option
or whatever, and that's how she was<BR>connected to us.<BR><BR>And, there have
been two other calls like that today, but we're no longer<BR>pressing 1 to
accept the calls because this is just too weird and I'm now<BR>suspicious that
I've gotten us involved in some scam :-( I can only hope<BR>that
if my missing family member is able to call collect that we'll be able<BR>to
tell the difference between that collect call and these other
mysterious<BR>ones :-(<BR><BR>Does anyone have any idea what could be
going on? I tried searching Google<BR>& found a lot of scams,
including collect calls originating from jails, but<BR>nothing quite like
this.<BR><BR>Of course this has to happen on a weekend when Verizon isn't
available . . .<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Saundra Lund<BR>Moscow, ID<BR><BR>Every
individual matters. Every individual has a role to play.
Every<BR>individual makes a difference.<BR>~ Jane
Goodall<BR><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>=======================================================<BR> List
services made available by First Step Internet, <BR> serving the
communities of the Palouse since 1994.
<BR>
<A
href="http://www.fsr.net">http://www.fsr.net</A>
<BR> <A
href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com</A><BR>=======================================================</BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>