Sandra,<br><br>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.<br>
<br>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.<br><br>Janesta<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Art Deco <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:deco@moscow.com">deco@moscow.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff">
<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><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); 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: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(228, 228, 228);"><b>From:</b>
<a title="v2020@ssl.fastmail.fm" href="mailto:v2020@ssl.fastmail.fm" target="_blank">Saundra
Lund</a> </div>
<div style="font: 10pt arial;"><b>To:</b> <a title="vision2020@moscow.com" href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com" target="_blank">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
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