Phone scammer telling victims to pay up or go to jail

Good thing she remained rational and reported the call to the authorities. 

I've had a call like that before and this man who claimed he was Officer Michaels threatened to burn my house down if I don't pay off  a debt I took out 16 months ago. Said he knew where I lived and that he was watching me so I shouldn't call the police. I freaked out and I just wanted him to stop so I wired him the amount he was asking, although I didn't owe him anything. After a while, he called again and demanded more. By then, I decided to report to the police and they helped investigate. I also posted a complaint at http://www.callercenter.com against the scammer and raised a warning. 

Hello 

Before reading on about a practical suggestion I have for stopping telemarketing, & other unwanted phone calls, I am pausing here like to add this. -- We've all been traumatized by even being born into this world, and like most of us do, that angry & hurt man is in need of a  good lesson in forgiveness & compassion.  

Now, onto the practical suggestion on how to stop unwanted phone calls. Its an idea that came to me recently and that I'd like to take credit for. If anyone is interested in doing this and wants to talk with me about it, just send me  an email through this KOMO website for them to forward onto me. They have my private email address. KOMO has my permission to contact me on your behalf.

Here is the idea I came up with on my own, and that I'd like to take credit for.

Why not turn our telephones into mini money-making machines? Everytime a telemarketer calls and connects to our phone numbers they are automatically charged money. We can even warn them with a voice message that tells them something like this, "If you are a telemarketer, press 6 and you will be transferred to a 900 phone that will charge you $5 for each call."  This will stop them from calling us.

This invention will be  easier on us than yelling and slamming phones, or buying and using services that screen and block calls, or filing complaints, or going to small claims court. It will penalize those that ignore the U.S. National Do Not Call list.  It will save the ears and sanity of all those we are complaining to. There are so so so many benefits of turning our phones into mini money-making machines.

We can charge $5 to $10 for each of their calls. This is a fair asking price considering how their distracting calls damage the quality of our lives. Using our phones are where we are most vulnerable. We use our phones to genuinely help each other and to receive help ourselves. They are primarily important to us because they help us intimately connect and communicate with our loved ones. They are also a vital lifeline to our work, and to our basic survival. We can hardly ignore the phone when it rings --- and telemarketers take unfair advantage of this. The next phone call may be an emergency, or a call from a beloved partner, child, grandchild, parent, or  a call from or for work. 

I already shared my idea with a couple of my Comcast representatives, and with our United States FCC (Federal Communications Commission). The Comcast representatives love the idea. And the FCC representative said he hadn't heard of this before, but he added this idea to the FCC data bank. I also sent this idea to Google but haven't back from anyone there yet. I also have a step-brother who owns a  small & local long-distance service that I spoke with. He, like the others involved in our telecommunications systems, said that as far as they know, this technology has not been created.   I say it will be.  We already can identify callers with "Caller ID" and we can Trace Phone Calls. Why not create a way to charge telemarketers for calling us?  Their calls will be billed through their phone service, and our money will be internally transferred to our bank accounts. Ching a ching! 

Let's talk. 

And "Shut 'Em Up!"

Because these SOB scammers are never really punished they keep doing their old stupid tricks... we need to start getting rid of these leeches permanently!

They were threatening me non-stop the last couple weeks. they even called my work three or four times saying id be arrested. our receptionist starting threatening them after the first call and some research Every few times the same guy would use a different number and a different name. As a iphone user it tells me where the number is based out of and a couple times it said a different place then what where he stated he was located. i finally blew up on him saying i knew it was a scam and i havent recieved a phone call since.

I got a call like that once. I told them I was recording the conversation, going to run a trace on it, and that I was going to turn it over to the police department as well. They hung up and never called back.

Will someone please tell me what a payday load business is?  This is the first time I've heard of this type of business

 

"Madision believes the man got her information from a payday load business she used years ago."

The same thing happened to me (it still is). i have the 1st phone voice mail recorded with their threats. I also got them to fax me something in writing. I asked for proof of debt and that they were contracted to collect. They will not take cash, check or money order. They say yo have to give them a faxed copy of your ID card and a debit or credit card. You have 3 choices 1. pay them $900.00 in a lump payment, 2. make 2 payments but you have to pay over $2,000.00, 3. go to jail/court (depending on his mood). i have done a lot of research and since they are calling me at work (a state agency) my IT deparment checked it out and let me know it was a total scam. They are calling a minimum of 44 times a day (at my work, so I have proof). They also some how got my social security number and my account information and have been taking money out since November. I had to close my account.

BUT I NEED THAT MONEY!

I don't know what elso to do. I filed a police report, but they did not even want any of my proof for the vm that i had recorded. He said it is an informational case only and gave me a case number. Mind you he was very nice and helpful, but their hands are tied when it is from another country.

This is a follow.  I am Ms. Madison's mother.  So I called the scammer back today to see how he liked his 10 minutes of fame.  A different person answered the phone.  They advised the Christopher Anderson has been terminated for unethical practices.  They said they are changing their number and that they are now Simon and Simon.  I advised they are still scammer regardless of the name of their company and their phone number.   The phone number she got called from is 2149847652 and the guys was Christopher Anderson.  The other part that did not make the new and is important that everyone knows.  They are spoofing the court phone numbers and leaving messages to call the courts back which only makes this scam seem even more ligit since people call the number back and actually get the court phone tree.  Pretty scary stuff.

I hate telemarketers, scammers, robocalls, etc with a passion. Get a real job and quit annoying people. If there weren't so many stupid people out there they wouldn't be in business and we wouldn't have to put up with these low life bottom feeders. I couldn't imagine doing any business with or giving any personal information to any cold call, robo call or whatever. If someone is threataning you or harrassing you, contact law enforcement, period. Contact the company or whatever in question to verify the authenticity of the claim. Also purchase a phone, device or service to block particular numbers. My phone service allows you to block up to 12 numbers. My answering machine allows me to block 10 more. Let's start using some common sense people (common sense isn't too common) and quit being so frickin' naive and put these morons out of business.

Whenever I receive the occasional email scam with the terrible grammer, obviously not from a professional, it makes me laugh. It just boggles my mind that there are people dumb enough to fall for this crap. Even if it looks to be from a bank and/or looks professional. Call the bank to verify, hello. Receive something in the mail that looks a bit fishy or is asking for personal info, call the bank/company in question. Don't use the link or phone number they provided in the email/message. Use a number that you know is legitimate. Like I said it just seems so common sense to me.

As soon as you pick up the phone and there's a pause it's probabl;y going to be a telemarketer or whatever. Just hang up. My time, or yours, is too valuable to wait around for these idiots to get to their sales pitch. Robo call or telemarketer, just hang up. Somebody threataning you, which is illegal, tell them "no you don't need to call the cops because I'm going to call them for you and then hang up.

If you want to play with them, act like you're interested and waste their time. Excuse yourself and set the phone down. Time is money to them.

I just received another telemarketers call. I answered and no one was there. I hung up and set up the number to be blocked, simple. "No one is there" is so true on so many levels when you're talking about these telemarketers and scammers.

Sorry about the long rant. I feel so much better.

I actually got the same call a few weeks ago and saved the information incase any suspicious activity happened on my credit report or bank account. The man I spoke with actually confessed to being a "Sales" person after I called him out on his game and hasn't called me since. Come to think of it, the first time they called it went straight to voicemail with no callerID available. The second time they called, it used the local Fred Meyer name and phone number....

 

These slimeballs are all over the place.  They don't care whether they have the right person which most often they do not.  They are abusive extremely dishonest, lying and threatening, and the only why to handle them is call blocking.  If they are legit they will start a paper trial.  If there is no paper then ignore them and block their calls if you can.  Never give any sensitive personal information of any kind over the phone.  Never.

 

Because of these slimy pieces of human waste I don't answer any calls from numbers I don't recognize.  If the call is out of area code I just open the line then close it hanging up on them.

How about blocking the incoming number from calling?   Thiscan be done on cell and landline phones.

I don't know if this will work for everyone but you might want to give it a try, it's what I did.

 

Once the guy started talking about investigations, I asked him if he was a police detective - I can't remember exactly what he said in response but i know I asked him which agencies he works for.  I was planning on calling them up and asking if this person worked for them and if not report to them  that he was claiming to work for their agency.

 

 Whatever he told me didn't make any sense.  It wasn't complete enough (should have been more like "King County Sheriff detective", Federal Way Police detective, etc.) so I got the impression he was lying about being a cop conducting an investigation.  So I asked him if he was a private investigator (could have been) and I think he alluded to being one, but when I asked him for his PI number he stated he doesn't give it out.  I think I also asked if he was licensed as a PI in Washington state but I don't think I got too far trying to pursue that line of questioning  either.

 

At this point I decided that probably the best way to proceed is to first find out as much as I could about who I was dealing with so I traced the number he called me from.  Turns out it was a payday loan company and at that point they had a couple of "collectors" calling people up and threatening them with jail.  They were also being very verbally abusive and it's not real smart to do that on someone's answering machine because the investigator with the WA State Department of Financial Institutions used that voice mail message that he left (and that I saved) in his charging papers against them.  They were put out of business and banned from the industry for 5 years.

 

And as far as I know, he's still pissed at me.  Someone just left a crazy note on my car on Sunday evening.

Ms. Madison did a good job! FYI... even if you DO owe people money, it is against the law for them to threaten you. My daughter owed some money when she was a young, single mom and she called me up at work, crying because a collection agency was hassling her. They told her they would no longer wait for to get a job and would be turning her into the police as soon as they got off the phone. They told her the police would be coming by within the hour to pick her up and she'd better arrange for someone to watch her baby or the police would take her and put her in the foster care system. Of course, my husband and I knew that the police wouldn't really be there within the hour but we also called an attorney and were told it is against the law for people collecting money to make those kind of threats.

I think this scammer will be going to jail shortly. A working call back number would give up his identity whether he's using a real phone or VoIP phone. Hopefully he's in the US where the swat team can raid his home. Komo please post a mugshot when this happens. :)

"Payday load business" is certainly a better descriptor than "Payday loan business."  In this case, I double thumbs up the typo KOMO!

This scammer is evidently counting on people's ignorance of the legal profession.

 

Real attorneys who are in private practice do not make phone calls on behalf of police agencies.

 

I'm glad that this woman wasn't fooled, but disappointed that they didn't print the scammer's phone number.  I can think of a few choice words for him.

I had a message left on my home phone from some unknown person who said complaints were being filed against me and my social security number and that if Ididn't respond immediately and provide the required information, that further legal action would be taken. Luckily, they left a call back and extension number, which I used to immediately file a complaint w/ the do not call registry and the FTC.