Harassment
Complaint
Debbers
Country: United States
Over the past 2 months, I have been receiving calls from a person who (first time around) claimed to be a government agent for the DEA. He called my house 35 times in one day, and every call came from a different area code. My answering machine has caller Id, and announced the number every time. He said that I was the leader of a check fraud scheme, and was going to have me arrested within the next day on fraud charges.
He called my 88 year old mother in law, harassing her (she told him off),my friends, and worst of all, he started calling my work. Every message was exactly the same. The calls stopped for 3 weeks, and then started up again. This time, he called my home and ended up overloading the answering machine, and when he couldn't get a response from that (we were moving out of our apartment, but were waiting for an important call), he called my work number 200 times!
I work security, and have told this idiot continuously not to call my work, or I'd get fired. My boss told him the same thing, yet he continued to call. Now his calls are being forwarded to our HR dept., and although I've worked a very long time there, they aren't going to put up with this much longer. I am the only one working, and my husband had a heart condition that he's still recovering from. I don't know what else to do about this.
He called my 88 year old mother in law, harassing her (she told him off),my friends, and worst of all, he started calling my work. Every message was exactly the same. The calls stopped for 3 weeks, and then started up again. This time, he called my home and ended up overloading the answering machine, and when he couldn't get a response from that (we were moving out of our apartment, but were waiting for an important call), he called my work number 200 times!
I work security, and have told this idiot continuously not to call my work, or I'd get fired. My boss told him the same thing, yet he continued to call. Now his calls are being forwarded to our HR dept., and although I've worked a very long time there, they aren't going to put up with this much longer. I am the only one working, and my husband had a heart condition that he's still recovering from. I don't know what else to do about this.
Comments
This sounds like a shakedown or extortion racket, but appears to have progressed to just stalking.
Usually these phone extortion scams use the "DEA" bit to claim you somehow violated some law, maybe "ordered drugs" or whatever, and have to pay a "fine", but here they appear to be playing the "check fraud" scam, which is basically the same as the fake "payday loan debt collector" scam. Doesn't matter what the "story" is, it's all the same scam: Make a bunch of vicious threats, and try to extort money. They have to find unsophisticated suckers to pull this off, as they can only make threats by phone. It's usually run by criminals, not "the DEA", and not even some company like a shady debt collector, so telling them you might lose your job, and expecially your boss telling them that, just makes them think they have more leverage to extort you.
Overall profile is consistent with common Indian based scams, including use of different area codes and phone numbers, which is often done by using cheap VoIP phone service. At this point, it looks like the perp is getting off on stalking you. Indian scammers are particlularly crude and misogynistic. Any thick accent?
You need to report this criminal stalking immediately, and your boss needs to grow a spine, and maybe some balls, since his responses have actually encouraged this stalker. There is nothing that you have done to attract this type of criminal extortion attempt other than living on planet Earth and probably being findable on the internet. Any of their employees could be subject to this harassment and stalking, and the fact that your boss told them your job might be at risk has actually exposed you to more harassment and made it more likely that they might choose to harass other employees if they can find them.
You need to contact local law enforcement and the FBI. If this guy is local, then there might be some chance of a physical confrontation, but they also might be able to catch him. More likely, it's just an overseas scammer, and there will be little they can do, but you won't be in any actual physical danger either.
Regardless, you want a police complaint and a copy of the police report on file, in case your employer uses this as an excuse to fire you. If so, get an attorney, and at least make sure you get your unemployement insurance, as this is not any legal "cause" for firing.
Let the police determine whether they can go after him or not.
In addition, this perv is using your place of work as a means to stalk you. Your employer should be in contact with the police to get some assistance and advice in how to handle this type of employee harassment, since whether you are there or not, their other employees could be subject to the same harassment. Your employer has a legal obligation to maintain a safe work environment, and just firing anyone who gets stalked at random by this type of scam plays into the hands of these sociopaths.
The most effective thing you can do is to send a strong message that he isn't going to accomplish anything, either getting money out of you or getting an emotional payoff from harassing you. You do this by cutting off all contact, and making sure that any attempts at contact he makes go to the police, or to someone with a thick hide who tells him to "F*ck Off".
Change your numbers (and your MIL's number) and get them unlisted. Don't answer unknown calls, and don't respond if he gets through. Hang up immediately. Shut down your Facebook, or any other information he may find on you and your family. Change your email. Don't respond to unknown email. Make yourself unfindable, and he will have to move on to harassing someone else.
Although the pattern here suggests a single loner, the access needed to track down and harass you at work, home, and through your mother-in-law raises the possibility that he might have access to skip-tracing, which may indicate he may be attached to one of the rogue Indian "debt collection" call centers. If so, there may be a trail back through the skip-trace services like Accurint, pointing back to the call center, and FTC should be aware of this capability. It might make tracing his phone calls back through the VoIP carrier, which isn't normally worth it if it's just some guy sitting in an internet cafe.
Same if your employer connection is visible in that manner.
If your MIL's name is unique enough, and her number is listed, then it would be easy to find without skip-tracing.
With stalking, the proper HR response is no response. "We do not disclose employee information" or "There is no person here with that name" CLICK.
This means that if your employer is being targetted by this type of attack (and in fact your employer is), their employees will need to be trained in how to handle it, not just HR, as part of employee safety training.
If you need to have anyone contact HR (like a bank confirming employement for a mortgage), HR should only be talking to them if you have already alerted them to the call.
That should be policy anyway, as it is in all large corporations with carefully thought out HR policies. HR should not be the "weak link" in getting information on employees that might expose their employees to fraud. They don't work for every stranger who calls them and feeds them a line of BS.
If you need to get any calls at work, get them on your new unlisted cell phone.
It is becoming common for companies to have websites including social media or feature articles on employees. Recent scams and cons making use of Facebook information have already suggested that exposing details of your life to the whole world may not be a good idea, just as an earlier generation may have learned that having a phone listing that appeared to be "female" also posed a security risk.
You may need to change any listings to just <first initial> <last name> rather than your full name.
Fraud and phone extortion are an international phenomenon. Someone in Inida, or in some internet cafe in Nigeria, has nothing better to do than to paw through internet searches looking for people to target with scams, and increasingly those scams include direct contact via anonymous phone calls using cheap VoIP. The fact that they are half-way around the world means that they have no fear of any prosecution or retaliation, so there is no limit to the types of threats or harassment they will engage in.
Law enforcement has no effective way to deal with overseas harassing callers, either. This is simply a fact, and you cannot change it. You can, however, limit your exposure, and think through how you will respond should you be targetted, so that you do not further encourage abuse.
Companies need to think through their policies that might be exposing their employees to similar threats.
"When Simon (the so called supervisor for this guy) gets on the phone, it's just a long string of expletives to whoever he has on the phone. "
That is consistent with one of these fake "debt collection" scams. It is also typical of the overseas type. The Indians and Pakistanis are particularly crude.
This was never real "debt collection" as that was never anything but a cover for an extortion racket anyway. Now it's moved beyond that, to abusive, predatory stalking behavior.
It's not about "don't call you at work", or at home, or your relatives, or whoever. He isn't going to "understand". That's not what he is about. This is not about any debt you owe to him or anyone else, and "paying him off" isn't going to stop his harassment. More likely he will start harassing more.
What you need to realize, is that with a predator, there isn't really any choice of letting him "win", since he will then keep "winning", over and over again. You will either learn this now, or later, or eventually after he messes up your life further. Your employer and coworkers need to understand this as well, since they could be subject to the same thing, even if (or especially when) you "get fired".
You need to contact your local police, to file a stalking and harassment complaint (also to protect YOU should your employer do anything stupid), and to bring them in to teach you all how to handle this. You need your management and HR people on-board with this, or your company is just setting itself up for future employee lawsuits. Might as well all learn now, as this type of harassment is becoming increasingly common. We live in a global economy now, with cheap global phone service, so now we have cheap global abuse and harassment.
This is a phone stalker, who started as a phone extortionist, and these people usually call from a safe distance (often overseas) where you aren't even going to get any assistance from the authorities.
When it's not likely the police can actually catch the guy, you all still need to deal with it. You do that by deciding that you are all going to block him out, not respond, hang up, or whatever, until he gets no reinforcement and moves on. Or you have your local police start calling HIM, and he starts to wonder what else they might do to track him down.
"On a lighter note: Habib called my 88 year old mother in law, and he started in on her about me being wanted in a check scam. She told him to "put it where the sun won't shine" and to go to hell. He hasn't called her since."
He thought he had another angle, and it didn't work. You're mom's got it right. Your can all learn from that. Forget all you learned about "telephone etiquette". Save that for your real customers.
When "law" doesn't work, we are all back to "tit-for-tat", the true basis of global stability, and the real reason for "manners".