False claim of criminal charges pending
Complaint
Emma Tasker
Country: United States
I have received at least 2 phone calls from 301-539-2558. The caller claims there are 4 serious charges pending against me and that I should call immediately to avoid having them turned over to the local police. I did a reverse look-up for the number and found the phone belongs to teleport communications. When I try to call the number get the message "Call rejected"
Comments
in exchange for $$$$monetary gain. Pure evil.
I run my own phone system and it is my responsibility to show an outgoing number that belongs to me or none at all if I wish to remain anonymous, I could even put the word private in there, both the CID and CNAM fields but then who would answer? The important difference is that I really am in the US and only use legitimate phone numbers I own and Last name, First name, in the CNAM field. By the way, my phone numbers (DIDs) actually are with Bandwidth.com which like Teleport is a CLEC. The old Ma Bell Circuit Switched system using wire to the house is what is known as an ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier), after deregulation the other parties are what is known as CLECs (Competetive Local Exchange Carrier) Right off hand I can think of several, Teleport, Bandwidth, Level 3, Onvoy and a slew of others could be found. Most communication is done by VOIP which is of course IP based packet switching telephony as compared to Circuit Switched telephony. AT&T requested some time time ago to dismantle the old Incumbent phone system as it is expensive to maintain. Most people are using VOIP but do not know it. If you are using VoLTE or any variant, you are speaking over IP, not CSD (circuit switched data). If you have phone service with your internet provider, that is VOIP. For over ten years now, if one shops for a business phone, they will see few if any analog phones to use the old copper to the home system or POTS (Plain Old Telephone System). Some VOIP providers will also allow you to use any outgoing number you wish BUT, you have to prove that you own it, they won't break the law for someone. Oh, since I mentioned AT&T, they own Teleport and their clientele is Large Corporations mainly. Trust me, they are NOT calling you. They would never have the resources nor profit margin to hire people to break the law all day and night even if they wanted to whioch they don't obviously.
To sum up, incoming calls can be made to look like they are coming from any number and can and likely will be from overseas if scamming is involved. Teleport, owned by AT&T is NOT calling you!
People here know just enough to cause harm to an innocent person or indict an entire corporation who has no idea their unassigned numbers are being used. Yes, I get it, you now know how to look up a number and think that calls showing as coming from a number absolutely must be, nope. Phone numbers are to route incoming calls only and are only shown in outgoing as a courtesy since Caller ID came into existence but can be any number the person running the phone system chooses even if illegal. To be legal, you have to use only numbers that are assigned to you. If you wanted to confront the caller, you would need to go overseas, likely Nigeria and if you really found them, what you would see is a bunch of young men all crammed into a small room with each holding a laptop and a script. The pictures I have seen makes it clear that those doing the calling are probably not paid much of what they scam for whoever runs the operation and they likely are desperate to help their families. The people they work for are probably living in luxury and are merely taking advantage of a bad situation to have their dirty work done for them.