Harassing phone calls
Complaint
Jim Richmond
Country: United States
Recieved a call from a man named John Nelson, with very thick accent. He put his Supervisor, Anthony Johnson, on the phone, upon my repeated request, demanding $956 to be paid immediately to a business called Cash Advance America for an alleged loan he claimed my wife failed to pay over a year ago. Never had a loan from them, never heard of them. He said if she didn't pay today that another company called American Law Division had a "senior" attorney ready to file suit against her tomorrow in "Oklahoma Court" for over $4000 after attorney's fee's. He had the last four digits of her social security number. He never could furnish our address. He claimed her employer was also being "investigated." He also called my wife at her work place earlier in the day. He told her she had failed to take care of her business and that she would "end up behind the bars." She continued to ask for a Supervisor and was told by Anthony that he was the Supervisor. She asked for his Supervisor because, while he claimed to be American and had an American name, his accent was so thick she could not understand a word he was saying. He then started talking really quickly and shouting. She just kept shouting back for him to put someone who could speak English on the line and he hung up. He also told her his company had sent 18 emails that had gone ignored. ROFL! Of course, those types of emails always get deleted! Not a letter or correspondence one. Just the emails... which, upon sifting through my past email logs were not found. My wife was very upset and I told her it was a scam and I'd be able to find something on the internet to prove it. Of course, I have found that proof here. You'll also note, they never put a phone number on their web sites. I'll have to see if they keep calling before I try to take any legal action, which I doubt would do any good since they are foreigners. I suppose I'll play along and make them mad everytime they call... who know's it might be fun!
Comments
They may even have information like old account numbers, SSN, DOB, relatives or employers, possibly from pulling credit reports or through skip-trace searches, or sometimes phony on-line payday loan sites, but the alleged debts are entirely phony, or if real, not owed to these crooks.
They are liars.
File a complaint with the FBI, and if they keep calling, record them and tell them the call is being recorded as evidence. If they have any brains, they will move on when they know you won't be conned.
Warning from the Illinois Attorney General:
http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2010_08/20100825.html
Warn your friends and co-workers about this scam, so that they don't get conned.
Since they are probably running this scam from overseas, suing them is probably impractical.
They are, however, vulnerable at two points:
1) Their phone provider. They may be using VoIP, but most likely use the same carrier even though they may change phone numbers frequently.
2) Their method of getting the money transferred.
If the scam got that far, how did they say payment should be sent?
Western Union?
MoneyGram?
Other?
If they keep calling, you might try fishing for that information.
If they are demanding payment by Western Union or MoneyGram, contact FTC to report that, and demand that these money transfer agents post warnings against this particular scam to protect others. MoneyGram is subject to a consent agreement to warn consumers against fraud, due to involvement by its agents in earlier fraudulent schemes.
Ignore them.
They're just scammers. All they can do is try to harass and threaten you.
You might harass them back, or tell them you are recording the call for the FBI so please stay on the line while they trace the call.
At some point, it's not worth their time if they know you aren't going to fall for it.
So please to say stupid is a bad choice of words!!!!!!
Mnemonic
Nunn b djbdjudjhjdjjd.Nunn u ibid yo uhh diurh
Morning's
Bang
Heightens
Ulcers hmm uhxvxjdbdidgdjdbdudhuxjhidihxugdhdidjdddjdjdeufioeoe
These are swindlers, the "debt" is fake, and whether you pay them or not, you can expect them tocome back for more if they think they can get it.
Ignore them.
I called about 25xs. I changed my phone, my bank acounts .I also called the FBI .I also plan on calling them all day & night. Do not give these people any money.Change ur acounts & file a complaint to the FBI and the Police.They have a few different number's. But its the same man. After u change ur acounts don't back down from them. Fight back .Demand to see the paper work that you took out a loan. And don't let them scare u by saying he'a lawer he is not . Its the same man. Report them and tell them u reported them . They will leave u alone. Now im signing off now . Its time 2 call them again .Im doing to them what they did to me I'm calling them all day.
These people have no authority to arrest or prosecute anyone
They try to pretend they are collecting on some loan that some of their victims may have taken out, but they are guessing, and don't actually have any information on an actual loan, so they try to stay vague, use generic payday loan names or the names of existing lenders, and use threats to get the victim to fill in the details as they try to figure out what's wrong.
It's a con.
They go aware real quick.
If you "apply" on one, then they know you have probably applied for others, and probably have had payday loans. They can then use that information, combined with name, address, SSN, DOB, bank account number, any references or employer, or whatever you entered in their fake site, to try to con you into believing they are collecting on some old loan you took out.
There are also "payday loan" lead generation sites, that claim they "forward your information to lenders". They may also be selling to these scammers.
What you are describing is a slightly different variety of scam, compared with the above fake "debt collection" scam. Your scam is called the "advance fee" loan scam. Pretty much as you outlined, convince you they will lend you several thousand, but you have to send them several hundred, for "fees", for "insurance", as an "advance payment", "taxes", or whatever, it's all BS.
They get you to send it by Western Union, and they could be picking it up anywhere in the world. Send it, and your money's gone, but they will probably come back again, and say there is a "problem", and they need "another fee". It's called "reloading" in the scam business. If you were suckered once, you are a good target for another try.
As for the 209 area code, that means nothing at all. The overseas scammers commonly use VoIP, which is cheap, allows them to appear to have a phone number with any area code they want, so they appear to be in the US, and they can even spoof their caller id if they want. VoIP telecoms, phone carriers for global scammers.
No way is it a "legit company".
It's just another con.
In fact, you might get con attempts from a bunch of different swindlers, all trying the same con.
No reason to waste all that valuable information they got on a mark gullible enough to provide it.
And im going to enjoy it.
If they call from a new number, do the same until they get the message.
Not likely FBI or Customs will ever go after them.
Until the VoIP telecoms clamp down on these fraud and extortion rackets, or the wire transfer services update their warnings to include the newer scams, we can expect this to be a growing problem.
Thank you for the heads up i was so scared I almost gave in. I am really calling my attorney now. I will be downloading the threatening messages on CD and filing harassment charges.
The address is probably a mail drop at a Mail Boxes Etc. or UPS Store or similar.
Contact them directly to report use of their store in an extortion racket.
Also report the extortion attempt and address to the US Postal Inspector.
My county also stated was a scam. I am saving the calls on my phone as they tried to call me at 4 am
Do not send money of any kind to these people !!!!
So I went and whenever I got to Wal-mart there was no such thing as a vanilla reload network voucher so I purchased a walmart visa money card instead and put the money on there. He told me later that the card would work just do not activate the card and made a really big emphasis on this. I was informed that no money would be taken off this card, that the money was mine to keep.
I gave him the card number and pin on the back and was told that I would have to wait from Friday to a Monday and then they would wire my money to bank account and take care of everything there, then call me back around 1 and let me know that my loan was proceeded and in my account to take and I could activate the card then and get my 500 dollars. Not that this guy had even sent me a "contract" e-mail from CashAdvanceEllc@gmail.com, which I didn't return or sign.
When Monday after 1 PM rolled around I didn't get a response so I called them, then this "Eric Thompson" guy told me that they was unable to use my card and that I needed to put ANOTHER 500 dollars onto a green dot voucher pak card, and told me that they didn't take any money off my card and I could activate it now.
Well, I refused and went to get my money back, and lo behold the card had been activated the day i gave away the information from it and it was activated in someone else's name and zip code and whenever I went to the supervisor about this I informed that this was a scam and all the money was gone from the account. And it happens a lot with those kind of cards and now have a case out against this Cash Advance.
After this I had received a call from 876-356-9362 telling me that they could not wire my money into my account because of my credit and that I needed to do something connected with Western Union that would cost me 300 dollars to do and then I will receive all my money, and was informed that they had "Bundled" my money together, and that I couldn't get any of my money back until I did so. He also informed me that they had been receiving a lot of unpleasant calls concerning my "loan". Obviously worried.
This Is a scam!! I was ignorant of this was until I was informed by the Wal-mart money card supervisor, since i never took out a loan before, but please do yourself a favor and learn from my mistake!