Scam Phone Calls
Complaint
Anonymous
Country: United States
Yesterday, I received a call from a "Kevin Johnson" who claimed to be calling to collect on a debt owed on a payday loan. He spoke in a thick Indian accent. I informed him that I was filing chapter 7 bankruptcy and gave him my lawyer's information. Today, he called me back from 1 (311) 695-3764. He left a call back number on my voicemail asking to call him back on this number: 1(347) 602-4551. Then he called me back this evening and would not give me any information except to tell me that he was collecting for a payday loan from Cash Advance. I have never heard of this company, first off. Second off, he was very rude and hung up on me when I was trying to get information. He had my social security number and said he had an affidavit for my arrest. I am very concerned b/c I have read on the internet that this is a scam and this guy has my social security number. I am going through a bankruptcy and I am hoping to establish some credit and I don't need some wierd scammer with my social...
Comments
Thank You for the specifics, I thought I was loosing it. LOL.
Basically criminals impersonating "FBI", other law enforcement, "attorneys", or whatever improbably named invented government sounding agency they find works in their scheme.
Apparently enough people have had past payday loans that this fraudlent scam works on a few.
FBI claimed recently that the number of scammers claiming to be FBI has risen to one of the top categories. Of cource, that is for scams reported to the FBI, so it would be a biased statistic.
If they keep calling, tell them you are recording the call for use as evidence. Might as well, if you want to. Maybe you can post it on the Internet.
Or just hang up.
You may need to change your phone number. Notify the phone company that you are receiving extortionate threats, and have reported them to the police.
Do NOT believe anything they say. Since you have never done payday loan, they would not have gotten your SSN from that source. Your report is similar to many others, indicating they have gotten access to U.S. consumer credit data. There was a BBB warning on them that reached a similar conclusion. That means that one of the 3 credit reporting agencies has probably given recent access to a phony "debt collector" with faked credentials.
Contact FTC.
You don't owe them anything, whether you ever had a payday loan or not.
They will not take you to court.
They will not have you arrested.
They will threaten you, and they will lie, harass you at work, or through anyone else they can get information on.
They generally claim their targets have taken out payday loans. In some casea they may have access to old payday loan data, or even credit report data. They may be a criminal spin-off of some debt collector that went under, that used to collect on payday loans.
They are criminals, nothing more. All they have is a telephone.
They use access to this information, combined with their threats, to try to create the appearance that there is an unpaid "loan". There are enough people who might have once had and paid a loan that they may convince some to pay them.
I have had 25 phone calls to my cell phone in 1 day. Also had family members harrassed by cell phone. The same individual that calls is very hard to understand and each time he calls he gives a different name. The person has called from all of the below numbers:
707-760-5712
281-891-2928
209-753-4111
657-202-6765
603-214-3525
801-838-9286 - Report all scammers to the FBI fraud unit.Caller: unknown name
FAKE NAMES USED by Indian Scammer-The below are some names of the person who keeps calling from the above numbers:
Identification: Thick heavy accent - sounds like he is from India
Male - mid-late 40s
Fake names used:
Ryan Rosen
David Powell
Ivan Wilson
Ronny Lischter (or something similar)
Many complaints report harassment of family members, coworkers, or employers as part of their extortion racket.
That's a great choice for an overseas con artist, but he doesn't appear to understand the nuances associated with his alias.
They also seem to like movie star names, particularly action movie heros, but most of the time they don't seem to realize how improbable their name choices sound to their intended victims in the U.S. Good thing they don't watch much Dragnet, or they might get it right.
They will keep calling as long as they think they might con you.
When they conclude it's not going to pay off, they will move on.
They may actually be performing a valuable "service". Since our own home-grown debt collectors sometimes engage in similar illegal behavior, their more often bungled threats are broadening general public knowledge of what is legal in debt collection, undermining the credibility of domestic debt collectors engaged in the same cons: using threats and phony "proof" by "id information" to scam consumers.
On this site, levels of complaints against phony debt collectors fitting this profile have increased to the point where they are comparable to complaints against known real debt collectors.
The debt collection industry has shown no initiative to warn and protect the public subjected to its excesses, so they will likely be tarred with the same brush. They deserve it.
My call at work came in on a cell phone number, I didn't check the number for the ones at home, but they are both from "David" at the Legal Affidavit Department and the return call # is 559-715-4103.
Don't answer the phone, don't give them any info and let anyone you may have used as a reference know about the scam.
They are crooks and love to threaten & scare people. Luckily I learned not to let them bother me...
About 30 minutes ago, same number showed up and I did not pick it up. This time he left a voicemail and urged me to call 202-386-6724 and I called him back. I asked him what is the company and his name. His name is Ricki and he's calling from United Legal processing dept. I informed him that I have never gotten a cash advance loan and that I was going to report him to the police.
As for the lecture you got from BBB, she is naive, as there are many reports of this scam from people who have not been lax with their identity information.
This phony "debt collector" scam is becoming increasingly common, with complaint levels on this site now comparable to complaints against actual debt collectors. Although there are some such scammers operating out of the U.S., many of these calls originate overseas, often from India, and are made by VoIP, which allows them to easily change their number and to spoof caller id.
A couple years ago, they appeared to be connected to several payday lenders in the U.S. who employed a debt collector in the Jacksonville FL area that had an Indian call center. Today, who knows, but they often use names of various actual or defunct payday lenders to try to sound legitimate.
They often are reported to have consumer identity information, including SSN, and some are reported to call and harass relatives or employers. Some of the information appears to have come from old payday loan data, and it is often reported to be outdated. Other reports tie it to phony on-line payday loan applications, which is probably what the BBB was referring to.
There are also reports, however, consistent with having access to current consumer information. For example, there are numerous reports from people who never have had or applied for a payday loan, yet they report being harassment of relatives, or harassment at work, by callers who have their SSN, DOB, and other id information. This may indicate these scammers may have gotten access to credit reports or skip trace services.