Apologies if this sounds a bit naive but I can't work it out. Maybe some of you more worldly types have an opinion.
I answered a call on the mobile yesterday showing a Merseyside 0151 number. The male Scouse voice on the other end greeted me with the name I use on Ebay and said that there was £1600 set aside for me for personal injury from a "non-fault motor accident" that I had last year. I didn't have an accident last year and I briefly toyed with the idea of stringing him along to see where it might lead but time was a bit pressing so I asked where his information had come from, but he spoiled the game and rang off.
Where is the scam and how would I have been parted from my money ?
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At some point he would of either asked for your bank details to transfer the money, or asked you to pay a small money transfer fee.
Thats my guess anyway.
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At some point he would of either asked for your bank details to transfer the money or asked you to pay a small money transfer fee.
Via PayPal I guess, the mention of your eBay user name indicating that he might know that you have a PayPal account.
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Which reminds me of the old joke: "What do you call a Scouser in a suit?"
The defendant.
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Which reminds me of the old joke: "What do you call a Scouser in a suit?" The defendant.
I love this one !!
How about what do you call a scouser in a 3 bed semi ?............... a burglar..
Edited by Roly93 on 01/10/2009 at 19:43
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He'll insist on some kind of advance fee, processing fee or similar. Have you googled the number? It's quite easy to set the wrong CLI number to a call, so it won't lead the feds back to the scammer.
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If it seems too good to be true, it is. Scams depend for success on people's greed.
Fortunately most people are sensible enough not to give personal financial or other information out on request, only during a call which they themselves have originated, such as ordering goods or services from a retailer or other business.
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somebody in your sales or purchase history is moving details on
its a bit like when the bus crashed with 8 people on it but 42 claims were received
if you still have the phone number make a note of it because you can report it online as a possible crime
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The male Scouse voice on the other end greeted me with the name I use on Ebay and said that there was £1600 set aside for me for personal injury from a "non-fault motor accident" that I had last year. >>
I got a text the other day with exactly the same message and came to exactly the same conclusion: it's a scam.
Then I began to wonder about all the people there seem to be with endless amounts of ingenuity who could (but don't) apply it to doing a job of work.
In a garage, for example, he linked to motoring.
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Have you googled the number?
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I hadn't but I have now.
01512553580
I'm not the first.
Thank you all for your replies.
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I'd have thought it was worth a call to liverpool trading standards?
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I get a call everyday on the nail 3pm offering to clear credit card debts under the missale act of walter raleigh,they always go on to tell me to push button 9 i think? to remove my number from their files,doing this however invokes a £5 fee to them,i assume its the same on some mobile numbers
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See:
www.ringdings.co.uk/01512553580
www.phonespamfilter.co.uk/search.php/01512553580?s...1
www.edwardsymmons.com/pages/news_story.php?id=171 (re seeus2save. com)
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We got a call once that my wife took. They knew her name, the ex-directory number etc. We came to the conclusion that it might have even been the doctor's surgery that passed on this info! Practically nobody else would have known about any accident - we did have one in italy in 2006.
I've had a few similar calls to the other line in the house too. And when I asked what accident and how they got this info they mentioned sometimes they get it from GP surgeries, hospitals, etc!
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I was in a hospital A&E recently and there was a notice telling anyone attending not to tell anyone about their injury.
This followed a complaint by someone who thought the hospital had given information to a bunch of ambulance chasers. The hospital stressed they never would do this, but be careful who you talk to.
You can be very anonymous in a GP or A&E waiting room (someone sitting in there for an hour or so isn't unusual) and it doesn't take you long to gather lots of information from people just by listening to conversations between receptionist and patient. Sad, but it's how data on injured people can be gathered.
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In our case the A&E was near Milan and the English of many including the police was poor. And our numbers are ex-directory.
Thinking about it, the call my wife got was even on her mobile and very few people know that number.
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"Thinking about it, the call my wife got was even on her mobile and very few people know that number. "
They block dial mobiles (ie sequentially). If they get an answer they start talking. In the process they build up a database of current numbers which they can sell on to the next scammer. They had no idea your wife had been in an accident. Pure chance that they called her, I'm certain.
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rtj - it may be nothing to do with anyone knowing any of your details.
Call centre software can call many numbers a second. They know the main 07*** numbers. It's not difficult to then have software which then runs through numbers in this group calling them all. Many will be unobtainable, but those calls are just dropped. That's also why the phone often goes dead when you answer. Someone else answered slightly before you so the call handler is busy.
Secondly as the calls are random they probably didn't know you had had an accident. They were fishing and the hook caught you because you had.
Alternatively any insurance company you used could have passed on details, or even be linked to an ambulance chasing company.
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Alternatively any insurance company you used could have passed on details, or even be linked to an ambulance chasing company.
This is more likely... but they did have her name to begin with so the call was not random.
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Lists of numbers AND names are common.
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Want mobile phone numbers, e-mail addresses etc? See:
www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/t28802.html
tinyurl.com/y89awy3
..:-))
There are many, many more offering such services; virtually nothing in our lives is sacred...:-(
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He'll insist on some kind of advance fee processing fee or similar. Have you googled the number? It's quite easy to set the wrong CLI number to a call so it won't lead the feds back to the scammer.
How do you do this ?
The only way I can think of is to have an engineer working for either a fixed or mobile service provider to make some config changes on their switch on your fraudulent behalf, as the CLI would have to originate from the fixed or mobile swiching centre equipment.
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But it is very easy when using VOIP
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Precisely - I have a VOIP number that looks like it's from a town 10 miles away, but I could just as easily have got a number from a Liverpool number range.
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I have a VoIP number for New Jersey in the US and live in the Midlands in the UK. Very helpful, but the fact there is a time difference still confuses the hell out of a lot of people.
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