Re: 925 524-3099 Cell Phone Spammers
Lower credit card rates? Hardly
Saturday, June 18 1:05 am
By JOHN BURNETT
Tribune-Herald staff writer
Police say a telephone "phishing" scam seeking credit card numbers and other financial information of cell phone users appears to be widespread.
"We haven't had any reports of people actually being victimized yet," said Lt. Greg Esteban of the Criminal Investigations Section. He added that Big Island police have received numerous reports of "robo calls" to cell phone users. The automated call says it's from "account services" with a purported offer for recipients to lower their credit card interest rates.
"It's definitely a phishing scam," he said.
Esteban said Friday that he received three such calls on his mobile phone.
"The second time, I answered the call and what I got was an automated female voice saying if I wanted to lower the interest rates on my credit card, to press No. 1."
Esteban said that on the third call, he pressed 1, and a woman asked him to give her his credit card numbers.
"As soon as she asked me for a credit card number, I asked, 'Wouldn't you have them over there?' And she hung up," he said.
A number of Tribune-Herald staffers also received similar calls on Thursday and Friday, with the number 925-524-3099 appearing on caller ID Area code 925 covers the greater Oakland, Calif., area.
An attempt to call that number was greeted by a recorded male voice intoning: "Sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again, or call the operator to help you."
"I ran a check on the phone number and it came back to a generic phone number in California," Esteban said. "... They use different types of phone banks that give a fictitious location. I went online and checked out complaints about that phone number."
Esteban said that cell phone users in places such as Denver and Phoenix were also receiving the calls.
The blog http://800notes.com has a thread chronicling the scam with posts as recent as Thursday.
Noted one anonymous poster: "When I hit '1' to speak to a live person, they immediately identified themselves as being with 'your bank' and represent VISA/Mastercard. I played along and politely started digging into more info about their company. This made the caller 'John' (yeah right), very uncomfortable and he kept on saying he was with Client Services with MY bank. When I told him I had multiple banks and which one it was, he became verbally abusive and sarcastic, saying, 'oh you're one of THOSE types!!'" The poster stated the individual on the phone then hung up.
Special Agent Tony Lang of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Honolulu office said he's heard about this scam.
"We receive a lot of these referrals for these phishing scams; we see them daily," he said. "We have a task force that addresses these cases. We also have a website; it's http://www.ic3.gov. People can actually write in their complaints and they'll filter down to our office."
"This is like a mass marketing-type operation where they send out thousands of these calls and a couple of people will actually give them this information," Lang continued. "The way we try to address this is through education. We go out to community groups and schools and tell them about the identity theft and phishing scams we've seen and to not respond back, because you can't get something for nothing, even if it's reducing your credit card interest rates."
Email John Burnett at jburnett@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
Lower credit card rates? Hardly | Hawaii Tribune Herald
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
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