(876) 810-9956

The wife was called a couple days ago from this number. Between kids yelling and being busy, and the money situation being tight, she was a prime target of opportunity. The brisk speaking and never giving her a chance to think before asking for information led her to give out information including a credit card number, and the last 4 of both of our SSN's. As soon as she hung up, she realized her error and I got a panicked phone call. The credit card number I canceled immediately, and we got identity theft protection that night. Verizon then called us to inform us that our phone number was making overseas calls and was possible cloned.

The caller claimed to be Robert Foster from PCH. And he referred her to another number to call. Unfortunately she did, thus an international call charge and the opportunity for her phone to be cloned.

Fortunately, I setup our bank accounts and credit accounts with security in mind. Coupled with being tight on money, the debit accounts were ruled out and the wife selected to use the credit card that had a large balance due remaining on it. The caller supposedly phoned our credit card company and deposited $2K to the account to get the balance to zero due.

This is the point at which the wife woke up, and I canceled the card.

The caller used an account from a bank located in Virginia (Mountain Empire Federal Credit Union), so at this point, our Jamaican friends have just started interacting with US banking laws, opening them up to police on their end.

At this point, I imagine the caller would want us to go check our credit card account and see that we now have a cleared balance, and would you please send us some money in order to cover these expenses, etc...

I have noticed, that they do not like talking to me when I answer the phone. They suddenly get hard of hearing and soon hangup. Though, they have continued to try to get the wife on the phone, they haven't had much success.

So there are a couple possible problems we have now.
1. Personal info (Last 4 of SSN's and mailing address) leaked.
2. Credit Card # Leaked (canceled)
3. Phone Cloned (VZW claims to have corrected this)
4. Credit Card balance at $0.00

Yes, that last one is a possible problem. Here is why. If the caller used an account of a previous victim, that money will be claimed by the victim and returned by the credit card company, thus our balance will be put back to $2K owed. The other possible situation (though unlikely, I fear) is that the caller was stupid enough to use an account that belonged to them. Thus, they couldn't really just call up the bank to dispute the transfer without opening themselves up to a lot of investigative questions.

The wife is beating herself up over this. She is a hard person to con, but the situation and the skill of the caller got by her. The important lesson here is:

For a con to be successful, there is a major ingredient that is needed.

The mark has to be very hopeful or very fearful that what the caller is saying is true.

In other words, the mark is hoping that they really have won money cause they need it. Or they fear the implied threat and intimidation that a caller makes demanding money to "keep them from going to jail" as such in other cons.