Claim: Scammers con victims into forwarding their phones to other numbers.
Status: True.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004]
To All: Last Tuesday morning my wife fell victim to a phone scam and I want to alert everyone I know about this fraud. She got a "wrong" number call asking for "Jason." When she said he had the wrong number he faked panic and said "please don't hang up." I just got picked up by the police for outstanding traffic warrants. I only get one call and my little boy is waiting at school for me to pick him up. He will be very scared. Please call my mother and ask her to pick him up." She agreed to make the call. He gave her what supposedly was his mother's number but by dialing it the way he directed, she unknowingly forwarded our phone number to this other person's phone number. When I got home from work she told me what happened and said she tried all day to call his mother but just got a busy signal. I told her that I was sure that if the guy explained what happened to the guards that they would have arranged for the kid to be picked up and not to worry about it. Friday, I was working late and got a call from my son-in-law about 6:30 asking me if I knew there was something was wrong with my home phone. He said that he tried three times to call us at home but each time he got someone in Plano. I picked up my office phone and dialed my home number and also got a lady in Plano who said she had been getting calls from someone asking for Glen or Kay for the past I then called Verizon's repair service and told them I needed my phone repaired. After being put on hold for several minutes the customer service rep came back on and asked if I had gotten a call from a jail or Verizon said that they won't be able to tell me how much damage was done until the invoice prints out in about three weeks. The customer service rep also said that it could be hundreds or even thousands if |
Origins: Given how often we've been asked about the validity of the
customer — it's surprising we've received so few inquiries about a call forwarding scam which can be effectively pulled on a large segment of the phone-using public. A recent resurgence of this scam in some parts of the U.S. has prompted us to put up this article to increase awareness and help head off additional instances of this con.
The call forwarding scam typically starts out with the scammer's calling a victim and pretending to be in an urgent situation with a desperate need to contact someone else. A typical scenario is that the scammer claims to have been arrested for a minor traffic infraction (such as having outstanding warrants for unpaid tickets or driving with a suspended license) and needs to call a relative to come pick up his children from the police station. Supposedly, the scammer has "accidentally" dialed the wrong number and claims he cannot place another call (usually by invoking the myth that arrested persons are allowed only a single phone call), so he pleads with the victim to help him complete the call by forwarding him to the correct phone number.
However, the forwarding instructions provided by the scammer don't simply forward the current call to another number; they set the victim's phone to forward all subsequent incoming calls to another number. This scheme allows the scammer to use his victim's phone as a relay for long-distance calls, with the victim being none the wiser until he spots the unusual charges on his next phone
bill.
For example, suppose the victim's phone number is
As AT&T explains the scam:
Star-7-2 is a custom feature for call forwarding. When the customer dials *72 followed by a telephone number, it activates the call forwarding feature causing all your incoming calls to ring at another number. At the end of the other
Star-7-2, billing back to you: You receive a call from a stranger posing as a telephone technician or telling you that he has been arrested for driving with a suspended license and is in
(Of course, this scheme only works if the victim had previously signed up for the call-forwarding option with his phone service provider. And although *72 is the sequence most commonly used for call forwarding, some phone service providers may use different sequences.)
The best way to avoid falling victim to this scam is the obvious one: never activate your call forwarding feature at the request of someone you don't know. Only forward your calls when you want them to go somewhere else.
Additional information:
 | April Foolproof: AT&T Alerts Consumers About the Latest Scams (AT&T) |
Last updated: 12 July 2004
Sources:
