A new scam has been reported by multiple Sheriff department across the United States. It involves a caller who claims to be calling from 911 department asking for money or personal information in order to register the victims telephone line with the emergency services. The caller also hints that if the phone number is not registered the police will not be able to reach the victim’s home in case of emergency because the home address will not appear in the 911 system.
The authorities would like to remind the public that all 911 service related fees are collected through a special dedicated 911 tax which is paid with every phone bill. There is no surplus charges and calls like this should be reported to the local police department as well as the FTC and the State’s Attorney general.
This scam is one of many “Authority figure” scams which have emerged in the recent years. In another phone scam which involves a scammer pretending to be a police officer the victim is informed that they will be arrested because they missed jury duty. When the victim objects, the scammer demands personal information in order to verify the validity of the claim. This is when personal information such as Date of Birth and Social Security Number is extracted.
By far one of the biggest phone scams involving authority figures is “phony debt collector” scam, in which the scammer pretends to be calling from a law-firm trying to collect an outstanding debt. In the beginning of the conversation the scammer tells the victim to contact their attorney because they will soon be arrested for the outstanding debt. The criminals become very aggressive when the victim starts asking questions and threaten to go to the victims workplace and arrest them in front of their employer. Faced with the prospect of getting fired many of the victims end-up paying the non-existent debt.
Authority figure scams will probably continue to rise, because scammers have realized that it’s profitable to piggyback of government institutions’ image.
If you get a call similar to the ones described above please report it to the real police department as well as http://whycall.me