Phone scam: You've won a free cruise. Press '9' to receive..

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

Today I got an automated call about winning a free cruise. It told me to press '9' to claim my prize.

Smelling the scam and possibly some baiting, I played along. When I pressed '9' tho, there were tons of ppl who were doing the same thing. I wound up at someone's voice-mail system. Never got a "live operator"... The voicemail system asked me to identify the mailbox number of the person. I had no clue, so I pressed 0. A phone rang, several times, and I wound up back at the voicemail system. I repeated this 3 times or so, then I started to guess mailboxes.

I wound up finally getting a person to answer. But, he wasn't talking to me... He was talking to someone else about the cruise, etc. I realized, I had done something on the voicemail system such that I was now able to hear the calls the scammers were taking.

After about three of them, I decided it was time to record a bit of this. I had to go dig up my mic for my PC, and put the phone on speaker. I recorded a handful of these messages.

Some of the people actually gave their credit card numbers to the scammers, although I could only hear the scamming side of the conversation. Most of the calls resulted in the scammers hanging up.

Anyway, I am trying to figure out if any of these recorded calls would be useful to law enforcement. As you can imagine, when I phoned the local keystone kops, they were not interested.

I'm hoping there's more than just humor value in these things, e.g., the techniques the scammers use to try to get someone to divulge credit cards, how they tell you they are "recording" the conversation once you give the CC#, etc.

Anyway, feedback would be welcome. I can post the whole lot somewhere, after perhaps taking out the bits that identify the scammees...

Here they are (I will edit this list to update as I go):

Click here to hear Phone-scammer-You-won-a-free-cruise-failing-to-get-scammees-phone-number
Scammer failing to get the guys phone number. The system works by having an auto-dialer call hundreds of ppl/hour and when a person "bites'" I guess the scammers don't know what his phone number is and he has to give it up. You can't hear what the victim is saying, but you can imagine "why are you asking me my #, you called me!"... the excuse given by the scammer (3rd floor vs 13th floor) is so lame... the hangup occurs just after.
Click here to hear Cruise-scam---its-free-because-we-want-you-to-spend-your-vacation-money-here Starts off with the one-sided dialog of the scammer explaining (and confirming that the user pressed '9', which I think is part of the scam) This person obviously knows nothing is free, and the scammer tries to explain it to the person.
Click here to hear Scammer-frustrated-after-he-phones-a-Quebec-person-who-speaks-little-English
All of the calls were blasted out to Quebec, Canada. Lots of people speak enough English to understand the message "Congratulations, you have won a cruise. To claim your prize, press 9" but they get pissed off when the scammer can't speak French when he wants to explain why it's free. This is one such example. The scammer calls the guy an IDIOT at the end...
Click here to hear Cruise-scam-Did-you-press-9-for-the-free-cruise
This is another explanation of why the cruise is "free" and how they try to get you to give up the credit card # "You or someone in your family has been on time with paying your visa or mastercard..." This case was a hangup - yet another person who smelled a rat. However, I heard another person fall for this, because the scammers supplied the first 4 numbers (which can be easily known for CC banks in certain regions like Quebec). The gullible scammee fell for it and gave up the rest of the number! Very sad...

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 12:24 am

Interesting... I don't quite know what to tell you about that.. I guess the best thing you can do is report whatever number came up on your caller ID to the FTC and give them as much detail as you can. I don't know if I would go as far as to divulge you got those recordings.. I don't know.. LOL!

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

419weasel wrote:

I don't know if I would go as far as to divulge you got those recordings..

For what it's worth, since *they* were recording, you hear a "beep" every so many seconds. I am not a lawyer, but I don't think it's illegal to tape a conversation that the other party is taping!

I am nearly sure that they tape the phone calls to prove their claims that you "accepted" the offer (by pressing 9).

Some web pages I found (in French) state that it is a legally binding gesture to press 9, and that the fraud involves using your account to bill you long-distance calls. I think the kops got that last part wrong, anyway. If you read French, check it out here: http://www.unlimitedproject.qc.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=348&Itemid=65

But of course, if you haven't given them a credit card, I think there's little risk involved, even if you pressed 9.

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 3:48 am

Crooked bastards.... I generally hang up on unsolicited phone calls.

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:23 pm

The one about with the 13th floor as an excuse should have been clue enough as most buildings skip the number 13 when numbering floors (very dumb superstition). Once again you see where hope is manipulated to satiate the greed of the scammer. Sad

Try pming a mod and see if they have any ideas of what to do with this.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

This isn't AFF, and isn't something that we deal with here.

If people want to discuss it, that's fine, but I'm moving this to Misc.

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 7:02 pm

FriedEggsAndScamBait wrote:

419weasel wrote:

I don't know if I would go as far as to divulge you got those recordings..

... but I don't think it's illegal to tape a conversation that the other party is taping!
...

IF, your are one of the parties in the conversation it's probably legal, otherwise it probably would not be without some sort of government/legal authority.

FriedEggsAndScamBait wrote:

... I am nearly sure that they tape the phone calls to prove their claims that you "accepted" the offer (by pressing 9).
...

They can "claim" anything they want. Takes a court decision to accept that as proof though; offhand, didn't find anything on any 'official' or government or court_record type site. (didn't dig real deeply either though)

Adamu's soulmate Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 337

there was a similar well publicised scam a few years ago in UK. Basically a recorded message said you had won whatever so when you picked up the call you were told to dial 9 at which point your phone - unbeknown to you- dialled into a premium rate number and then the call was picked up - similar to the examples here.

People only found out they had been scammed when they received their telephone bills and as the premuim rate number was offshore the phone line providers were - they said unable to act. Calls were charged at something like �5 per minute and lasted as long as the callcentre could stretch the call out.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 27 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

I read something very similar in an article I Googled when I posted this message, and I was worried about the same thing. Quebec police in some small town warned of off-shore phone line connection charges if you pressed 9. Anyway, I phoned my telephone company's "phone busters" support the same day. They said that the police were wrong, and that "used" to be possible on some business lines, but that it's not possible to be billed for pressing 9.

It makes sense. The scammers were very quick to hang up on people if they were not able to speak English or suspected that something was not right (nothing is free, so why are you calling, etc.). It's pretty clear from what I heard that they were interested in getting a credit card number, not keeping people on the line. Most of the calls I heard were done within a minute.

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