Red alert! Scammers are attacking Australians!

Don't be fooled people. It's a trap!

Yes, an overseas call centre (sounded like India to me) has launched a full frontal scamming attack on unsuspecting Australians! It's sort of like email spam but they ring your home phone instead. 

So..... yesterday I get this call from India (?). The usual thing. Can barely understand what she's saying, and it sounds like there's about 50 other people in the room ringing people as well. She tells me that she's from some gov dept here in Australia (yeah, riiiiight) and that she has money to return to me of $7,200. I just about fall off the chair laughing, but decide to stay on the phone to see where this all goes - their scamming method if you will. 

I ask "How?". She tells me (it's still very hard to understand what she's saying) something like transaction fees are being returned to me. Yeah, riiiiiight. Then she asks for my bank account number. I tell her that I don't believe her but send me a cheque in the mail then. Then she asks what bank I'm with, I say it doesn't matter what bank I'm with. Then she says I have to ring their supervisor to get all the details, and she gives me an Australian number to ring. I write down the number, this is getting interesting.

Anyway I hang up and don't bother ringing. Meh, was entertaining at least. David gets back from up the road and I explain a bit of the call. He laughs. Then it occurs to me to put the number into this site called reverse Australia, which is a fantastic site that you can find out who is at the telephone number just by putting the number in and searching. This is what came up. Click to enlarge.

Ha ha ha. Now I'm even more entertained :)  So I Google and come up with this at a real Australian gov site called Scam Watch.

Fake rebate scams on the rise 

March 2015: In February the ACCC received a spike in contacts about fake rebate schemes so we are warning people to be aware of calls from a fake government department claiming you are owed money. 

Scammers have recently been calling Australians offering them a cheque worth $7000 or more claiming to be from the ‘Department of Finance’ or other government organisation such as the ‘Office of State Revenue’. The scammer will demand an upfront payment and various pieces of personal information before the money can be provided. However, there is no money and no connection with any state or commonwealth department. 

The scammers may spin a range of stories about why you are owed money to make their story sound real. They might claim that there is money due because of a tax refund, bank fee rebate, one-off payment, investment return or even a bonus. Whatever the story, these scams always involve some government department or organisation claiming you are owed money but you need to pay a fee in order to collect it. 

Scammers typically ask for money to be sent via wire transfer as it’s nearly impossible to recover money sent this way. They may also ask for people’s financial and other personal details to access their money and use this information to commit other scams. 

Be on guard – if you receive a phone call from someone saying you are owed money and they then ask you for your personal or banking details or to pay a fee, hang up – the person on the other end may be a scammer. If in doubt, look up the government department or organisation yourself and phone them. more

Ha ha ha. Totally utterly busted. David then actually rings the number and pretends to be the police, ha ha ha......

I decide to have a final bit of entertainment from it. I ring the ACCC number at the bottom of the Scam Watch page and inform them of it. They know all about it, just want my postcode is all. I ask if they want the number they gave me to ring, and they tell me no as it's a computer generated number designed to look like an Australian number.

Ah but just when I thought it was the end of it all, earlier today the same lady from India rings me again. She's obviously on a commission. I tell her "You're a con. It's all over the internet. Goodbye" and hang up. She was speechless! Ha ha ha ha.

I wonder how these people sleep at night you know. Ripping off innocent people like that. What assholes.