A Telephone Scam to Be Aware Of

My phone rang this morning at 4:45am. About an hour before I normally get up. You know how that goes - you immediately think someone in your family has a crisis. My heart started racing and I jumped out of bed. Because I was pretty groggy, I stumbled my way to the kitchen because the answering machine had picked up the call by then. (It takes at least 2 rings to even wake me up.)

 It was a call from my local county jail from 'Thor'. I thought 'Thor' was that alien guy on Stargate SG1 and wondered why he didn't just beam down. Ok, I was sleepy.

 I called the jail around 10 this morning and asked why an inmate was able to call me at 4:45am and what could I do to prevent that from happening again. I got a real nice lady on the phone who told me about this scam inmates like to pull.

 She said inmates call random numbers and pitch a sad, sob story to anyone who answers about needing to call a family member, girlfriend, boyfriend, or boss. They'll say they dialed a wrong number and aren't allowed make another call. So they ask you to call for them and pass on their message.

 Invariably, some kind soul will agree to help. When that kind soul calls the number the inmate gave them, the person answering the call gets your phone number and can use it for call forwarding. They can then make long distance calls on your dime.

I'll have to admit I'm not real sure exactly how they do that, but it's possible. The key is: you have to be tricked into calling them first.

You can call your phone service provider and ask to have any calls from jails blocked. This is a great precaution to take to protect your phone number identity. I can imagine an elderly person, a young teen or just a kind but gullible soul would fall for this.

I'm now blocked from these types of calls... not necessarily because I would fall for this scam, but mostly because I don't want anymore calls in the wee hours of the night.