PLEASE ALL READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
08 February 2002, 03:43 PM
#1
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
This is not a hoax, and have just received it through work (work for the Government).
Subject: Message from Northamptonshire Police
Below are details of a scam currently going the rounds. The police have
requested that as many people are alerted as possible.
Unfortunately it is a genuine scam.
Police Report !
The reason this is working so well is it plays on your good will!
Picture the scene:-
You are sitting at home and there is a knock at the door. On answering it
you are confronted by a respectable looking woman in a suit, who is slightly
distressed. She explains that her car has broken down further down the road
and she needs to contact her husband to come to her aid. Is it at all
possible to use your phone to call him?
You allow her to use the phone, but being the suspicious type you stand
with her as she makes the call. She dials the number, and asks to be put through
to Mr Smith / Brown / Stevens (Whatever). She holds the line for about
thirty seconds. She continues, "In that case can you ask him to leave the
meeting for a minute I need to speak to him quite urgently." She apologies
again and explains they are getting him out of a meeting.
A couple of minutes goes by and she starts to speak to her husband. She
explains the situation to him, tells him what has happened to the car, is
annoyed because she now can't get to her meeting, and asks what she should
do now. She listens for a few seconds and then says, "Well as soon as the
meeting finishes can you come to Cardiff Road / Leicester Road / Surrey
Street (Whatever), where the car has broken down. Another few seconds go
by,
"OK, I'll see you in about twenty minutes hen."
She put the phone down, and thanks you ever so much for your kind
assistance, even offering you a pound for your trouble, but of course you
decline, it's no trouble.
She leaves and everything is fine.
Or is it? The day or week before knocking on your door she set up her own
premium rate line with a telephone company at the cost of about £150, and
she has dictated that calls to that number should be charged at £50 per
minute. She has dialled that number. The
conversation she has had with her "husband" is entirely fictitious, there
is a pre-recorded voice message on the other end to give you the impression
she is talking to someone. She has been on the phone for about five minutes,
that call just cost you £250, the majority of which goes into her pocket,
and the first you know about it is when you get your bill a month later.
To rub a bit of salt into the wound,she hasn't even committed a criminal
offence. You've given her permission to use your phone. 5 occasions in
Luton where this has been reported in the last couple of weeks .
Would anyone reading this please pass it on to friends and colleagues etc.
otherwise it could cost someone a lot of money.
PC Paul Toseland
Corby Business Anti-Crime Network Administrator
[Edited by Shaun - 8/2/2002 8:25:41 PM]
Subject: Message from Northamptonshire Police
Below are details of a scam currently going the rounds. The police have
requested that as many people are alerted as possible.
Unfortunately it is a genuine scam.
Police Report !
The reason this is working so well is it plays on your good will!
Picture the scene:-
You are sitting at home and there is a knock at the door. On answering it
you are confronted by a respectable looking woman in a suit, who is slightly
distressed. She explains that her car has broken down further down the road
and she needs to contact her husband to come to her aid. Is it at all
possible to use your phone to call him?
You allow her to use the phone, but being the suspicious type you stand
with her as she makes the call. She dials the number, and asks to be put through
to Mr Smith / Brown / Stevens (Whatever). She holds the line for about
thirty seconds. She continues, "In that case can you ask him to leave the
meeting for a minute I need to speak to him quite urgently." She apologies
again and explains they are getting him out of a meeting.
A couple of minutes goes by and she starts to speak to her husband. She
explains the situation to him, tells him what has happened to the car, is
annoyed because she now can't get to her meeting, and asks what she should
do now. She listens for a few seconds and then says, "Well as soon as the
meeting finishes can you come to Cardiff Road / Leicester Road / Surrey
Street (Whatever), where the car has broken down. Another few seconds go
by,
"OK, I'll see you in about twenty minutes hen."
She put the phone down, and thanks you ever so much for your kind
assistance, even offering you a pound for your trouble, but of course you
decline, it's no trouble.
She leaves and everything is fine.
Or is it? The day or week before knocking on your door she set up her own
premium rate line with a telephone company at the cost of about £150, and
she has dictated that calls to that number should be charged at £50 per
minute. She has dialled that number. The
conversation she has had with her "husband" is entirely fictitious, there
is a pre-recorded voice message on the other end to give you the impression
she is talking to someone. She has been on the phone for about five minutes,
that call just cost you £250, the majority of which goes into her pocket,
and the first you know about it is when you get your bill a month later.
To rub a bit of salt into the wound,she hasn't even committed a criminal
offence. You've given her permission to use your phone. 5 occasions in
Luton where this has been reported in the last couple of weeks .
Would anyone reading this please pass it on to friends and colleagues etc.
otherwise it could cost someone a lot of money.
PC Paul Toseland
Corby Business Anti-Crime Network Administrator
[Edited by Shaun - 8/2/2002 8:25:41 PM]
08 February 2002, 04:04 PM
#2
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Sorry mate it is utter bollox
I have spoken to Ictis and they have told me it is a hoax.
http://www.icstis.org.uk
There is no such thing as £50 numbers. £1.50 is the max. FACT!
If you did get scammed you could claim the money back from the service provider. FACT!
Mark
[Edited by Mark Champion - 8/2/2002 4:06:41 PM]
I have spoken to Ictis and they have told me it is a hoax.
http://www.icstis.org.uk
There is no such thing as £50 numbers. £1.50 is the max. FACT!
If you did get scammed you could claim the money back from the service provider. FACT!
Mark
[Edited by Mark Champion - 8/2/2002 4:06:41 PM]
02 August 2002, 03:46 PM
#3
Drag it!
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ba5tard5[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img][img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]
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02 August 2002, 04:05 PM
#10
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This is a Shame, you try to help peoeple out and it cost you £250. i suggest dialing the number yourself and asking for her husband will be the best way, (if its a scam, probably cost you £5, still much, but better than £250) or just slam mthe door and say you dont speak english
02 August 2002, 04:18 PM
#13
Scooby Regular
It is reported as a hoax on the Urban Legend website, and I for one am fairly sure it is:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/phone.htm
DW
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/phone.htm
DW
02 August 2002, 04:19 PM
#14
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From http://www.snopes.com/
Claim: Scammers are racking up hundreds of dollars per phone call by borrowing homeowners' phones and placing five-minute calls to expensive premium rate services.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
Police warning . . . for your info - a new scam! this is not a joke!
We've been alerted to a new scam and asked to pass this on to everyone we know. This is not one of these "chain" thingys - please read it and pass it on to people you know especially the most vulnerable amongst us.
Police Report!
The reason this is working so well is it plays on your good will! Picture the scene:
You are sitting at home and there is a knock at the door. On answering it you are confronted by a respectable looking woman in a suit, who is slightly distressed. She explains that her car has broken down further down the road and she needs to contact her husband to come to her aid. Is it at all possible to use your phone to call him?
You allow her to use the phone, but being the suspicious type you stand with her as she makes the call. She dials the number, and asks to be put through to Mr Smith / Brown / Stevens (Whatever). She holds the line for about thirty seconds. She continues, "In that case can you ask him to leave the meeting for a minute I need to speak to him quite urgently." She apologizes again and explains they are getting him out of a meeting.
A couple of minutes goes by and she starts to speak to her husband. She explains the situation to him, tells him what has happened to the car, is annoyed because she now can't get to her meeting, and asks what she should do now. She listens for a few seconds and then says, "Well as soon as the meeting finishes can you come to Cardiff Road / Leicester Road / Surrey Street (Whatever), where the car has broken down. Another few seconds go by,
"OK, I'll see you in about twenty minutes then."
She put the phone down, and thanks you ever so much for your kind assistance, even offering you a pound for your trouble, but of course you decline, it's no trouble.
She leaves and everything is fine.
Or is it? The day or week before knocking on your door she set up her own premium rate line with a telephone company at the cost of about £150, and she has dictated that calls to that number should be charged at £50 per minute. She has dialled that number. The conversation she has had with her "husband" is entirely fictitious, there is a pre-recorded voice message on the other end to give you the impression she is talking to someone. She has been on the phone for about five minutes, that call just cost you £250, the majority of which goes into her pocket, and the first you know about it is when you get your bill a month later.
To rub a bit of salt into the wound, she hasn't even committed a criminal offence. You've given her permission to use your phone.
Would anyone reading this please pass it on to friends and colleagues etc. otherwise it could cost someone a lot of money.
Origins: This dire warning is similar to the area code 809 phone scam in that the technique it describes isn't completely implausible, but the extent of the scam and the amount of money potential victims stand to lose have been grossly exaggerated.
If any groups of scammers are really going door-to-door in England to dupe homeowners into allowing them to use their phones to place calls to expensive premium rate services (familiar to Americans as "Pay-Per-Call" services which use area codes 900 and 976), then the anonymous author of this bit of Internet scamlore seems to be the only one to have taken note of it -- neither the police nor the press in England has issued warnings about or reported real incidents of this occurring.
Moreover, it's just not possible that a scammer could rack up a £250 charge with a single five-minute phone call, as The Guardian noted in July 2002:
Two readers in Watford are alarmed by an open letter warning of the following scam: a distressed, smartly dressed woman rings the doorbell and asks to use the phone as her car has broken down. She spends five minutes on the line, then departs. When your bill comes you find you've been charged £250. "In fact," says the letter, "She has set up her own £50-a-minute premium rate line and dialled that number on your phone."
"It's a hoax," says a spokesman from the premium-rate line regulator Ictsis. "The highest premium rate tariff available is £1.50 a minute and only network providers can dictate such charges."
As far as we know, ICSTIS (the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services) still doesn't have the power to force premium rate service operators to give refunds (they can only levy fines against operators), so English phone customers might conceivably be on the hook if they fell victim to such a scam. In the USA, however, a consumer could dispute such a fraudulent charge with his phone company (and report it to the FTC) to have it removed from his bill and charged back to the premium line operator. And while we don't know about English law, in the USA such a scammer could be charged with a criminal offense: even if you gave the scammer permission to use your phone, wire fraud laws (such as 18 USC 1343, which makes it a federal crime for anyone to use interstate wire communications facilities in carrying out a scheme to defraud) could still apply.
This isn't a scam anyone really need fear, but those who worry nonetheless can employ a simple safeguard against it: if someone asks to use your home phone to make an emergency phone call, offer to place the call for him. Those truly in desperate need of a telephone rarely stand on ceremony and demand to dial it themselves.
Last updated: 31 July 2002
Claim: Scammers are racking up hundreds of dollars per phone call by borrowing homeowners' phones and placing five-minute calls to expensive premium rate services.
Status: False.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2002]
Police warning . . . for your info - a new scam! this is not a joke!
We've been alerted to a new scam and asked to pass this on to everyone we know. This is not one of these "chain" thingys - please read it and pass it on to people you know especially the most vulnerable amongst us.
Police Report!
The reason this is working so well is it plays on your good will! Picture the scene:
You are sitting at home and there is a knock at the door. On answering it you are confronted by a respectable looking woman in a suit, who is slightly distressed. She explains that her car has broken down further down the road and she needs to contact her husband to come to her aid. Is it at all possible to use your phone to call him?
You allow her to use the phone, but being the suspicious type you stand with her as she makes the call. She dials the number, and asks to be put through to Mr Smith / Brown / Stevens (Whatever). She holds the line for about thirty seconds. She continues, "In that case can you ask him to leave the meeting for a minute I need to speak to him quite urgently." She apologizes again and explains they are getting him out of a meeting.
A couple of minutes goes by and she starts to speak to her husband. She explains the situation to him, tells him what has happened to the car, is annoyed because she now can't get to her meeting, and asks what she should do now. She listens for a few seconds and then says, "Well as soon as the meeting finishes can you come to Cardiff Road / Leicester Road / Surrey Street (Whatever), where the car has broken down. Another few seconds go by,
"OK, I'll see you in about twenty minutes then."
She put the phone down, and thanks you ever so much for your kind assistance, even offering you a pound for your trouble, but of course you decline, it's no trouble.
She leaves and everything is fine.
Or is it? The day or week before knocking on your door she set up her own premium rate line with a telephone company at the cost of about £150, and she has dictated that calls to that number should be charged at £50 per minute. She has dialled that number. The conversation she has had with her "husband" is entirely fictitious, there is a pre-recorded voice message on the other end to give you the impression she is talking to someone. She has been on the phone for about five minutes, that call just cost you £250, the majority of which goes into her pocket, and the first you know about it is when you get your bill a month later.
To rub a bit of salt into the wound, she hasn't even committed a criminal offence. You've given her permission to use your phone.
Would anyone reading this please pass it on to friends and colleagues etc. otherwise it could cost someone a lot of money.
Origins: This dire warning is similar to the area code 809 phone scam in that the technique it describes isn't completely implausible, but the extent of the scam and the amount of money potential victims stand to lose have been grossly exaggerated.
If any groups of scammers are really going door-to-door in England to dupe homeowners into allowing them to use their phones to place calls to expensive premium rate services (familiar to Americans as "Pay-Per-Call" services which use area codes 900 and 976), then the anonymous author of this bit of Internet scamlore seems to be the only one to have taken note of it -- neither the police nor the press in England has issued warnings about or reported real incidents of this occurring.
Moreover, it's just not possible that a scammer could rack up a £250 charge with a single five-minute phone call, as The Guardian noted in July 2002:
Two readers in Watford are alarmed by an open letter warning of the following scam: a distressed, smartly dressed woman rings the doorbell and asks to use the phone as her car has broken down. She spends five minutes on the line, then departs. When your bill comes you find you've been charged £250. "In fact," says the letter, "She has set up her own £50-a-minute premium rate line and dialled that number on your phone."
"It's a hoax," says a spokesman from the premium-rate line regulator Ictsis. "The highest premium rate tariff available is £1.50 a minute and only network providers can dictate such charges."
As far as we know, ICSTIS (the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services) still doesn't have the power to force premium rate service operators to give refunds (they can only levy fines against operators), so English phone customers might conceivably be on the hook if they fell victim to such a scam. In the USA, however, a consumer could dispute such a fraudulent charge with his phone company (and report it to the FTC) to have it removed from his bill and charged back to the premium line operator. And while we don't know about English law, in the USA such a scammer could be charged with a criminal offense: even if you gave the scammer permission to use your phone, wire fraud laws (such as 18 USC 1343, which makes it a federal crime for anyone to use interstate wire communications facilities in carrying out a scheme to defraud) could still apply.
This isn't a scam anyone really need fear, but those who worry nonetheless can employ a simple safeguard against it: if someone asks to use your home phone to make an emergency phone call, offer to place the call for him. Those truly in desperate need of a telephone rarely stand on ceremony and demand to dial it themselves.
Last updated: 31 July 2002
02 August 2002, 04:23 PM
#15
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This is not a hoax, and have just received it through work (work for the Government).
02 August 2002, 04:39 PM
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That clears that up then.
I'm fairly sure that there would be a criminal offence within there somewhere (deception related).
Obtaining percuniary advantage by deception maybe?
(If it was a real occurrence, which of course it isn't).
I'm fairly sure that there would be a criminal offence within there somewhere (deception related).
Obtaining percuniary advantage by deception maybe?
(If it was a real occurrence, which of course it isn't).
02 August 2002, 05:38 PM
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if anyone can work out to set up a premium rate number for more than a few quid/min let me know. It will help with my plan to be a millionaire.
This originated in the US. In the UK we have a regulator who will not let people set phone lines up costing £250/min or whatever it is supposed to be.
The closest I've seen in this country are people doing SMS subscription services for a joke/day etc. - at £1/sms. Now that is getting on for pure genius as far as making cash goes.
Deano
This originated in the US. In the UK we have a regulator who will not let people set phone lines up costing £250/min or whatever it is supposed to be.
The closest I've seen in this country are people doing SMS subscription services for a joke/day etc. - at £1/sms. Now that is getting on for pure genius as far as making cash goes.
Deano
02 August 2002, 08:30 PM
#27
Scooby Regular
Thread Starter
Since people are sooooo adament this is a crock, I will lock the thread.
Just when I receive an email from a KNOWN offical body, I seem to be more concerned. This email was circulated by a governing body within our organisation......some how I doubt THAT would of happened if it was a known hoax.
Sorry for the inconvenience of trying to alert others.
Regards,
Shaun.
Just when I receive an email from a KNOWN offical body, I seem to be more concerned. This email was circulated by a governing body within our organisation......some how I doubt THAT would of happened if it was a known hoax.
Sorry for the inconvenience of trying to alert others.
Regards,
Shaun.
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