Latest Telephone Scam----Be Aware.

[snooky]

Received this e-mail from one of the lads at work:-








Telephone scam to watch out for!
Send to a few people to pass it on!



The new telephone 'scam' has arrived Sept 1st 2009

I received a call from a 'representative' of BT, informing me that he was
dis-connecting me because of an unpaid bill. He demanded payment
immediately of £31.00 , or it would be £ 118.00 to re-connect at a later
date.

The guy wasn't even fazed when I told him I was with Virgin Media,
allegedly VM have to pay BT a percentage for line rental!

I asked the guy's name - the very 'English' John Peacock with a very
'African' accent - & phone number - 0800 0800 152.

Obviously the fella realized I wasn't believing his story, so offered to
demonstrate that he was from BT. I asked how & he told me to hang up & try
phoning someone - he would dis-connect my phone to prevent this.

AND HE DID !! My phone was dead - no engaged tone, nothing - until he
phoned me again.

Very pleased with himself, he asked if that was enough proof that he was
with BT. I asked how the payment was to be made &am p; he said credit card,
there & then..

I said that I didn't know how he'd done it, but I had absolutely no
intention of paying him , I didn't believe his name or that he worked for
BT.

He hung up.

Did 1471 & phoned his fictitious 0800 number - not recognised.


I phoned the police to let them know , I wasn't the first! It's only just
started apparently but it is escalating.


Their advice was to let as many people know by word of mouth of this scam.
The fact that the phone does go off would probably convince some people
it's real, so please let as many friends & family aware of this.


Brenda Cross
Essex Watch Administrator
Community Safety Office

[donedigging]

Thanks for that Snooky.

[oldherbaceous]

I was just a wondering, if the, "cut off telephone", effect, could be achieved by them simply pressing their mute button, as this would not let you get a dialling tone!

[Geoff]

Correct OH - this scam was featured on "You and Yours" some time ago.

[peter]

As per usual this is a hoax.

http://www.snopes.com/fraud/telephone/btscam.asp

All e-mails of the "OH my god this terrible thing might happen to you" are designed to do one of two things.

1/. Be a damm nuiscance and clutter up e-mail systems and boards like this.

2/. Possibly carry a payload, i.e. a virus.

Best policy, never spread rumours.

[Johnboy]

Hi Peter,
If you read your posted website it decidedly is not a hoax.
I had a phone call from a person along the same line some time back and was told by the 'BT person,' a woman in this case, that I had to clear certain amounts of money on my phone account amounting to £48.00.
I politely said to her that she was wrong and I would look into it and if necessary deal with it. She then threatened to cut my supply off. I told her that she could do as she pleased and replaced the receiver. I didn't like her manner. I never owe anybody anything and as I was busy and had only come in for a cuppa I went straight again out and forgot about it.
A couple of days later when I remembered I checked my phone bill and rang BT to be told that it was a scam and that they had had many complaints and that the police were aware of the situation. That was back in April and until reading Snooky's posting had forgot all about it.
Had I given any details over the phone I think that by now I would be considerably poorer. So where is the hoax?
JB.

[Cider Boys]

Thanks snooky for the warning.

When someone calls you they in general control the call, so when he asked you to replace your receiver and try dialling out you would not receive any dial tone until he also repalced his receiver. Nowadays on modern exchanges there is a time out when the call is released when the called party hangs up but this is after a set period of time.

Many years ago I worked as a engineer for the then GPO telephones and it was not uncommon for taxi firms to send out cars to dial their rivals numbers from remote call boxes and leave the phones off the hook, this would busy up all the incomming lines to the rivals phones. The rivals would then send out their drivers to frantically find these call boxes to replace the receivers to free up their lines.

Nothing changes much, there will always be bent people, just a shame we don't staighten them anymore.

Barney

[Chantal]

The first thing I did when I received this was check on Snopes and it does appear to be a genuine warning for once.