*721 Scam

[wesleydnunder]

This weekend, I received a call from someone posing as a Harris Co. Sherrif. He told me that one of my kids was in jail and I needed to contact a Sgt. Garcia at another telephone number. When I called the other number, part of which was the sequence *721, it transferred my phone number the another number, allowing this jail inmate to place calls at the pay phone against my number. I'm currently getting this mess sorted out. I just wanted to warn my fellow boxers about this scam. Sheesh, what a PITA!

Mark

[phan222001]

get your phone carrier to block all long distance calls for a while the scam as gone on for awhile now

[Rico]

yep. its called fishing the phone line in jail. i've seen it done plenty of times. some of them sit at the phone all day until they get somebody. its the *72 part you need to watch out for. they use it to contact people who dont have collect calls or to simply leave you stuck with the bill.

[wesleydnunder]

Yeah, Rico. It was about an hour later that Shelia called my cell phone to tell me she couldn't get through on the land line. I called the ATT operator and he told me what had happened and to dial *73 to take the line off forwarding. ATT said when I get the bill to call customer service and they'll take the bogus charges off since the scam is under investigation by the Harris County Sherrif's office.

Mark

[mahoro]

i had those call before, but it was long time ago, it was back when i was 14, and they said my 22 years old son was busted for doing drug or whatever, i didn't think people still run those scam... isn't there another one few years back that people were using the scam for long distance call?

[FuzzyDragon09]

That's good to know. Thanks! Hope you get it sorted. At my house we make a habit of ignoring the phone unless we recognize the name on the caller id. And I do the same with my cell phone, though I've gotten some numbers with really weird area codes.

[eklikewhoa]

Damn Wes, you couldn't help a brotha out?