Florida Phone Scams - Don't Let Them Fool You
Yes, we would hope to get some rest from phone scams and robocalls during the holiday season. But as things are, it is when they decide to increase everything in an effort to use our good food and desire to connect with family in order to scam us out of our personal details or, more often, money.
The best way to prevent this is always simple, use the Florida Reverse Phone Lookup and just run the number before answering. That way you can save yourself a lot of time and more importantly, nerves.
However just to provide a bit more help - we will go over some of the latest and most common practices sussed by phone scammers in Florida.
Public Notice for Floridians
So Attorney General Ashley Moody released a resource for Floridians to use for protection against fraud. Scams at a Glance is an outreach program with information about common and emerging scams.
Some general signs of common scams include:
Unsolicited calls or emails;
High-pressure tactics or too-good-to-be-true offers;
Threats of loss if immediate action is not taken; and
Requests for immediate payment by wire transfer, credit, prepaid debit, or gift cards.
Now all of these can easily happen over the phone and that is why it is imperative that you stay alert and question everything.
Do Not Provide Payment Details Over The Phone
This should go without saying but at times the person on the other side of the phone call can seem very persuasive and can use fear tactics to get you to share payment details or even send them money.
The solution is simple. Hand up. As any government agency can confirm they will never call you up and ask for money in this manner. Most, like the IRS, will send you a formal document by post with the official letterhead and relevant data.
This means that you should not be worrying about hanging up or ignoring the phone call. And in case you still have reservations, hang up, use the Florida Reverse Phone Lookup, and see who is behind that number, and if you want to prevent it from happening to someone else, report it to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center and to the Federal Trade Commission. And don’t forget you may remain anonymous when you report suspicious or criminal activity.
One of the Latest Northern District of Florida Scams
Recently - The United States Attorneys Office, Northern District of Florida, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation alerted the public of several imposter scams involving individuals claiming to be United States Attorneys, FBI Agents, or other law enforcement officials.
This is just a part of the warning they issued ->
According to the statement - "During the calls, appearing to come from the Northern District United States Attorneys Office telephone number, the imposters attempt to collect a fine in lieu of arrest purportedly related to a claim of human trafficking, or other similar offenses. The intended victims are advised they can avoid arrest by paying a monetary fine.
The tactics utilized appear credible, such as providing information like badge numbers, names of actual law enforcement officials, and physical courthouse addresses. The fraudsters also spoof their phone numbers to appear on caller IDs as if they are calling from a government agency.
Luckily they also provided a very useful list of things to keep in mind -
1. The United States Attorneys Office will never contact individuals about criminal investigations and never ask for credit/debit card/gift card numbers, wire transfers, or bank routing numbers, or to make bitcoin deposits for any purpose.
2. You should never divulge personal or financial information to unknown callers.
As you can see, phone scammers are not afraid to take on the United States Attorneys Office, Northern District of Florida and it is at times very hard to stop them in time. The prosecution is even harder when people fail to report a crime, usually when they feel ashamed for falling for it.
There is no need to be hard on yourselves, as these are professional scammers who even spoof names, badge numbers, and phone numbers, so as always the best course of action is to hang up, use Florida Reverse Phone Lookup service for free and report the number when it turns out to be a scam.