W Have A Warrant For Your Arrest!

[Manny]

Just about everyone I know has received a call stating this! Depending on the caller, different remedies have been offered, none of them good of course. It DOES cause a momentary rise in pulse rate when receiving such a call. My reply was from a James Cagney film : "Come and get me copper!" and I hung up.

Has anyone received a similar call?

[Burnaby49]

Just about everyone I know has received a call stating this! Depending on the caller, different remedies have been offered, none of them good of course. It DOES cause a momentary rise in pulse rate when receiving such a call. My reply was from a James Cagney film : "Come and get me copper!" and I hung up.

Has anyone received a similar call?

I get then frequently. Recorded messages purportedly from the Canada Revenue Agency saying that a warrant has been issued for my arrest on income tax fraud and it can only be stopped by phoning some number. Since I had a 35 year career with the CRA I'm well aware of the process the agency goes through in handling tax fraud cases but perhaps they nail a sucker from time to time. I reported on one unfortunate woman here;

http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtop ... 50&t=11726

Since I've obviously never phoned back I don't know details but no doubt it involves clearing my debt via Western Union.

[notorial dissent]

I thought Walmart gift cards were the flavour du jour.

[ArthurWankspittle]

I thought Walmart gift cards were the flavour du jour.

That is so last year. It's Apple gift cards these days.

[Dark Optimist]

I had one call my home and talk to my wife, threatening to come to my work and arrest me. She told them to go ahead - one of my clients at the time was a local police lieutenant, and he would be happy to meet the caller there to assist with my arrest.

An unfortunate victim was a friend of mine, who did have prior IRS issues, but had caught up on her filings and payments. The scammer had her scared enough to buy over $500 of Apple gift cards and give the scammer the information. She worked in admin for a CPA firm at the time, so I wish she had just hung up and called one of the partners.

That's why I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize - especially calls to my cell phone that start with the same area code and prefix as my cell. Always fake.

[rogfulton]

I haven't gotten the warrant call in a long time. I have recently received calls from men with a pronounced accent telling me they are calling from the Federal Dept of the Treasury. My response is usually "I can't hear you over rhe noise here. Did you say you are offering me a treasure?" Calls disconnected immediately.

[Judge Roy Bean]

The scammers can buy lists of numbers where the target victim actually answers the call. Some of our cultural behaviors are coming back to haunt us.

It's not going to get any better even with legislation and regulation. Until and unless the penalty for calling-number spoofing is corporate death to the perpetrators and enablers it's going to go on and on. We're all going to be subject to absurd calls from collectors who think we have some kind of connection to an alleged debtor.

I get one every week or two from a well-known, utterly bogus operation that can't even figure out that I don't have any relationship with or to the person they're trying to scam into believing they'll be arrested for a debt. I'm not related. They were a tenant in a rental house some years ago. The number displayed is never the same and the recorded message doesn't vary much. I know who the company is and I'm not about to respond or contact them and thereby verify that they've reached someone at a number in their database who doesn't give a rat's ass. Better to let the automated system record the hang up.

Years and years ago during the mortgage crisis I suggested to people who were being harassed by predatory debt collectors that there is no legal obligation to answer a phone call. If only more people had accepted that as the norm the problem might have eventually gone away. The scammers who lured people into talking on the phone would have dried up, but our odd social and cultural curiosity of answering unknown calls simply poured gas on the fire and technology has only helped the predators take advantage of the unknowing.

Please - if it didn't work they'd eventually stop trying. If you don't know who it is, ignore it.

[AnOwlCalledSage]

I do genuinely answer "Have you been involved in a motor accident that wasn't your fault?" calls with "No, it was my fault. I killed two people."

Longest they have kept on the line after that is 30 seconds!

8 years ago when I got into a little trouble with my mortgage after being made redundant, a well know UK mortgage company that operates nation wide would cold call me without giving their name and refuse to speak to me until I confirmed MY details (date of birth, place of birth etc.). I refused every time and asked them for an number I could look up and call them back. They said they couldn't give me one. Took them three months before they finally sent me a letter which I responded to!!!

[ArthurWankspittle]

I do genuinely answer "Have you been involved in a motor accident that wasn't your fault?" calls with "No, it was my fault. I killed two people."

Longest they have kept on the line after that is 30 seconds!

Someone off another forum replies "Which one?"
"Er how many accidents have you been involved in in the last three months?"
"Eight"
And would continue with things like "Was it the one when there was 11 of us in the car?"

[Elmware]

I've been getting calls saying something like "Hello, this is an important message from Service Canada... crime against your Social Insurance Number..." At some point it tells me to press "1" to speak to an officer, so I press "1" and when they answer, I blast them with my 130dB Storm Whistle, then chant "This is the Whistle Blower, blowing the whistle on scumbag thieves like you! Get a life! Get a real job! And get a fucking clue you stupid moron!" I try to get as much of that in before they hang up.

There are also other people blasting loud stuff into their ears, such as air horns. Anyone else want to do this, I say "Go for it!"

They are less likely to call the police on you and try to have you charged with assault, but if they do, just explain to the officer why you are doing it, and that you will keep doing it if they don't stop harassing you with these calls, pretending to be officers, of Service Canada, or CRA/IRS, etc., with fraudulent intentions. I'm sure the police would be more interested in the crimes they are committing, over a petty assault charge.

[Burnaby49]

Hi Elm, been a while. I've not gotten this one yet. Most prevalent last six months or so are the recorded message saying there's a problem with "your" credit card and the always evergreen fake CRA call.

[Mike_p]

I've been getting a lot of calls supposedly from my internet service provider (but not!).
The prerecorded message say there has been some suspicious activity on my internet connection ... press 1 to speak to an operator. So I press 1. Voice comes on the line and starts with their spiel. My favourite gambits are:

1/ "Before you go any further, I'd just say like to say how sorry I am."
"huh?"
"Well, you must have reached such a low point in your life to become such a shameless, dishonest crook ..."

2/ "Does your mother know what you do for a living?"
If they say yes ... "Is she ashamed of you? If not, with that lack of shame she's probably a prostitute!"
It can go a variety of ways, but normally ends up with the caller calling me all kinds of bad things.

It probably doesn't achieve anything but I have fun doing it.

[Burnaby49]

I've been getting a lot of calls supposedly from my internet service provider (but not!).
The prerecorded message say there has been some suspicious activity on my internet connection ... press 1 to speak to an operator. So I press 1. Voice comes on the line and starts with their spiel. My favourite gambits are:

1/ "Before you go any further, I'd just say like to say how sorry I am."
"huh?"
"Well, you must have reached such a low point in your life to become such a shameless, dishonest crook ..."

2/ "Does your mother know what you do for a living?"
If they say yes ... "Is she ashamed of you? If not, with that lack of shame she's probably a prostitute!"
It can go a variety of ways, but normally ends up with the caller calling me all kinds of bad things.

It probably doesn't achieve anything but I have fun doing it.

I used to engage in similar antics but now I'm too old and tired. I just hang up.

[Elmware]

If you're referring to those calls from India, I get them all the time. At first it was the CRA/IRS, then Service Canada, then Canadian Border Service Agency, and occasionally some tech company going out of business offering a so-called refund, or some company claiming that your computer has a virus and is attacking their network, etc...

If given an option to press "1" to talk to someone, I press it, and wait for someone to answer, then I blow my 130dB Storm Whistle right into the phone and chant "This is the Whistle Blower! Blowing the whistle on scumbag thieves like you! Get a life! Get a real job, and get an effing clue you stupid wanker!" Sometimes I manage to get that all in before they hang up.

Other times I may have some fun with them. I kept calling Officer Switcher Officer Swindler. One line that I'm waiting to use is to tell them they either have their turbin wrapped around their head too tight that it's squeezing all the common sense out of their skull, or they ate way too much currey that it fried their effing brains.