Complaints rise over epidemic of robocalls
It’s been three years since Winifred Woll was featured in the newspaper complaining about all the robocalls and scams she gets on her home phone.
Woll, 75, of St. Lawrence, Berks County, said she has a cellphone but really only uses it if she goes out or in case of an emergency. All of what she calls “the trash calls” come in on the landline in her house.
In three years, the numbers of robocalls she gets have increased.
“I get about four a day,” she said. “My son got me a phone with caller ID so I can see who’s calling and if it’s one of the idiotic calls I don’t answer.”
Woll said she wonders why legitimate businesses don’t join with consumers to put an end to the nuisance phone calls and scams that could cost consumers dearly.
“I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t answer the phone at all,” she said. “Maybe it’s a legitimate company. I’m not going to talk to them.
Woll said she’s most disappointed with officials who seem powerless to not only stop annoying telemarketing calls, but the scam callers whose sole purpose for calling is to get personal information so they can raid credit cards and bank accounts.
“It’s something that should have been handled by the government and wasn’t,” Woll said. “It’s no better than it was a few years ago.”
Robocall, scams, phishers
Robocalls are a growing epidemic and a new study shows Pennsylvania ranks 6th among states with 239,133 robocall complaints filed in 2018.
A robocall is normally defined as a computerized call sent out by a legitimate business through an autodialer or some other device. If you’ve ever gotten a call where no one answers for a few seconds then a recorded voice comes on, that’s a robocall, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
Sometimes the voice is a human.
An autodialer dials 10 or more numbers at once. The line lights up when someone answers and the telemarketer in the call center picks up the lighted line.
Phishing is attempt to get sensitive information like passwords, usernames banking and credit card information through deceptive means, including portraying a trusted person or entity in a phone call, email or other com
munication.
Victims are often directed to a fake website where they are asked to give detailed personal information used by scammers for rip-offs, according to SocialFish.com.
Currently, 3.7 million people are currently registered on Pennsylvania’s Do Not Call List, said Karissa Hand, a spokeswoman for the state Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s Office.
“The Do Not Call List is effective primarily for enforcement of the law for true telemarketing, as it improves our office’s ability to identify when calls are made to consumers who have indicated they do not want to be called,” Hand said. “Unfortunately, the law is not effective against scammers in that they ignore the law regardless of its consequences.”
Federal findings
The latest data from the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission compiled in a SocialCatfish.com study titled The Rising Robocall Epidemic in America revealed these key findings:
Five states had more robocalls than Pennsylvania. They were California, 747,829; Florida, 427,404; Texas, 402,316; New York, 348,615; and Illinois, 252,935.
Robocalls were: scams, 43.31%; alerts and reminders, 23.49%; payment reminders, 19.89%; and telemarketing 13.31%.
The most common scams were phoney IRS calls, health insurance companies and foreign consulates. A new scam claiming to be from the Chinese consulate has cost more than $40 million in total or $164,000 per victim.
“In April 2019, there were 3.5 billion telemarketing and robocalls made to mobile phones in America,” said Haley Helms, a spokeswoman for SocialCatfish.com.
“As artificial intelligence technology expands, robocalls are expected to keep rising,” Helms said. ”While some businesses use robocalls for legitimate purposes, an astounding 43% of all robocalls are scams.”
No local solution
“It’s frustrating.” That’s how Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams describes dealing with phone scams. Adams said his office doesn’t deal with robocalls and refers those complaints to the FCC or the state attorney general’s office.
“As far as phone scams go, the general advice still applies: If it sounds too good to be true, it’s not true,” Adams said.
It has gotten to the point, Adams said, where he won’t even answer his home phone.
“I got a call this morning,” he said. “The number may come up as being a local number but they (scammers) are circumventing the system to appear that it’s a local call when it’s probably coming from another country.
“It’s very frustrating and the other advice I give is don’t give in,” Adams said. “Don’t provide credit card numbers, banking numbers any financial information over the phone.”
Most recently, Berks residents were receiving calls saying they had missed jury duty and had to pay a fine with a credit card over the phone or risk arrest. It was a complete scam, he said.
In that case, the president judge of Berks County Court issued a statement warning residents to not be fooled by the phone scam.
Adams also said consumers should heed the warnings of government, utility, banking and other official sources that they will never call you and ask you for your personal information because they should already have it.
Information like name, address, birth date, Social Security number, and bank account numbers should all be in the possession of the people and agencies you deal with on a regular basis.
“We handle phone scam calls all the time, however, our investigative resources in that area are limited,” Adams said. “Typically what we have found is that most of these calls emanate from outside the United States or in another part of the country.”
Even federal investigators are limited in what they can do to stop robocalls and scam phone calls that are generated in other countries.
“It becomes extremely difficult to police this type of call,” Adams said.