Dying To Know

1. Most telephone sales calls are made by legitimate businesses offering legitimate products or services.
But wherever honest firms search for new customers, so do swindlers. Phone fraud is a multi-billion dollar business that involves selling everything from bad or non-existent investments to the peddling of misrepresented products and services. Everyone who has a phone is a prospect; whether you become a victim is largely up to you.

2. There is no way to positively determine whether a sales call is on the up and up simply by talking with someone on the phone.
No matter what questions you ask or how many you ask, skilled swindlers have ready answers. That’s why sales calls from persons or organizations that are unknown to you should always be checked out before you actually buy or invest. Legitimate callers have nothing to hide.

3. Phone swindlers are likely to know more about you than you know about them.
Depending on where they got your name in the first place, they may know your age and income, health and hobbies, occupation and marital status, education, the home you live in, what magazines you read, and whether you’ve bought by phone in the past.

Even if your name came from the phone book, telephone con men (and women) assume that, like most people, you would be
interested in having more income, that you’re receptive to a bargain, that you are basically sympathetic to people in need,
and that you are reluctant to be discourteous to someone on the phone. As admirable as such characteristics may be, they help
make the swindler’s job easier. Swindlers also exploit less admirable characteristics, such as greed.

4. Fraudulent sales callers have one thing in common: They are skilled liars and experts at verbal camouflage.
Their success depends on it. Many are coached to “say whatever it takes” by operators of the “boilerrooms” where they work at rows of phone desks making hundreds of repetitious calls, hour after hour. The first words uttered by most victims of phone fraud are, “the caller sounded so believable…”

5. Perpetrators of phone fraud are extremely good at sounding as though they represent legitimate businesses.
They offer investments, sell subscriptions, provide products for homes and offices, promote travel and vacation plans, describe employment opportunities, solicit donations, and the list goes on. Never assume you’ll “know a phone scare when you hear one.” Even if you’ve read lists of the kinds of schemes most commonly practiced, innovative swindlers constantly devise new ones.

6. The motto of phone swindlers is, “just give us a few good ‘mooches,’” one of the terms they use to describe their victims.
Notwithstanding that most victims are otherwise intelligent and prudent people, even boilerroom operators express astonishment at how many people “seem to keep their checkbooks by the telephone!” Sadly, some families part with savings they worked years to accumulate on the basis of little more than a 15-minute phone conversation — less time than they’d spend considering the purchase of a household appliance.

7. The person who “initiates” the phone call may be you.
It’s not uncommon for phone crooks to use direct mailings and advertise in reputable publications to encourage prospects to make the initial contact. It’s another way swindlers imitate the perfectly acceptable marketing practices of legitimate businesses. Thus, just because you may have written or phoned for “additional information” about an investment, product, or service doesn’t mean you should be any less cautious about buying by phone from someone you don’t know.

8. Victims of phone fraud seldom get their money back — or, at best, no more than a few cents on the dollar.
Despite efforts of law enforcement and regulatory agencies to provide what help they can to victims, swindlers generally do the same thing other people do when they get money: they spend it!