Expat Community > Colombia

Exbury
Joined 2014
Posts: 94

Mobile Fraud Scam

10 years ago

Ok, this may have been covered before but I could not see it. Unfortuantely my wife fell victim today to a well re-hearsed scam. Details following, hope no-one else gets caught out;

My wife got a call supposedly from her Network operator (we have only had this mobile 3 weeks and its hardly been used). They knew her name (which as this phone was bought for me means its limited to either the Service Operator or a couple of calls made to numbers in Metrocuadrado) and started with a 'Checking the service - kind of call'. Then they claimed she had won $10million pesos, but that she would have to work for it as part of an undercover marketing exercise. They even sent a text which came up in the name of the Operator, confirming the 'win' and passed their name, cedular details etc. They even called her back for the whole call. She certainly felt it was real, it was that slick, they started by getting her to take details of the shops and service levels of different mobile services, Claro, Uff, Tigo, etc. using non-responsive numbers so she would not have to pay for the fee, this moved onto an actual paid number which they said she would be re-imbursed for and then so on with both responsive (which she paid for) and non-responsive numbers. To cut a long story short, they kept her on the phone so the phone would run out of battery plus it was to keep going with the 'game'. Here in Colombia apparently the credit can then be passed to another mobile and the scammer throws away the original SIM and the credit becomes untracable. Apparently the Police or the Phone operators are helpless to do anything about it (or cannot be bothered).

Hope this helps someone out the next time you get a similar call, either end it or make sure you call the Operator customer services from a seperate phone. My wife feels such an idiot as she is not normally like this but it really was a slick operation.

William Russell

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William Russell

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Mobile Fraud Scam

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