Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Emergency Calls

A state of panic is something that phone frauds also take advantage of. When a criminal caller sets the mood of the victim at a panic mode, it would be easier to persuade that person to jump into making reckless decisions like doling out money without thinking. It is so easy for these criminals to create “emergency” situations to generate panic rush.

My friend’s brother almost got victimized with this tactic. The caller introduced himself as their aunt and wailed at the phone. The “aunt” narrated, in between sobs, that they are in a vacation in another city and that his cousin was badly hurt. Because of the crying and wailing, his brother could not readily tell if the voice was really of his aunt or not. The “aunt” says their cousin was in a critical condition at the hospital and was needed to be operated on immediately. She said she needed some money for the operation. She asked him to send the money as soon as possible because his cousin’s condition could not wait. She told her brother to wire the money to a person whom she said was in charge of the hospital bills.

It was just fortunate that before the brother wired the money, their cousin (the one who was supposed to be in a critical condition at the hospital) paid them a visit. Just in the nick of time. They decided to find owner and location of the phone number that called his brother and found it was from a former neighbor who moved to another city. That was why she knows so much about their family because she had been a frequent visitor at their home before. They confronted her and she said that she was in dire need but was ashamed to borrow money from them. They lent her some money. But after a while, they learned that this neighbor was really into phone scamming and has already victimized too many people. So, in a sense, they still got victimized by her.

The lesson in this story, my friend said, is that you can never really know who can do such crimes to you. Even people you would not suspect doing these schemes can do it and you would be surprised if they do. One safety measure is to check phone numbers and related reviews/comments by others, especially if it is not familiar to you. Tell people about your experiences as well. There is no need to be ashamed. This is one way to try to stop these crimes from happening and from victimizing more people.

1 comment:

  1. Good information.

    I bought the phone which is locked with Sim card.When I Switched on phone with a sim card from a network other than the network it displays an error message saying "Wrong sim" or "Incorrect sim" or "Emergency calls only", etc., then your phone is probably locked.

    So,I used an unlock code to unlock it.I got this code at reasonable cost from ClassicUnlocking.com with easy step by step unlocking instructions.

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