You have to watch some of these crooks. They are quite good at their criminal activity.
I had one instance where my wife received a phone call,supposedly, from the credit card comp[nay security and theft protection department. This was only a few hours after we had u8sed it at a restaurant about a hundred miles from home. They asked if we had purchased a Rolex watch and a large screen tv in California. I overheard my wife on the phone and she started answering a question they asked. I do not recall the exact question but it was something "to verify her id". Red Flag! I interrupted her, and got her off the phone for a few seconds and said "Scam". Then we asked for a telephone number for their office or an e-mail or web site. They actually did provide one.
The number did NOT match the phone on the back of the card. Red Flag! I asked for a case or incident number to track things. They asked for an address to send a new card Red Flag! I said something had come up and we have to leave nad will call them back. They wanted a card number security code but I said we HAVE to leave. I then called the number on the back of the card. They had never heard of that security office, I called the number, an 800 number and it identified as a Barclay (the card company processor) number on the ANI but this was a number that the actual Barclay Card services had never heard of. I then looked at the web site they gave me and compared it to the listing of offices that Barclay had on their actual official web site. The two sites looked almost identical EXCEPT for Address and Phone. The false site however showed no office hours at all and the phone # was the 800 number the scammer had given and the official site showed no offices at all in Pennsylvania where the false site said it was. That was worth about three or four Red Flags!!! to me.
A Goggle street view of the supposed address showed a grassy field and it was located only a mile or two from where the restaurant we had eaten at was located. The flag pole was so full of Red Flags!!!! that it was beginning to bend. When I reported the whole thing to our local police department I was told that they had never seen such an elaborate set up for a scam. 800-number with ANI, Identical (almost) web site (multiple pages), having enough info about the card to make it appear to be a true call (Barclay was the processing bank but the card was identified as an airline sponsored card) and a well rehearsed script. Oh, by the way the true security office put a stop on the card and reissued a new card with different number when I told them about this.
I have adopted the old Ronald Reagan style, which he based on the old Russian proverb “doveryai no proveryai”, dealing with credit card calls. "Trust but Verify!"
