Yesterday I got a phone call from the FCC.
Except I didn’t.
The woman on the other end knew my name. She knew my birthday. She knew my home address.
And apparently, I had a problem.
According to her, another phone number had been registered in my name in Washington, D.C. The Verizon line had supposedly been opened in June and was now connected to illegal activity.
There was more.
She told me the FCC had sent two letters to my home and hadn’t received a response.
That part was interesting because the address she gave me was correct.
The letters, however, had never arrived.
She gave me the phone number supposedly registered in my name. She gave me an FCC agent ID. And when I questioned whether she really worked for the FCC, she gave me the FCC’s toll-free number so I could verify it.
Here’s the clever part:
The number she gave me really is the FCC’s phone number.
A little truth can make a lie considerably more convincing.
I actually wanted to hear the pitch
By this point, I had a pretty good sense that I was dealing with a scam.
But I was curious.
Where was this going?
Was she eventually going to ask for money? Gift cards? Bank information? Some kind of payment to make my alleged Washington, D.C. crime-phone disappear?
There was just one problem.
I had another call starting in about six minutes.
So while she seemed determined to work her way through whatever script she was following, I kept trying to move things along.
“Okay. What’s next?”
She repeated that the phone was registered to me.
I repeated that I hadn’t opened the account.
She repeated that two letters had been sent.
I repeated that I hadn’t received them.
“Okay. But what’s next?”
I even asked her directly whether she was going to ask me for money or gift cards.
No, she assured me. She wasn’t asking for money or gift cards.
Fine.
Then what ARE you asking me to do?
I couldn’t get a straight answer.
In retrospect, I think my own deadline may have interfered with hers.
I wasn’t giving her enough time to run the script.
And then came the urgency
Eventually, she got there.
If this situation wasn’t resolved within two hours, she told me, all of my registered phone lines would be canceled.
At that point I remember thinking:
Thank God. Maybe I’ll finally stop getting calls like this.
I also asked what seemed like a fairly obvious question.
If the FCC believed this mysterious Washington, D.C. phone belonged to me, why was she calling me on my actual cell phone?
Her response?
“That’s a good question.”
Yes.
I thought so too.
Eventually, she had enough of my questions.
She told me she was going to hang up.
I beat her to it.
And that’s when things got really interesting.
Apparently, the FCC has a very unusual customer service policy
She called me back.
And called me a bitch.
Then hung up.
I called back.
The number displayed on my caller ID was 202-367-5934. I can’t independently verify who owns or controls that number, but when I called it back, I reached the same woman who had called me.
There may have been another “bitch” involved somewhere in this exchange.
Eventually, calls to the number started going to voicemail, so I left her a message thanking her for clearing things up.
Because up until that point, there had still been some tiny possibility in my mind that I was dealing with something legitimate but bizarre.
Calling me back to swear at me pretty much took care of that.
I may also have mentioned that karma is a bitch.
Nobody’s perfect.
Then I did some research
And this is where the story stopped being quite as funny.
The Federal Trade Commission warns that government impersonators may know your name or home address. They may provide an employee or badge number. They may use a Washington, D.C. area code. And caller ID information can be faked.
In other words, several of the things that made this woman sound credible are tactics government agencies specifically warn consumers about.
And remember that FCC phone number she gave me so I could verify that she was legitimate?
It really was the FCC’s number.
Think about that.
She didn’t need everything she told me to be false. She needed enough of it to be true that I might accept the rest.
That’s the part of this experience that has stayed with me.
Credibility can be manufactured
We tend to think we’ll recognize a scam because something will be obviously wrong.
Bad grammar.
A ridiculous story.
A request for gift cards.
Some prince somewhere who desperately needs our help moving several million dollars.
But sophisticated manipulation doesn’t necessarily work that way.
It gives you things that check out.
Your name.
Your address.
Your birthday.
A real government agency.
A real government phone number.
Then it introduces a problem.
And finally, it adds a clock.
You have two hours.
Now you’re no longer simply evaluating information.
You’re evaluating information while someone claiming authority is telling you that something bad is about to happen.
And you’re probably doing it in the middle of an already busy day.
When someone creates urgency, slow down
Ironically, I was rushing this woman because I had somewhere else to be.
But the question I kept asking turned out to be a pretty useful one:
What’s next?
What exactly are you asking me to do?
That’s a useful question well beyond scam phone calls.
When someone is creating pressure, urgency or fear, don’t spend all your energy arguing with the story they’ve given you.
Get curious.
What do you actually know?
What don’t you know?
What can you independently verify?
What action is this person asking you to take?
And perhaps most importantly:
Why does it have to happen right now?
The FTC’s advice for government impersonation scams is simple: don’t rely on the contact information the caller gives you. Independently contact the agency or organization using information you know is legitimate.
In other words, remove yourself from the environment the other person is controlling.
Then make the decision.
Urgency isn’t always a reason to move faster.
Sometimes it’s the best reason to slow down.
Better decisions begin with better understanding.
And occasionally, they end with someone calling you a bitch.
Apparently.
One last thing
Yes, I reported the call to the FCC.
As it turns out, their complaint form specifically asks whether the caller claimed to be from an organization they didn’t actually represent.
Apparently, I’m not their first.
