Annoying barrage of phone calls

Last weekend, my social media feeds were scattered with people complaining about being bombarded by phone calls coming in from places in Jamaica, Africa, etc. I was fortunate enough to avoid these phone calls but my husband wasn’t.

Tim is usually an easy-going type of person. He’s the strong, silent type you can depend on to be there when our family needs him. He doesn’t ask for much, just goes along with whatever I have planned. Last weekend, I popped up to my parents house to help do our traditional Christmas decorating. However, Tim made the rare request not to join us so he could use the beautiful weather to winterize a few things in the garage. He felt bad, but I assured him it was fine.

When he is working in the garage, he turns his phone off silent/vibrate to its loudest sound setting so he doesn’t miss a phone call because his phone is often sitting on his work bench instead of in his pocket. That said, his phone only rings if I call him or one of his parents. So he was really confused when his phone would ring for two seconds, stop, ring for 5 seconds and stop. When he checked his phone, he had 10 missed calls, all from the Cayman Islands.

He called and asked me what was going on or if I knew anything about it. I told him I’d seen others on social media complaining about the same thing and it’s just scammers.

It continued throughout the day and Tim was ready to throw the phone against the wall. Instead, he just turned it back on silent. It continued off and on Sunday as well. It seemed to have stopped but the calls returned on Tuesday.

Knowing this was likely a phone scam, I contacted Newton Police Chief to see what people should do if they have been receiving phone calls like this.

“The easiest thing to do is not answer the calls or just hang up once you determine the call is a scam. If it’s not a number you recognize then there is no reason to answer the call. Scammers are good at what they do and their goal is to get you on the phone. If you don’t recognize the number just don’t answer it and allow it to go to voicemail,” Burdess said.

It seems the phone scam activity always picks up around the holiday season and, especially with the ongoing pandemic, they do their best to play with people’s emotions. The only way they can do that is if you engage with them and answer the unknown number. Unless I am expecting a phone call for work, I typically let those numbers go to voicemail in hopes someone will leave a message for me to return.

Burdess also said a person need only report this activity to the NPD if they believe they have been scammed out of money or recieved physical threats. For residents receiving hang-up calls, unsolicited business calls or any other kind of scam calls, these can be reported to the Federal Trade Commission at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

For more information about potential phone scams, visit consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0208-phone-scams or the Iowa Attorney General’s Office iowaattorneygeneral.gov/for-consumers/general-consumer-information/phone-scams.

Contact Pam Pratt at pampratt@newtondailynews.com