Worthington police chief warns of cell phone scam

Tuesday, November 3, 2009
By Anna Rochelle, Staff Writer

One of the latest scams to be reported around the county involves calls coming in on a local cell phone from outside the United States.

Worthington Town Marshal Dennis Conaway says a man in the Worthington area has been getting lots of these calls over the past few months.

"This man has been receiving numerous calls on his cell phone from individuals using an 876 area code. That's the area code for Jamaica. If you search online for information about these calls from Jamaica, you'll find many references to scams being generated from this area code," saidConaway.

A few regions outside the country, including Jamaica, British Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic, can be dialed directly from the U.S. without using an international prefix. However, these numbers are not subject to our laws, and there is no legal requirement to inform callers in advance of any special rates or fees like we do here with "900" numbers that charge high per-minute rates for calls.

What happens is the scammer will call a number here in the U.S. and leave some type of message to entice the receiver to call back. The message might be about winning a prize, or about family member that is sick or about an unpaid debt. The caller will also leave a number to call back for more information.

Then when the recipient calls that number back, they won't know it, but they could be accruing some very high-priced charges per minute.

The charges will show up on a future phone bill.

The area code for Jamaica is 876. The area code for the Dominican Republic is 809. The area code for the British Virgin Islands is 284.

Conaway says the best way to prevent falling for these types of scams is to not answer or respond to calls from these area codes.

"Don't answer calls from the 876 area code (or 809 or 284)," said Conaway. "If they leave a message, don't call them back."

In addition, do not respond to e-mails or web pages that tell you to a number in one of these area codes.

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Although this is believed to still be a scam, reports of it are hoaxes using highly exaggerated numbers (even Snopes has the costs at 100 times what they really are). The reality is that it costs about $.50/minute to call Jamaica, and there are no special rates or fees for any international calls aside from the normal international rate. Nor are there any 'high per-minute rates' or 'very high-priced charges per minute'.

It is possible that the person reporting this was getting such calls (these days, rumor has it that the scam usually involved calling a phone number and hanging up, so people see the number on the Caller-ID and call back). But from the minimal details, it is also possible that it was just a wrong number.

If they manage to keep you on the line for 4 minutes, that's $2. A scam, yes, but not the $24,100 that many of the hoaxes suggest.

For full details about this scam/hoax, you can go to http://www.wherecall.com/809.htm .

-- Posted by wherecall on Wed, Nov 4, 2009, at 7:00 AM