April 2011 Archives

I sent this notice to the office of the state attorney general on Friday:

I just received a telephone call (with no caller ID available, unfortunately) that gave approximately the following script in a computer-synthesized voice:

"Hello. This is MasterCard. We are sorry to inform you that your account has been suspended. Please press '1' to be connected to the security department."

 I held the line while I tried to get a caller ID trace, but the call disconnected about 5 seconds after the script ended.

This was an obviously fraudulent call because this is a business office and we have no MasterCard accounts registered here.  I am suspicious that a scam artist is robo-calling numbers in the 515 area code.  I wish I had more information available, but the above was everything I could obtain.

Unfortunately, a scam like this is intended to catch people off-guard, who might not otherwise be fooled into giving out private information like their credit-card details. Never give out private details like credit-card account numbers or verifying information unless you placed the call yourself. When it's an incoming call, it could be coming from anywhere.