to whom it may not concern …

Last week I got a call at approximately 10:30 am. ’No number’ appeared on the screen. Expecting it to be one of my friends form the States or Europe, I picked up and the sweet feminine voice on the other end of the line, who was trying so hard to fake an American accent, started the conversation by congratulating me for winning $ 72,000 in a lottery!

"Do you know who you’re calling?", I asked, almost certain it’s a wrong number, but she stated my FULL name. As much as I wanted to believe her, but from that second, I knew it was all utter BS, simply because I DID NOT FRIGGIN’ BUY ANY LOTTERY TICKET, especially not if you’re living in Dubai! The whole situation reminded me of that joke of the tafeeli who kept praying to God every single day and night to win the lottery.

Anyways, back to the lottery. Of course I could’ve immediately cussed her off and ended the call, but that wouldn’t be fun now would it? So being the sly person that I am, I decided to play along and act like her perfect victim, particularly after realizing that she’s not using any IP telephony to call me, but a regular overseas call. So the more I keep her on the phone, the more she’s paying and hopefully from her commission!

Fraudster: Now to complete the transfer, all we need is your credit card number, the expiry date and the 3 digits in the back of your credit card.
Who-sane: Oh yeah sure, there you go! I give her 16-digit random numbers and ask her to repeat them so I’d write them down, because I know she’ll ask me to repeat it again once she discovers that the number is wrong.

Fraudster: From which bank did you issue your credit card from?
Who-sane: From Standard Chartered (I’ve never dealt with this bank, mind you).
Fraudster: Wonderful. Now I’m going to connect you to one of your banks representatives to validate the transaction.

She conferences her accomplice in who confirms he’s from Standard Chartered and authorizes the transaction. This way they make sure that the victim feels safe and rules out the possibility of fraud.

Of course I tried to find out where she was calling from, she said New York but I’m almost positive that it’s a lie. I’m still stalling till this minute and she’s still calling to get me to call my bank and make them authorize the online transactions, as she still thinks I gave her a correct credit card number.To make a long story short, the duration of all her calls in the past 4 days exceeded 2 hours and still counting, which shows you how persistent and impudent they are.

A friend suggested I flirt with her so she’d freak out and stop calling, but she was more than ok with it, she actually liked it! So I stopped the flirting and went back to the formal stupid victim mode. You’d probably I’m just wasting my time, but imagine if every person they tried conning stalled them like I did, they’ll eventually give up as they’ll just be wasting time and money.

And by the way, I’m not the only one who these fraudsters called. A colleague of mine, whom I’ve told the story to, said he heard people calling the Ajman Radio’s Abu Rashid (who thinks he’s the Arab version of Dr. Phil, but that’s a different story) and complained of how people are trying to get their credit card numbers, one of them actually did provide them with his credit card number but called the bank and stopped the transaction from happening.

So this is what’s been happening for the past 5 days and I’m positive they’ll call back today. I’m posting this hoping to raise the awareness of some of the desperate people out there, so please spread the word. Who knows, you might be saving someone from falling a victim to fraud.