Reporting a telephone scam is not an easy thing to do.
Our ROBO call from Plaquemine,La.,225-659-5107 stated we were "bad folks" and if their call was not answered promptly bad things would happen to us because they are the IRS.
Since we are not withholding from the IRS and are not criminals,just report the scam to the authorities.
That's what we have been told time and again. Let me tell you it "ain't" easy.
Our first call was to local police...they couldn't handle the problem
Next in line was the Sheriff's Dept. and they said they could do nothing and said we should contact the IRS.
Perhaps,since it's election time let's see what the Alabama Attorney General might do.
That office didn't have an email address that I could find, so I called a department that handled fraud.
I struck out again. The lady on the phone said they didn't take complaints like mine and I might call
the Federal Trade Commission.
A light bulb went off...I could check for an email address on the Attorney General's political website.
That failed,too. I could send an email if I wanted to schedule a speaking engagement or if I would send money for his election campaign.
Now I do call the IRS. Bingo, an IRS scam telephone number! My call was answered by a machine that said there were so many calls that I must go to another website and fill out an email form. That did work. I got to tell my story,
even if nobody cares. Will anything be done? My confidence is low.
The fact is there is a reporting mechanism with the FTC. I have used it and given all details several times including the phone number making the call and describing the voice M/F old, young, accent etc. Guess what? They can follow up on the number, don't know if they do. However the bad guys just get another number. Same with the "Hey Grandpa"scam. I play with them a bit until I tell them I don't have any grand sons who call me grandpa, they hangup. But it is amazing how many "old" folks get hooked with that one. We have had several women(widows) here in our community go to the local supermarket which sells gift cards for just about every American enterprise from which a purchase of merchandise or food can be made, and buy 100's and 1,000's of dollars worth of gift cards to send to the thugs. Most have been able to recover the money but it happens every day.