John's Scam Call Story

Below is an account of John handling a scam call.

I got a call from "Clearinghouse publishers" one day, showing the call location as coming from Jamaica. I was told that I had won 4.5 million dollars and a Mercedes. The guy on the other side of the phone asked me to grab some paper and I waited for a good while, playing my game before pretending I had gotten the paper.

He started talking about how legit he was and how he wasn't a prank call. During this point I heard someone talking in Jamaican in the background and I asked him what language it was, he brushed me off a few times but when I kept pushing it he hung up and called me back shortly after from inside a closet. I could still hear the Jamaican voice in the background but muffled. The sound echoed like the phone was in a small room that kind of gave it away.

He asked why we got disconnected and I played it off as me accidentally hitting a button or something. He asked me for my name (I gave a fake one) and my wife's name (Also gave a fake). He tried correcting my pronunciation of Thomas insisting that it was “Toe-mas” not “Thomas”. Then he asked me to write down a bunch of numbers and read them back to him, and I wasted as much time as possible reading back the numbers but a little bit wrong each time.

His voice was pretty frustrated at this point, so I moved on to talking about the Benz, asking where they were delivering from and trying to tell him the directions to my house, saying it didn't have an address yet due to just being put up and the road not being named due to zoning or whatever. I gave a long list of right turn here, left turn at the barn, ect. I also kept going off on tangents on how fast the delivery was and how impressed I was that they could have even gotten it to me in 24hrs. He redirected the conversation, telling me that the IRS needed a registration before I could pick up my award and I just needed to fax my documents at the local CVS or Walgreens. I asked if I could pick up my cash prize at the CVS and he started getting really mad, yelling that I wasn't listening and I couldn't pick up cash at the CVS, just send documents to the IRS from there.

At this point I said that I didn't really need any cash, it sounded like too much work going to the CVS for such a little amount, and to just send me the car since that's all I really wanted. He was verbally pissed and started going off on how he HAD to give me the FULL prize amount because it was rightfully mine. I begrudgingly agreed, and he again started talking about how the IRS needed to get me a registration card to pick up my prize. I stated that I already had a vehicle registration card, and didn't need a new one. He got upset, saying that the IRS wasn't the same, and we argued about who was in charge of vehicle registrations, and since he didn't know shit about the IRS or vehicle registration, I'd say I pretty much won that argument.

He asked if I was at home, work, or driving, and I said "No" which apparently wasn't an option so he kept asking. Eventually, I said I was in a mine, and he was really confused until I said "You know, a mine. Rocks, iron, spiders?" and he was like "Oh, a MINE......" You could hear him dying inside, so mad at this dumb person who thinks millions of dollars is pocket cash and who hangs out in old mines on properties without addresses. He finally caught on that I was just messing with him and told me I was wasting his time. I laughed at him and asked him where he was from. He told me to go fuck myself, and I kinda pushed it farther telling him I had heard Jamaican in the background and that I just genuinely wanted to know where he was from. He told me to fuck off, and I said I thought Jamaica was cool. He responded with "Your wife's pussy is cool!" I laughed and said I really enjoyed chatting with him. He was both confused and threateningly angry. "What? CHATTING?!?!?!?!?" and then hung up angrily, probably cursing the fake name that I had given him.

We had watched a few YouTubers work on cracking down on scam calls/call centers to stop them from scamming innocent victims. Though we aren't at that level, we do believe that wasting their time as much as possible will stop at least ONE possible successful scam.

Michelle was panicking the whole time though not being able to handle the prank I was doing the whole time but she still let me. We can't stop them, but we can delay, bother and waste their time!

What sort of funny scam calls have you come across?