A Phone Scam >:(

I live in my grandfather's house. He is an 89 year-old man who does not always understand English (he was raised in Italy). Sometimes when I don't have anywhere to go during the day, I notice through his Caller ID that he gets strange calls. The name just says "Jamaica," and the number is almost always different. I just typically ignore them because I do not know who it is, nor does my grandfather. I always just figured that if it were important, they would leave a message. No messages were ever left by this caller.

Just today, however, I got a phone call from my younger brother who is home with a bad cold. This caller phoned the house and my grandfather answered. My brother picked up the other line to hear the conversation because he had seen this come up in the Caller ID as well. The caller had an accent and repeatedly asked my grandfather what his name was and, after he answered, kept telling him that he had a package for him. My brother then stepped in from the other line and started asking this mystery caller who he was, what he had and what he wanted. The caller just hung up.

My brother then proceeded to tell me that he immediately researched this number (we wrote down 2 of the numbers used under the name of "Jamaica") and found out that it is a call-back phone scam targeted specifically at the elderly. The way it works is that a caller, in this case from Jamaica, will call an elderly person and tell them that they have something for them. The caller will then hang up, causing the elderly person to think the call simply dropped. When the elderly person calls back, they are charged heavily for calling the number (especially since it is an international number). These scammers are said to have made upwards of 300 million off of the elderly last year alone.

If this is happening to you, the way to deal with the problem, at least according to the news sources my brother viewed, is to contact your local authorities who will, hopefully, in turn be able to contact the proper authorities, such as Interpol.

The two numbers we took down are (876) 486-7793 and (876) 460-4618. I hope this helps someone out there.

~Jay Mason~