I am getting repeated and relentless robocalls from scam PACs, pretending to be various “noble” organizations, but they all follow the same script and formula. It’s a soundboard (there’s a live person at the other end but all they can do is play pre-recorded messages) and the messages are very similar, regardless of the organization name.
They go by different names, including:
Police Coalition for America PAC
Police Officer Support PAC
National Coalition for Disabled Veterans PAC
and so forth.
I’ve tried running some of them through Robo Revenge (basically read them a gift card with $0 balance, to get the name of the merchant that’s charging the card). The merchant names tend to follow the PAC name, but always contain the characters “R P*” in some form. Some of their merchant names are:
R P*Veteran K9 PAC
R P*NAC Police
R P* Police POSA
R P*POLICE CMTE
R P*BREAST CANCER PLEDGE (additional info: 844-8448942)
Has anyone heard of any groups that are following this formula? Clearly, there is one organization that is doing robocalling on behalf of all of these, erm, “causes”. I’d love to go after them with a TCPA complains (yes PACs may be “exempt” in some way, but not when it comes to calling cell phones!). But, every one of these has been a shell organization of some sort and I haven’t been able to dig up anything further. Any help/info would be appreciated. Thanks!
Same here, they try to sound official but are nothing but a business run by wealthy folks scamming Americans who already struggle to survive. Many of these are real Political Action Committees but they word things as if the money is actually going to help someone besides the PAC and the thieves that run it. Most of the numbers calling say private or verified, the verified numbers don’t ring back and are dead.
Aside from the name of the organization, the script is essentially IDENTICAL. There’s gotta be a single “scam PAC fundraising infrastructure” company behind all of these. One time I managed to get far enough into the “provide a slightly inaudible credit card number” tree to get them to open a mic, and it was two people talking quickly amongst themselves in Spanish.
This thread will do instead of making another one
This was the third chunk of interest in the same 1000 block as 530 more Pakistani Spectrum scam numbers (HERE)
5513170500 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170501 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170502 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170503 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170504 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170506 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170507 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170508 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170509 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170510 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170511 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170512 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170513 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170514 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170515 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170516 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170517 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170518 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170519 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170520 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170521 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170522 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170523 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170524 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170525 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170526 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170527 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170528 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170529 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170530 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170531 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170532 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170533 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170534 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170535 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170536 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170537 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170538 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170539 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170540 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170541 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170542 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170543 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170544 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170545 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170546 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170547 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170548 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170549 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170550 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170551 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170552 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170553 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170554 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170555 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170556 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170557 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170558 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170559 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170560 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170561 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170562 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170563 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170564 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170565 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170566 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170567 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170568 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170569 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170570 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170571 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170572 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170573 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170574 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170575 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170576 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170577 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170578 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170579 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170580 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170581 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170582 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
5513170583 New Jersey police officers foundation PAC
I’ve been getting a lot of the kind of “fake charity” / “fake PAC” calls described in my earlier post. Historically, these have NOT been using spoofed caller ID - that is, calling the number back led me to the same soundboard that basically called me.
I’ve been looking up their carrier information and have been trying to determine who’s actually making the calls. Although most carriers (sinch, neutral tandem, peerless) have been generally unwilling to disclose who’s leasing these numbers, one of the carriers finally gave me some info. One of the calls came from a number owned by NUSO. I called NUSO and they told me the number is leased to a retail telecom provider called “VOIP STIR” (I find the name ironic). This was very helpful.
“VOIP STIR” seems to be based in Puerto Rico, but their CEO (George Kaltner) appears to be in New York. I called up Mr. Kaltner and had a very contentious conversation about these calls and about which of his customers might have been making them. The experience was surreal and dealing with these guys was unlike any other carrier, though (as far as I recall) he vehemently denied knowledge of any scams or criminal activity. I had begged Sinch and a few other VOIP carriers to completely ban my number from their network, to no avail, but VOIP STIR outright offered to block my number from being reachable by any of their “customers”. I have not received any fake charity robocalls since that day.
It would not surprise me if VOIP STIR were fully aware of the sort of traffic going through their network, though this is just a suspicion. What’s interesting is most of these fake PACs (at least, the ones that actually bother to register with the FEC) claim to spend all (or almost all) of their “donations” on overhead and on telecom costs. Thus, it would not be surprising if in some cases the telecoms were in on it.