My initial thought was that someone at the Social Security field office must have been in cahoots with the scammers but one fact kept drawing my attention -- the number the man was given to call was only one digit different from the real number. If you had someone on the inside who was funneling calls to you, why would you go to the trouble of obtaining a phone number so similar to the real one?
Let me posit a theory for what happened. Nobody at Social Security was in cahoots with the scammers. The number on the sheet was a simple typo. What had happened was that scammers had obtained as many telephone numbers as they could that were one digit different from the real number. Probably they did this for many offices. They could then expect a steady stream of misdials from people who thought they were talking with a Social Security office. By chance, the sheet handed out by Social Security funneled more calls to them but it wasn't part of their scheme. Actually, the typo may end up exposing their scheme.
That's my theory. Have you got a better one?
8 comments:
This Happens all the time
As an example Scammers have bought up millions of websites that differ from the actual website you’re trying to goto by only a letter, knowing that people will mistype and be directed to their site where they can scam you
Quite clear that is exactly what Happened here
It’s abundantly clear it is a typo.
Our law firm receives calls from SSA all the time with a caller ID that is one digit off, 800-722-1213. I tried calling it once and it was an automated recording that likely would have taken me to a scam artist had I continued with the call.
Why aren't people being directed to mySSA to order a new card to be sent to them?
Two reasons come to mind: In a state that doesn’t have iSSNRC (there’s 3 I think) or their SSN card business can’t be handled by iSSNRC (new SSN, alien, name change (for most states)).
9:28, true, but NY isn't one of those states. I imagine the FO staff got tired of writing down or printing out information about the card centers for people who wanted to deal with it in person, don't have computers, don't speak English, would have trouble making a mySocialSecurity account and the FO doesn't want to deal with validating their identity...the list goes on. So they made their own flier and it had a typo and now they are going to get a lot of scrutiny.
All kinds of SSA offices make their own fliers...I think hearing offices are responsible for making the ones with local legal service info that they send with the hearing notices. I've seen forms sent by DDSs to doctors that don't appear to be official SSA forms (things like seizure questionnaires). When the fliers are accurate I can see the value in it and understand why people don't want to wait for SSA to decide to make a flier and put it through the OMB process, but they often aren't accurate.
The only thing that would give me pause with your take is: Stokes noted that the scam flyer had some hallmarks of amateurish doctoring, like inconsistent formatting and fonts.
This doesn’t necessarily mean anyone on the inside was “in on it,” but sure seems like however the decision was made to give out these fliers was flawed. So, where did the form come from? Who vetted it for use? And who gave the okay to start handing them out? That person is likely sweating some bullets regardless of whether there was intent to defraud.
It is possible that the local office created a informational flyer that they placed in the lobby for public access, and it got switched out by a scammer for otherwise identical ones with an altered phone number. That is the downside of such flyers given that anyone with a computer (or even a modern smartphone, for that matter) and a laser printer can easily and cheaply alter them.
In our office, we did create and use these type of documents. However, management always reviewed them beforehand and we were only allowed to hand them directly to members of the public . We were specifically not allowed to display them in the lobby where the public could just pick them up -- that is what official publications are for.
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