Tidbits

So yesterday I was on Skype with my mom and while we were talking she receives a phone call, one of those “automated voice” to inform her of something. The automated voice basically said you have not pay your credit card bill which is overdue at this time, please call “phone number” for more information. Without thinking my mom call the number that was given and some lady picked up and said this is so and so bank. I don’t really remember the exact detail but the lady basically told her that she has a statement of 30K NT and there were 2 transactions on the statement. One was a charge at a store and the other was a cash advance. Since my mom never use cash advance she started to panic and told the lady she didn’t advance the cash and asked the lady to stop the credit card immediately (I was still on Skype listening to the entire conversation). The lady told her she could not do that for whatever reason and she gave my mom another “phone number” to 財經部 to notify them and have them investigate the situation. So my mom calls the number and talked to a man. The man gathers some of my mom’s information and said they will call her back after investigation. A few minuets later, a woman from the department called her and starts to inquire more information. This lasted about like 30-45 minuet and even when my mom had asked her to cancel the credit card she said she couldn’t because that was not her job. She told my mom she needed her to know how many bank accounts my mom has and information such as that so they can freeze the fund in my mom’s account so no one can move the money. Anyways, I can type on and on forever but basically the person was trying to get all of my mom’s information. The lady also told my mom not to cancel her credit card and not to tell anyone of this. Ridiculous but anyways, so my mom also inform my dad of what is going on and shortly after, my dad rushed home to talk to the people from 財經部. (At this point I was off Skype and heard the rest of the story from my parents this morning and I am just summarizing the entire story since it will take forever for me to type every single detail)

From the very first phone call this entire situation smell as bad as a dead fish but my mom panic so she just kept on making phone calls. #1: Credit Card Company will never use automated means to inform you that you have not paid your bills. I bet the rather you forget so they can charge the surcharge. #2: When a phone number was given, always check its authenticity. #3: Never give your information over the phone because you cannot verify who you are giving it to. So my dad knew this was one of them 詐騙集團 so he got on the phone with them and asked the lady her name and what is her occupation. She said she was an account and my dad then asked where she graduated from. She told my dad a school and my dad said oh that’s my school as well. Then he asked her who was your professor and some other question and she couldn’t answer the questions that my dad was throwing at her. So my dad told them he know they are fake and so what were they going to do when my mom did what they had asked and meet them at the bank? Where they going to kidnap her? They said yes. What was even more outrageous was when he asked if they didn’t get their money what were they going to do and they said throw you off a building. So my dad started screaming at them. My dads had called the police earlier and provide the phone number that they had given my mom and asked the police to investigate right away. My dad also told the 詐騙集團 about this and once they hear this they hang up the phone. When he tried to call back, the phone becomes a fax machine line.

Anyways, this makes me very mad.