Hi there,

Not sure how many of you have received call from scammers posing themselves as 'FedPol' officers accusing you of a 'crime' that you committed during your last holiday trip abroad.

This week I missed a call from a number ( +41 58 463 11 23). Not recognizing the number, I tried to call back and found that it belonged to the FebPol. Because it was late in the afternoon , I couldn't speak to the customer support officers but I knew it could have been from a scammer. I was pretty sure that they would try to call me again and so did they the following morning. Caller started speaking in English ( thick accent) and started usual blah blah blah. Unfortunately I was very busy at that moment , so couldn't play around with that guy on the phone. I asked him to stop the non-sense and he goes 'Why? What happened?'.. then I asked him (in French) why was he not speaking in French? .. It pissed him off. he started swearing and hung up the phone.

Doing a little bit research on this subject on the internet, I found that these scammers use airline boarding passes to fetch your personal details and use those details to threaten you by cooking a story.

It would nice if someone records such calls and shares the details here, so that EF membes don't fall in such traps.

Cheers

I'm not sure how that would work. It would give them your name, the flight you were travelling on and, perhaps, your Passenger Name Record code.

They can get more personal data from the phone book.

But the phone book won't tell you if they are gluten intolerant and book extra legroom.

I can't imagine why anyone would call back a missed call from an unknown number, let alone waste their time talking to scammers.

As for warning others, surely a simple "ignore odd calls from unknown numbers" should suffice?

The boarding pass idea is ridiculous, not even worth pointing out the flaws in the theory.

Some people may be curious about who called. Also they may have free minutes, so costs them nothing to call back...

Cost of calling back, zero. Cost of being taken in by a scam...

It is not allowed to post phone-numbers on EF but it's okay, the MarchPol will use a different one anyway.

Just call with your number withheld and put mute on. You don't need to speak to them.

Oh how I wish some callers would put the phone on mute after dialing my number

BTW the number I posted actually belongs to the FedPol. Scammers use some software to mask the number, which actually appears as a number from FebPol.

Here is a news item that 'Shropshire Lad' posted on Facebook.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/busines...JiNmDzeLKuAWOY

<<Fedpol says it will file a complaint and also encourages victims to do the same>>
According to your link you should file a complaint at the police station. Just because you didn't pay, you're still a target. It will add to the information the police will have to gather.
Returning the calls is definitely not a good idea.


It's the nastiest thing to target the weakest - the asylum seekers. But then again I've not heard of a kind crime yet.

Returning a call- to the FedPol number? As I said in my first post, I was busy so couldn't play around with those scammers to get the full details. However, if they call me again, I was planning to record the call, get maximum details and then file a complaint with local authorities. Right now I don't have much information. Had I not been busy when I received the call, I would have asked the caller for a contact number etc. I have seen numerous videos on YouTube (especially by Trilogy Media), so I knew what it was. Because of my busy schedule I couldn't play around with that guy and that's why posted it here, in hopes that someone would make a fool out of those scammers,record the call and post it here.

To make their accusation sound legit- the scammers tell you your name,date of birth, address, passport details, your holiday
itinerary and accuse you of a crime. Like involvement in a murder/ accident/narcotics etc etc. A friend of mine in the UK had received a similar call few years ago and he was almost fooled. He really believed the caller because the scammer started the call confirming all the personal details - for which my friend had to say yes/no. In the end he was told some story about accident and not filling forms etc. But when he was asked to pay immediately using iTunes card to avoid arrest, he got suspicious and started confronting the caller. In the end scammer disconnected the call.