Mocking the scammers

On this side of the pond I’m using truecaller to give me a headsup on who’s calling me.

Because we’re just getting a shit ton of cold calls trying to sell you inn-sewer-ants, cellphones etc etc etc, and it is just getting too much.

Already I have blocked most of the repeating numbers, the rest just get ignored.

I’m planning on a second SIM for business purposes, but that will be later.

More on the toll scams. From the Wall Street Journal video below, the scammers are upping the fear factor by saying you might be deported if you don’t pay.

I can see that working in the U.S. The promise of “We’re only going to go after the really bad criminals” was broken almost immediately. A notorious example is ICE went looking for 3 or 4 people at a Hyundai plant being built in Georgia and they arrested between 300 and 400, most of which were the technicians from South Korea with the specialized knowledge needed to construct it. The government of South Korea is reconsidering how much they want to be involved in the U.S. because of it.

This scam is very profitable for groups in China and they’re smart enough to know that when they get the info to connect your bank account to one of their phones, they don’t use it themselves. They transmit the info to the phone of a person in your area they’ve recruited, and that person does the damage to your account.

I remember reading about the Koreans arrested at the Hyundai plant. It really didn’t hit the mainstream news, it seems, but it could have some serious repercussions on our economy.

I heard about that fustercluck over in NZ, how on earth was it not major news in the US?

1 Like

Because Trump goes around calling a lot of the reporters “terrible reporters who work for fake news.” He actually said, “Quiet, Piggy” to a reporter asking about the Epstein files. He’s done a lot to repress news that is critical of him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/20/business/media/trump-leavitt-reporter-piggy.html

There WERE articles about the Hundai fiasco, but it seems that I heard more about it from Korean sources than American.

We don’t have a lot of toll roads in SoCal. So I’m aware when I’ve used one.

1 Like

Were you wondering whatever happened with the Oklahoma schools Bible bid?

  1. Ryan Walters resigned two months ago to run the Teachers Freedom Alliance. It’s a kind of anti-union Teachers association. (Unions? Unions? We don’t need no stinkin’ unions.)
  2. The purchase of the Bibles was halted before he left.
  3. The Oklahoma State Department of Education began removing Walters initiatives from their website and then got rid of all of them after they were shut down.

I tend to call that a Charlie Foxtrot… :slight_smile:

So I’m allergic to unknown numbers, and installed a caller identify app.

One such number pops up as “Authroized Source (legal)”. I block it. Another one, same name, also pops up. It get blocked as well.

Many other numbers with the same name also call, and they all get blocked.

I do a bit of digging, and apparently it is somebody trying to sell legal services. Which I don’t need, and cannot afford.

Then we have my cellular phone provider trying to get me to upgrade one or two of my contracts, and I’m just not interested. These also get blocked as well.

I’m gatvol (fed-up) with allsorts of cold callers phoning you and trying to sell you some $service which you won’t use… and it’s not only me, a lot of people’s feeling the same.

Yet the grabbamint does nothing to stop this scourge of cold callers.

Until something get done, I’ll just keep on blocking unknown numbers.

No, I’m not selling my house.
No, I’m not planning on doing any renovation or upgrades on it.
No, I do not have any other property I want to sell or renovate.
No, I do not know of anyone else I can refer you to that might be doing any of the above.

1 Like