How often do I receive emails about one scam or another and wonder to myself if the email is a scam in itself??? Well…UNFORTUNATELY, I missed one of those scam forwards and I GOT SCAMMED.?? I feel so so so STUPID about the whole thing and my family is having a GREAT time ridiculing me over my gullibility.

Generally speaking, I think I am discerning but sometimes I am way too trusting.?? Jim is the type of person who trusts no one until they have proven themselves trustworthy (and that takes a long time).?? I am the opposite.?? I give everyone the benefit of the doubt up front.?? If you violate my trust though, the building back process might be quite long and I get very boundaried after being burned.?? I believe there is a big difference between forgiveness and restoration.?? I need to post on that sometime because people ask me about that often.

I am stalling.?? I want to tell you this story so that you will be forewarned and I think a blog story has more merit than all those email forwards.?? BUT…I am going to make myself look really incredibly dumb by telling it so go easy on me okay?!!!!?? 🙂 🙂

Yesterday I was processing some pictures and the phone rings.?? Caller ID says “Inmate Phone”.?? Hmmmm…..didn’t seem wise to ignore a call like that.?? A family member could have a warrant out for unpaid tickets or some benign thing (it’s happened hee hee).?? I answer it and a recorded operator says that I am receiving a call from the Maricopa County Jail and will I accept a collect call from “blank”.?? The “blank” should have been warning #1.?? Curious then to know who it was, I accept the call.

It’s “Carlos”.?? Carlos asks for someone I don’t recognize and I tell him he has the wrong number.?? He repeats my number and I affirm it.?? He asks how long I have had it. I say a long time.

Next he asked if I would please do him a favor.?? He can’t get a hold of his brother and the numbers his brother gave him aren’t working.?? He asks if I will call his brother for him and tell his brother that he needs 500.00 to post bail and he needs some “numbers”.?? He sounds nice enough and sincere.?? This was the second point I was mocked on. 🙂

So I figure “what’s the harm”??? Irony in that coming.?? He gives me his brothers number.?? It’s a local number but he tells me to dial *72 first.?? YES I KNOW – DING DING DING SCAM alert.?? It just didn’t register folks – I don’t know what to say.?? He then says if that one doesn’t work to call another number preceeded again by *72.

I ask him why the *72 (that was baffling to me).?? He says “well my brother is in an office and if you dial the number direct you are going to be on hold for a long time but he said if you dial *72 you’ll get straight to him.

Okay – yes – nothing about that makes any sense and I should have questioned it further.?? I didn’t.?? I was busy doing other things, kids were in the room…my attention was divided and I didn’t give it much thought.

We hang up and I do what he says.?? Busy signal (or was it just a tone? I forget).?? Try the other number – same thing.?? Then I try calling the numbers without the *72.?? First person that answers is a woman.?? She claims to have no idea who the person is I am calling about.?? The second number – same story.

I sit there a moment disappointed for my poor friend.?? I can’t help him and now no messages are going to go out on his behalf.?? He is counting on me for this and I have no way of telling him that his brother gave him the wrong information.?? I still think the *72 thing is weird though so I google it.?? Uh oh!?? It’s a call forwarding activation code.?? That takes a minute to sink in.?? I then realize I have forwarded my phone to these “wrong numbers”.?? Ooops!?? I quickly follow the instructions to remove call forwarding (*73).?? Before I have time to process what that means, caller ID says “Inmate Phone” again.?? I answer and accept the collect call again because I want to have a talk with Carlos.

I tell him that I have no idea why his brother told him to call *72 first because that is call forwarding and I had to remove it once I realized that.?? Carlos seems baffled by this and wonders why his brother told him to do that.?? And yes…I am so humiliated to admit this – but I think Carlos and I are in this confusion together and I am biting hook, line, sinker.?? Ahhhhhh!!!!!

So then he asks for one more favor since he can’t reach his brother.?? He asks if I have a cell phone.?? I say “Yes but what does that have to do with anything?”.?? He asks if I will call his mom on my cell phone and keep him on the line so that he can relay a message to her.?? I ask him why he?? can’t call his mom himself and he rattles off some explanation to me that didn’t make any sense but I am not on high alert so I just let it go.?? Again, I don’t see the harm in calling his mom on my cell.?? In the back of my mind, I thought it was that “one call” jail thing where he needed me to make his call because he couldn’t keep using the phone.

So I call his mom.?? She is spanish speaking.?? I have to put my cell phone up to my home phone and let them talk this way.?? I have no idea what they are saying and they go on and on.?? At least five minutes – probably more.?? I was getting ready to break into their conversation when he ends it.

He thanks me and tells me that he was arrested for driving without a license and his girlfriend was in the car.?? She is not a legal citizen but he has his papers.?? They have two little girls.?? Girlfriend is being deported and he is really worried about her and their girls and he doesn’t know what to do.

Living in AZ, I have many opinions on the illegal situation but I still feel compassion for the predicaments people find themselves in.?? Sure – they got themselves into this fix but still…I hate for kids to suffer over it and it is sad but I won’t derail on that topic.

We hang up.?? I am glad I got to help Carlos for a moment.

I then call my Dad who is with Daniel and relay the story.?? They start laughing.?? AT ME.

In case you haven’t figured this out yet, inmates pull this prank to get free long distance and to simply harass people.?? When he called me back the second time (I should have questioned that and I didn’t), he assumed he was going to be forwarded to the number he gave me.?? The people claiming not to know his brother were lying.?? They are part of the game.?? They wait until I forward my phone to their number, and then they give out my phone number to people so that friends, from Mexico (for example), can call my number and??talk AT MY EXPENSE.???? Who knows what Carlos was telling his mom at my expense though I agreed to that one.?? Would have been a real convenient time to be bilingual.

The good news is, I was at least smart enough to google the *72 thing and deactivate the call forwarding so theoretically I should escape this unharmed.?? Had I not immediately??done that, who knows how much long distance they could have run up on my line before I figured out I wasn’t getting any calls to my house.?? Jim read of one instance online where 20 guys made 4700 calls in 3 days doing this scam and racked up $50,000 in long distance fees for people.?????? The only thing I should have to pay for is the two collect calls that I allowed (though under false pretenses grrrrrr).

My family is going to get a lot of mileage out of this one aren’t they??? 🙂

I dreaded explaining this to Jim the most because I knew it was going to take him a bit to see the humor in it.?? I have been hearing things like “so explain to me why you thought an inmate was an above board kinda guy?”, “dialing *72 before a number…that didn’t sound off?”, “why didn’t you ask him to make his own phone calls?”, “why did you keep talking to him and agree to do an INMATE a favor?????? Did you think he was in there because he was just really unlucky that day????”!

I did report this to the Sheriff’s office because I want them to be aware that this little racket is going on in the Maricopa County Jails.?? I am sure they are well aware since I left a message for the “Administrator of the Inmates Phones office” LOL.?? For real??? They have a whole desk dedicated to “Inmate Phones”??? I am speculating that they have been hearing this a lot lately.

Sigh……live and learn.