Sometimes People Try to Scam Patch Editors, Too

My great aunt will tell you exactly how terrible I am at checking personal voicemails. So will the Easter dinner I missed at her house this year because I neglected to listen to messages for a week.

Ever since then, I’ve made a concerted effort to press play as soon as I walk in the door. The guilt I feel imagining lonely slices of baked ham waiting for a guest who never arrives will do that.

I made good on this voicemail pledge on Monday when I entered my code immediately after returning home from an afternoon in La Grange.

Right away I was bummed when an unfamiliar voice blared from the speakers. (No ham dinner invitations.)

Bummed turned to confused when the woman intoned, “You will be served with criminal forgery charges at your workplace or your home. You will forfeit all of your rights once you are served.”

What the what?

Unless someone was trying to nab me for once forging my dad’s signature on a birthday card, this was a mistake.

The caller left a phone number, which I Googled.

Bingo.

It wasn’t merely a “mistake”; it was a scam.

The voicemail I got sounded virtually identical to the one in this article on an Oklahoma City television station’s website.

In that instance, a man targeted a blind woman who was shaken but self-possessed enough to immediately call police.

Scam artists use these kinds of fear tactics to extort money from anxious victims who are willing to pay to have the charges "dropped." After I learned the message was a fake out, I called the La Grange Police. (As a side note, bravo to them for sending someone to my home in about three minutes.)

The officer listened to the message and confirmed it was bogus, just like I thought. One of the tip offs—aside from the fact that I hadn’t, you know, committed a crime—was the fact that it said I would “forfeit my rights” once the charges were served.

“That’s when you get your rights,” the officer said with a chuckle.

Because this caller didn’t seem to have any other information about me, the officer told me I didn’t need to take any other action.

Crisis averted. My criminal record is still nonexistent. 

If you get a suspicious voicemail, try Googling the phone number first. When it’s something weird, other people will have encountered it too, and their stories will be scattered around the Internet.

Call the police if you feel threatened in any way by the caller, though if it’s anything like the message I got, you have nothing to worry about.

Now let’s just hope the next message I get is another dinner invitation from Great Aunt Mary Ann.