P.S. “Never” is spelt with a ‘v’, not a ‘w’ ;-)

This is a cardinal rule. My wife is always nagging me because she claims I’m overly cautious about giving out personal information. Yet only because I’ve brought up a similar sounding statement to yours, repeatedly, that she was able to recognize a scam artist when they called. Also keep in mind they don’t always represent “money” interests.

The guy who called my wife said he was with the state fraud unit. He repeated my wife’s name, our address and phone number and then said that they were tracking an illegal withdrawl from our checking account and that we had to act fast to keep $499 from being removed. He said the amount was below a “triggering” level for tracking and that it was a widespead problem and they were close to capturing the crooks. He sounded very official, very calm, and said he didn’t need any identifying information, just the number off the bottom of one of our checks so he could verify the account and that the money had been removed.

My wife was uneasy with this, but might have fallen for it, especially when the guy said he understood her concern and provided a call back number with the correct area code for the nearest major city and an 800 number, and then pressed her for the need to “help” them quickly get these rip off artists before the opportunity passed.

Still she hesitated and the more the guy talked the more unsure my wife became, so she called me on the cell phone and I told her to tell them I’d get right over to the bank and take care of it from our end. He said he understood and ended the conversation. The numbers provided were, of course, false and no money had been taken from our account.

Had my wife given the routing number to the man, they could have taken money out of our account. So just another scam and they are getting better at it.