I received a call on my home line (of which 99% of calls are telemarketers, and I rarely answer). The caller listed himself as “Tom from the FCC”, and he was calling to validate my entry in the Do Not Call list. He had a very thick Indian accent and was talking from a scratchy phone line (clearly VoIP overseas). He said that I would receive a second call right after his with “important account information”, then he would call back.

Tom hung up, then two minutes later I received an automated call. It was a simple call saying “Your Craiglist telephone passcode is “, then it listed a 6-digit number.

Two minutes after that, “Tom” called me back. He asked me to read the passcode from the previous call. I told him to stop trying to scam people. He flustered back with “No, no, you misunderstand me. I’m Tom with the FCC, and I am simply trying to verify your registration in the Do Not Call list”, and asked for that passcode again. I asked him multiple questions:

• What’s your last name? (answer: “Jericho”)
• What’s your phone number? (answer: “1-888-CALL-FCC” or something like that)
• Why are you trying to scam people? (answer, again: “You misunderstand me sir!”)

I hung up the phone at this point. I dialed *69, but as expected, the number is unknown.
I’m surprised he kept trying to convince me. I would expect that, at the first sign I would be hostile, he would hang up and try again with a less suspecting target.

It turns out that this is a derivative of a Do Not Call List scam that has been reported on the Internet. Though, what they are going to do with a Craiglist account, I really have no idea. It seems like a lot of effort for very little gain.