The 9-0-# scam has been around for years and is directed at businesses, hospitals, government agencies and other organizations that use telephone switching equipment called private branch exchanges (PBXs) to handle their calls.
This type of fraud involves a perpetrator who calls an office and cons an unsuspecting worker into transferring him or her to an outside line. The perpetrator then starts dialing calls that are charged to the owner of the PBX. In this latest version, the caller claims to be an AT&T service technician "repairing" the phone lines and convinces the recipient of the call to help out by transferring him to an outside line and then hanging up.
Below are some points about this scam worth remembering:
This scam doesn't affect residential customers; its target is businesses.
An AT&T service technician would never call customers and ask them to help check phone lines.
The scam is generating a lot of interest in the media and over the Internet, but our network fraud experts report no increase in the number of fraud cases as a result of this notoriety.
The best prevention against this type of fraud is for business managers to make their office staffs aware of it and to review what to do if it happens.
If someone receives such a call, he or she should ask the "technician" for a call-back number or for the name and number of the caller's supervisor. Then hang up.
To report this or any other phone scams AT&T business customers should call their account representatives. You also can call the AT&T Business Customer Care Center at 1-800-222-0400, or report the scam to your local law enforcement agency.
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