Fraudulent “call center calls” in Gauting end lightly 

Created: 03/15/2022, 10:35 am

According to the Gauting police, call center calls of completely different qualities all ended lightly © PantherMedia/BrianAJackson

Gauting - Yesterday, Monday, several Gauting households received calls from alleged fraudsters, who covered almost the majority of the most common known scams, which are mostly sent out by call centers from abroad.

It was interesting in all cases that only women were the target of the callers and that the first names of the alleged victims also allow certain conclusions to be drawn about a presumably older age.

In the first case, a 79-year-old senior woman was prompted around lunchtime by an extremely demanding fake Microsoft caller to log on to her computer immediately and then enter certain key combinations.

However, the extremely bright senior citizen smelled "immediately the roast" after this announcement and explained to her counterpart that she would not do exactly that and then simply hung up. 

Also at 1 p.m., a 68-year-old woman from Gautingen received a call on her landline from a fake police officer who pretended to be an officer from the State Criminal Police Office and wanted to make the 68-year-old believe something about burglaries in her immediate vicinity.

The woman from Gauting could not read any telephone numbers on the display, which she found suspicious.

She also left the fake police officer's question about valuables in her apartment unanswered and then ended the call so resolutely that she did not receive another call (which is by no means the rule).

In the third case, around 4 p.m., a 52-year-old woman received a call from an electronically generated voice in English.

The woman from Gauting only knew something about government and identification.

When the 52-year-old received the request to enter her identity card number on the keypad of her phone, she also ended the call immediately.

When the Gauting police called back, it turned out that the number displayed was not assigned and that the phone number was generated by what is known as ID spoofing.

Call ID spoofing is the term used to describe the method by which calls can be made using a fake calling number for the person being called.

This small selection of cases shows in a pleasing way that the police's prevention of fraudulent calls is slowly bearing fruit.