So I just received a call from a local number with an automated voice at the end telling me that as a valued American Express customer, I qualified for a free cruise to the Bahamas!
Wow!! How could I resist??
Especially armed with the knowledge that it is both: a) a scam, and b) I don't have an AMEX card.
I figured that at the very least, since I had a bit of time to kill, and had recently binge watched a bunch of scambaiting videos on YouTube, I was going to waste this guy's time and keep him from making someone with an actual AMEX card his victim.
I cracked open a fake identity generator, as well as a fake credit card generator, and gleefully accepted the call!
However, in my excitement and anticipation, I forgot to record the event. So from here, I will have to give the short version of events.
For the next 20 minutes, I was Mark Hood from Abbotsford, BC - a completely falsified identity.
Armed with a false American Express card and a desire to waste as much of this fool's time as I could, once a real person (with obligatory thick accent) came on the line, and confirmed that I had indeed been selected to win a free cruise to the Bahamas, I put my phone down and shouted for about 3 or 4 minutes that I had won! I was just so excited!
At least, I wanted this fool to believe that.
At this point, my daughter and her friends came downstairs to see what all the noise was about, so I told them to make a little bit of noise with me for effect.
Once I had "calmed down," I provided him with my fake name and personal information, while giggling thew whole time in order to keep up appearances that I was SO excited to win this free trip!
Free, that is, except for the one time fee of $89.99 per person for alleged government port taxes.
Oh, and the gratuities of about $15 per day, per person.
Oh, and the right to charge a fuel supplement charge of $12 per person.
After a 5 minutes debate as to what the definition of the word "free" is, he came back with, "but you only have to pay $179.98 today!"
I feigned a begrudging acceptance, and told him to run my card.
Of course, when he ran the card number, it came back as invalid. (Of course it did)
So I generated 2 more card numbers for him to try, all of which obviously came back invalid, much to my amusement and his frustration.
I told him that I hadn't been able to make my minimum payments, so that was probably the reason I my card were coming back invalid. (LOL!)
However, I had a solution! Since my card was experiencing problems my wife's card was probably upstairs and that I would go get it and he could try that one. He agreed.
At this point, about 19 minutes had passed on the call, and this is where it occurred to me that I should have been recording this. Oh well. I figured I had messed with him long enough for today. So I put the call on mute, put my phone down, and let it sit until he finally hung up, about 12 minutes later.
Successful scammer time wasted: 31 minutes!
Hopefully next time, I will be better prepared so that I can make a YouTube video for you guys.
