Have you gotten a call from 215-944-8989? Here is the information you need. These calls are short, include noise or clapping or a cash register chinging in the beginning, followed by a woman speaking Spanish.
If you have gotten one of these calls, please let us know below.
This is an illegal telemarketing activity dialing random numbers to lure in Spanish speaking US citizens and steal your personal information. There is no contest to win, and these types of boiler room operations only serve to do you harm. They wants your name, credit card information, and to do you nothing but harm.
Why is there no pause or delay in the call? Thats to avoid wasting time leaving messages on voice mail or answering machines. They want quick immediate responses as part of this smash and grab operation.
Why Spanish? Its who they are targeting. The US has a large Spanish speaking population. How large? According to the 2007 American Community Survey conducted by the United States Census Bureau, Spanish is the primary language spoken at home by over 34 million people aged 5 or older.
And what about people learning Spanish? There are 6 million Spanish students based on that 2007 survey.
For that boiler room operation, that is a huge audience to target.
Ways to tell these calls are not legit? Why no message at the end in English and Spanish telling you where they are from? Why call hundreds of numbers all over the country at random? Simple steps and common sense that illegal operations don’t want to do. Its one criminal offense to run these types of operations. It is another series of crimes to provide false or inaccurate information to deceive or lure you away from their true address and information. The criminals know this so they don’t risk multiple offenses. If the crimes they commit are low in number, or harder to prosecute, it makes law enforcement move on to another criminal.