American fraudsters are targeting UK victims by ringing them and playing automated threatening messages claiming to be from the FBI.
The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) has received several reports of victims being targetted in the scam, with messages claiming the USA’s FBI has an arrest warrant in the victim’s name.
The victim is then told to call the phone number 3237 592 099 to stop the warrant being executed. Many of the reports state the victims need to do this by a certain time.
Most reports state that the phone number is for a law firm called Walsh & Peters LLP where the victim then has to ask for David Williams in order for the warrant to be stopped.
Other alternative law firms are mentioned in some reports such as Walter & Peters, Schwartz & Peters and Lodge & Peters.
Some victims that have reported to Action Fraud have attempted to contact the suspect number but the call does not appear to connect, this could potentially be because victims are not putting the internationally dialling code in front of the suspect number.
Open source research reveals the suspect phone number is based in Los Angeles, California.
Action Fraud, is urging anyone who receives any messages of this nature to ignore them, not to call the number and to report them to Action Fraud at www.actionfraud.police.uk