Woke me up at 6:30 in the morning! My father was in the hospital at the time, so I immediately dialed back the number without looking at it. It was the porn. The worst part is VERIZON CHARGED ME!

DO NOT ANSWER THIS NUMBER!!!!! IT IS A SCAM!!! IF YOU CALL BACK YOU WILL BE CHARGED $3-5 PER MINUTE ON YOUR CELL PHONE BILL!!!!

Received a call at 10:50 P.M. Did not answer as Idid not recognize the number

The calls are placed randomly by automatic dialers.  At most, they may choose to target blocks of 1,000 or 10,000 consecutive numbers that are administered by mobile phone carriers.  People who use these carriers are used to free long distance calling and may be more naive than others about calling back an international number that happens to be beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.  Those blocks are easy to look up from public sources.  If they even bother.

473 "AREA CODE" WARNING -- DO NOT RETURN DIAL ONE RING CALLS RECEIVED FROM AREA CODE 473 !!!!!!

In the current variant of this scam, the caller doesn't have any intention of talking to you. All the scammer wants is for you to get upset enough about the late night call that you return the call, never even noticing that it is from a foreign country outside the reach of US or Canadian laws. When you return the call (at international rates), there may also be a big surcharge added to your phone bill that gets passed along to the scammer.

What appears to have been the original version of the scam surfaced about 11 years ago in Japan and is known as the "Wangiri scam:"

From Japan Times
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2002/08/21/n ... r/#.Ur2543-9KSN

From the Economist
http://www.economist.com/node/1367988

A few U.S. news organizations, but not many, have picked up on this latest variant:

KPVI, Pocatello, ID TV report on Grenada phone scam
http://youtu.be/eSp9tY1gBW8

From Toledo News Now
http://www.toledonewsnow.com/story/23695832/b ... huge-phone-bill

I don't think this problem is limited to or has anything to do with Verizon.  The same problem has been reported on other carriers, I believe, but Verizon Wireless appears to be the biggest carrier, so they get the most calls.  Verizon has a discussion board set up with at least one thread concerning "473" calls:

https://community.verizonwireless.com/message/1035009

It appears that at least Verizon is devoting some resources to stop these callers or at least refund some or all of the charges for people who call these numbers.  How long that will last is known only to Verizon, and even they may not have decided at this point.  Other carriers may also be doing the same.  They all want to avoid bad publicity that may drive away customers, of course.

At least one early report on 800notes.com, if taken at face value, asserted that a charge of $100.00 was made to a phone bill for calling back for 15 seconds.  Even regular calls to 473 numbers are billed at upwards of $1.80 per minute by most cell phone carriers, even on so-called "unlimited" phone plans, unless you have paid extra for an international dialing plan.  It may be that the scammers get a cut of this money for every international call they receive.

That's why either:
(1) you can't return the phone call, because even though you would otherwise be able to dial it like an ordinary long distance number, you phone company has a restriction on your placing international calls (which these are).  At least some pre-paid cell phone services work this way.  If this case applies to you, consider yourself lucky. Or,
(2) when you call back and get through, the operator of the 473 phone number tries to keep you on hold for as long as possible to run up your phone bill and their profits.

The scammers don't have to be associated with recent security breaches, such as the recent one at Target stores.  (In fact, many of the victims of this scam say that they either don't shop at Target or did not shop there during the period of the known security breach.)  All the scammers have to do is randomly dial a lot of telephone numbers in already-assigned area codes. And they must be dialing a LOT of them based on the complaints logged to 800notes.

It probably doesn't cost them anything to dial you, either, if the called party (you) doesn't pick up the call before they hang up. It only takes a small percentage of angry and/or curious people calling back for them to make a lot of money. They don't even have to pay for real people to operate a call center -- it's all done by machines, outside the reach of US and Canadian law enforcement.

So do yourself a favor and don't call these scammers back.  And you'll also be doing us all a favor, because they wouldn't call anyone at all if there weren't so many people who fell for this scam.

Received a call from this number 12:03 am on New Year's Day.  Of course the call woke me up.  Caller didn't leave a message and after reading this blog their lucky they didn't because I would be reporting them to the police.  I want to know how these idiots got my number.

I received a call at 10:45 pm. I didn't answer, it only rang briefly before disconnecting. I didn't recognize the # so decided to Google it. Interesting but mostly ANNOYING!  

Received this call tonight and my boyfriend, as well about twenty minutes later. We both didn't answer. We do not have Verizon, though. We are on the same plan and our carrier is at&t... Glad we didn't answer, though.

Intentionally responding with the title anonymous I occassionally frequent adult content the only reason I only reference this is because the individuals that called back or answered the call report hearing sounds similar to intimate encounters.  My phone alerted once and I recieved no message; however, I have friends around the country and some that travel the world so I figured that I would look into it.  I am not being strange I assume that having this poat indicates that individuals of like minded and similar positions and situations are attempting to remedy the situation so information would help.  Reading others feedback, it would seem as though a reocurring theme is that people have been charged, although I do not believe that I have upon responding to the initial call, then again I am unsure if we all have shared essentially the same experience (my admission of the adult content aside I also ordered several items online as seasonal gifts I did not view anything innappropriate if it makes a difference to the lot of u conversing and disregarding my input merely commonplace adult, intimate material; nonetheless I do not want my accounts to be jeopardized).  Happy new year's, I am not asking of anyone to make any admission(s), in fact I would strongly prefer to not hear about a complete strangers personal pursuits, but I am interested in achieveing a communicable comprimise.  Thank you and have a happy new year.

I received a call from this number and called back and it sounded like sex noises.

Received call from this number today at my church and it sounded like someone having sex...Is this Some kind of joke? If so it's in poor taste. I received the call this morning around 9:37am central time.

Received call at 10:10 am 12/29.
Did not answer.

Same thing happened here . As I'm reading all the comments funny how we are all verizon!

I got a call from this number at 4:48AM!  Wish I could have reached through the phone an strangled them!

You were smart!

Got a call this morning 5:40 !!!  Called Verizon to explain what happened....advised to block number.  Will not be charged for calling number back.  Lesson learned....do not call back a missed call unless you know who you're calling.

Called me at 4:04 am I was sound asleep thought it was a friend having an emergency saw it was a weird number grrr get a life people!!! My mobile carrier is Verizon

call received at 356 am, from the sound of it I would'nt mind meeting the owner of this #

I have been looking at things that would qualify as adult content has anyone else?  I have never paid for anything that has required me to share any personal information.  It is either sites that we have visited or sites that we have made purchases throught the latter is more likely i would think but then again i do not know

Just got a missed call on cell (verizon), called back and it was a recording of people having sex.

Receives cll at 1130, did not answer it.  Will call phone company on Monday.

I received the unwanted call also- dialed back to hear a recoding of a couple having sex- really irritating. ill contact verizon

CALL ON CELL @ 9:57 P.M. DID NOT ANSWER/NO MSG

The calls are placed randomly by automatic dialers.  At most, they may choose to target blocks of 1,000 or 10,000 consecutive numbers that are administered by mobile phone carriers.  People who use these carriers are used to free long distance calling and may be more naive than others about calling back an international number that happens to be beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.  Those blocks are easy to look up from public sources.  If they even bother.

The naive people who call back do not understand that the country code for Grenada is "1," just as it is in the United States.  Thus, unless international calling is blocked by your carrier, you can dial a number in Grenada in just the same way as you dial a number in the United States.

Check out "Wangiri" on Wikipedia, or the following articles, which prove that the scam is over 10 years old, at least, and because of the volume of calls the scammers place, it can bring down entire networks:

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2002/08/21/n ... r/#.Ur2543-9KSN

http://www.economist.com/node/1367988

It's a scam. Block the number. If u answer it check ur service provider. They charge u for this call

Ya they charge ur phone bill. It's a scam.

are these "coincidences" happening a lot lately?  
I just got this call which was also spooky......

Called my "unknown" VOIP and my cellphone within a few hours of each other. Spooky coincidence as nobody should be able to put these two pieces together as my VOIP is used for business only. Cellphone identified call origin as Grenada.

They called twice. I returned call, it went right to voicemail - sounded awful - porn!!
They called my wife's phone, then mine...we are not on the same plan, nor do we have the same phone contacts.

Got this call 12:31 am 12/26. Didn't answer it

called at 5:30 I did not answer. Thank heavens