Hi people, I too have been getting harassed. I am trying to organize a way to stop these
unscrupulous people from calling our "do not call" registered phones day and night. It costs us
money, time, and energy at a time that we as a nation have little or none of to spare. We
have to raise awareness of what's going on and figure out how to stop them.

This particular call left a voice mail which was poor audio quality, but the basic gist of it was that I had won a car and needed to call them back at this number to claim my prize. Yet another trash caller that ignored the do not call list.

First some known facts, then I will follow with some action we can take to stop these illegal
behaviors.

1) The calls are apparently off shore, and ignore the do not call list. All of my phones have been listed on the do not call registry since it started in 2003. When you get one of these calls, you are encouraged to go to donotcall.gov and if you are registered, you can file a complaint. If you are not registered, do so, it will take a few weeks for the new registry to get you on the list, but you can't file a complaint until you do so. There is a suggestion that this does no good. I wrote to Orin Hatch about it and his reply was nonsense and missed the point. We probably shouldn't expect too much help from the Federal Government in stopping this harassment.

2) They are spoofing the Caller ID number. If you own your PBX, you can change the number that it reports in your phone's caller id function. It is not legal, but if you're off shore, you don't care. There is a document filed by the North Dakota Attorney General's office that describes this problem. Please read it at:

http://www.ag.nd.gov/NewsReleases/2010/05-25-10A.pdf

That means that the number you see in your Caller ID is not really who is calling. Calling them back will only take you to the number they put into their PBX to fool us, which is likely a non-existent number.

3) Answering the phone, calling them back and pressing "1" to be removed only confirms that they have a real person on the phone. I believe they have "war dialed" to find your number and if you've answered or called back, they now know they have a real phone number and it only makes you get targeted for more calls, I've managed to get a second phone on their list via calling back from another line.

4) Here is a list of the numbers they have used (spoofed), note that this list is from places that have a very light  population density and therefore lots of free and unused or available numbers, places like North Dakota and Flint, Michigan among others.

714-209-8684
801-533-9777
800-463-3339
603-214-3668
701-625-5008
701-625-5758
216-501-2998
901-268-4934
302-394-6888
810-232-0555
810-715-1369
810-238-6889
701-920-9647
701-920-9732
701-920-9871
701-920-9939
912-447-3244
865-292-0385
515-989-9889
438-876-4557
316-789-1356
731-256-3580
631-291-4014
505-369-1289
702-418-1175 (a new number as of last night)

As they add new numbers, I'll update this list.

5) The companies that purchase this illegal service include a credit reduction scam ("Card Services", a home security system provider. As I we hear of other companies, I'll update this list.

Actions we can take:
1) To help on my phone, I've created a trash contact which has a silent ring tone and each time they change their spoofed number to a new one, I add them to this contact so at least I can continue my meetings and meals without interruption once I have their new spoofed Caller ID number. It helps, a little.

2) Register your phone at donotcall.gov. After that you should file a complaint each and every time they call.

3) I recently complained to both of my senators and my representative, I have gotten a letter from the FCC noting my complaint, giving me a case number and a phone number to call to complain, that number is: 888-225-5322
Call that number and complain when you get one of these unwanted calls and you're on the do no call list. The telemarketer has to try to sell you something. So when they call press 1 to get to a live person then  let them go through their whole sales pitch before telling them you're on the do not call list.
Then when they hang up on you call the FCC and file your complaint. Ultimately, we can find the companies that enable this behavior and get the feds to help curtail it by bringing them to justice for using illegal telemarketers. There are now several cases of successful prosecution of companies that enable this behavior.

4) From another victim, Folks, the reason that these people can call you while you're on the DO NOT CALL registry is simple.  These people harassing you aren't in America and aren't subject to any do not call regulations!  Well if they aren't in America, how are they calling with domestic phone numbers you ask?  Major USA telecom companies have reseller businesses where they resell VoiP phone services to consumers all over the world and they use virtual phone numbers that have american phone number exchanges.

Why then are these American Telecom companies providing these foreign people with phone services to harass American consumers and use the services for illicit activities?  The truth is they're not, in fact most of the major American Telecom companies aren't even aware of who is using the services and what they're being used for as they're reselling them to different foreign vendors who then sell the service to foreign consumers.

So the question then becomes, what are my options and what can I do to prevent this?  The best thing to do is contact your STATE Attorney's Office with the phone number harassing you.  Be very specific about what these illicit individuals are doing with these phone numbers and what information they are trying to obtain from you.  What will your local STATE's Attorney's Office do about it?  They will subpoena the carrier who actually provisioned these telephone numbers from the national pool.  If these numbers are operated by another carrier, the carrier who owns the number will contact their reseller and will hopefully comply with terminating the number or potentially face legal action from the STATE.

Contacting the FCC won't do anything, trust me.  Contact your local STATE's Attorney's Office and complain, complain, complain but be very specific about who called you, what they wanted and exact timestamps of calls.  The more information the better.

Together we can stop these illegal people from calling night and day, and moving to new numbers. The businesses that purchase this company's product, their telemarketing services without regard to the do not call list. They've messed with the wrong nest of people, the hornet's nest. Thank you everybody who has helped to contribute to this document.