ATLANTA — Crooks are posing as Medicare and are trying to trick you out of your personal and financial information.
It can be really confusing telling the imposters from the real thing.
For Dwayne Melton in Cobb County, spoofed phone calls come to his phone on a regular basis.
While trying to call his Medicare provider, Melton told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray that he ended up on the phone with someone else.
“I was calling Medicare to get a list of my providers in my network because I didn’t know where to go,” Melton said.
Gray was there as Melton called one of the spoofed numbers back.
“They pretend like they’re Medicare, but they’re not,” Melton said.
Melton said he was promised free goods from Home Depot and Lowes, they just needed to confirm his credit card.
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“I gave him the expiration date. And he goes, ‘What’s the number on the card?’ I’m like, ‘You mean the last four digits? ‘And he goes, ‘No, the whole number.’ ‘Why do you need the whole number?’” Melton said.
Kern Smith from the mobile security company Zimperium told Gray there are a variety of ways they are getting people on the line. But if you spot red flags, he said you need to hang up.
“It’s not just the phishing attacks, it’s mobile malware,” Smith said. “It’s incredibly important to trust but verify, or even in this day, maybe not trust that, still extra verify.”
Melton spotted the scam, hung up the phone, reported it to Medicare, and then called Gray to help warn others.
“At least I had the sense to not give them my credit card number, but somebody that’s thinking they have Medicare on the line, because that’s the number they dialed, they would think nothing about it,” Melton said.
Medicare said you should protect your Medicare number and your Social Security number, never give out identifying info, and that they will not be trying to sell things over the phone or offer gifts.
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