Phone scammers have personally irritated the guy at the head of a regulatory body tasked with stopping them.
Federal Communications Chair Tom Wheeler said on Wednesday that his house has fallen prey to “spoofing”–a tactic often used by con artists to trick people into giving them money by imitating another telephone number on caller ID.
Wheeler made the remarks in a discussion about cracking down on the fraudulent practice before the Senate Commerce Committee.
“I may be the only member on this panel who has actually been victimized by this,” Wheeler remarked. “I came home a couple of weeks ago, and my wife said to me ‘the IRS is calling and saying we owe them money.’ This was news to me.”
“You didn’t fall for it, did you?” Committee ranking member Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) asked in jest, in response.
Wheeler replied: “I said, ‘boy, they called the wrong number because I’m the Chairman of the FCC.’”
“We got the information and I took it to our enforcement bureau,” he continued. “And they started drilling down. And guess what? This was a US number, but it was coming from abroad. And we couldn’t get to it.”
“Believe me, we understand and are with you on this,” Wheeler concluded.
“By the way,” Nelson replied, “the ‘Do Not Call List’–it doesn’t work.”
Nelson had been asking Wheeler’s colleague–fellow FCC member and Democrat, Jessica Rosenworcel–about legislative reforms he has proposed to crack down on spoofing.
“That fraud has moved offshore. It’s now coming from international locations,” Rosenworcel noted.
