A bloke in Canada decided to get some serious payback after he was subject to a cold calling scam.
Kevin Underhill, who lives in London, Ontario, received a voicemail from someone claiming to work for the Canada Revenue Agency. The message told him to get in touch over some supposed 'problems' with his taxes.
Not one to be caught napping, Underhill clocked it was a scam straight away, so he decided some banter was in order.
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"I called the first chance I had, and the first tip I had was that it rang twice and I already had a live agent," he explained to BuzzFeed.
Underhill played along, questioning the back taxes he supposedly owed and how much jail time he could avoid by coughing up. But, when they asked what his name was, he instead spelled out Y-O-U-E R A-S-C-A-M and then asked them to read it back to him.
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This pissed the guy at the other end of the phone off and he responded by hanging up. But the prankster wasn't done, he decided to call back, over and over again, despite being repeatedly hung up on.
Sometimes he would get a different agent, meaning he could pull off the fake name prank again. And, eventually he called up and a manager snatched the phone from one of the scammers.
"I'm like, 'Stop hanging up on me. Tell me what's going on.' And he goes, 'No. You stop pranking me,'" Underhill said.
He said he laughed at how strange it was that a criminal was telling him to leave him alone.
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Underhill said he spoke to eight or nine people in total. Although the scammers used a phone number with a 613 Ottawa area code, he believes their setup was based outside of Canada.
"You could hear the amount of people in the room talking at a huge call center. It wasn't three or four people in a boiler room. It was probably 40 or 50 people," he said. "It's a big organisation."
if you wind up in the same situation, the Canada Revenue Agency say that people should contact the agency directly through its 1-800 number or via it's website.
"The CRA never asks taxpayers to provide their personal or financial information by email, text message, or by clicking on a link," a spokesperson said. "It also never asks for payments by a prepaid credit card or a gift card, and does not inform taxpayers by email that they have tax refunds. The CRA never threatens taxpayers with police arrest or jail time."
Featured Image Credit: ProvidedTopics: Prank