Give a criminal a resource — just about any resource — and he will probably find away to use it for some type of criminal activity.

This time, it’s criminals that are already behind bars who have managed to pull off a clever scam using the telephone.

An inmate in jail will make a collect call to someone they are hoping to victimize. The inmate will tell the call recipient that someone in the jail has provided their phone number as an emergency contact number or come up with some other bogus reason for calling.

What the inmate really wants is to convince the call recipient to dial *72 on their telephone, followed by the telephone number of the telephone in the jail, which will then forward all calls that the victim receives to the telephone at the jail.

With that accomplished, the inmate can have their family and friends make collect calls to the victims number, which will be forwarded to the jail telephone where the inmates can accept the charges for the calls and the victim is the one that will be responsible for paying the bill.

If you have not purchased the “Call Forwarding” service for your telephone line, it will not be possible for you to forward your calls and you are not in danger of falling victim to this particular scam.

With so many telephone scams these days, be very suspicious of any telephone call from someone who is trying to talk you into making another phone call or anything else that is a but out of the ordinary.

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