Las Vegas, Nevada Real Estate Agent’s Las Vegas Homes, Condos, Land, Commercial Real Estate and Personal Blog

  A new phone scam has hit Las Vegas and below is how it works.Your phone will ring, usually after 7 pm to on a weekend night to get you upset, so you will listen to the whole message, and then comes the following recorded message:

If you are not the person who owes HealthSouth please hang up now,

And after a brief pause asks the person to call 1-866-608-7107

When the person calls that number, he is directed to call 1-900-622-8000

Those who call this number are subsequently billed anywhere form $50-$150. Please go ahead and Google 9006228000 and you will find many forum posts from the poor people who fell for this and were surprised with a big bill subsequently.

Needless to say, this is only one scenario and different names or phone numbers may be used. Following is post from a victim:

“Yeah, my parents got hit with this last week. Their VISA statement came with an odd $120 charge on it and the only note was a 1-800-290-8630 that then in turn leads right to this 1-900-622-8000 number to talk to a real person for $10 (and more I assume). Oh, and the line on the bill “1F - great fun”, I mean what jerks. We are disputing the charge and I am sure it will disappear. We will see.”

Please note that the prefix 900 for a phone number means that there will be charge for the call. 900 numbers are exactly opposite to 800 numbers as 800 number guaranties no charge for a call, 900 number guaranties that there would be a charge. So never make a 900 number call unless you know how much you will be charged.

I found out about this today after getting 3 calls over the weekend from these dirt bags, all after 7 pm. Needless to say we didn’t fall for the scam and didn’t call the 900 number. We contacted HealthSouth’s administrative office and they were unaware of what is going on, as we suspected. To me this means that this is a relatively new scam here in Las Vegas, so I decided to do a post about this and alert the innocent souls that will fall victim to these %&*#@ ( please let your imagination run wild in replacing these with nasty words) criminals.

These lowest of the low are targeting poor defenseless people by covering a large area by the name of an institution that many may owe and hit them with a fraudulent bill. I can’t overstate my disgust for these cancerous tumors in our society which grow and prosper only by destroying others, the best cure for cancer is to shut down its food source and then it will die.

If you receive a bill from these low lifes, contest it.  

I will get back to my analysis of Las Vegas condo auction in February-2008 next, but if I can save one person from these predators, this post is well worth the time.

Please forward this to the law enforcement agency of your area and alert everyone you can. GOD willing we can try to shut this down before it claims more victims, as I know it will.