Put the FTC to work for you

I've been getting mystery calls on my cell phone for a few weeks now. I haven't answered them, assuming that if the call were important, the caller would leave a message. No messages were left.

Finally, today, I answered the call. Lucky for me, it was a criminal telemarketing scam. This gives me an opportunity to do my civic duty and warn everyone about this.

First off, the number the call came from was 612-808-5643. The company claims to be "Freedom Choice Financial".

Let's look at their crimes:

1. They start off with an recorded message. By law, recorded messages have to offer a way to automatically remove you from their call list (i.e. "press one to stop receiving these calls") No such option was given.
2. They called my cell phone. It's against the law to telemarket to cell phones.

While not illegal, they also work very hard to deceive the call recipient. They make it seem as if they are your credit card company and not some wholly unrelated scam company.

The good news is that it's very easy to file a complaint against jerks like this. The FTC has a web form (click on the big brown logo on the right that reads "FTC Complaint Assistant") that you can fill out to file the complaint. It takes about 5 minutes. I recommend that if you've been called by these, or any other telemarketers, that you visit that site to file a complaint.

This site has some additional information on your rights.

Take the time. Make it so difficult for these crooks to evade the law that they give up!