I’ve been piecing together additional bits of information about the “ghost message” that has been repeatedly left on our home telephone.
Since my original post, I called the number the voicemail was reportedly received from, but it was a strange and quite unsatisfying call.
It rang and then went into a long pause. Silence, as the seconds ticket by, the kind of silence that sometimes comes when answering a telemarketing call, and the call is being routed to a call center somewhere else in the world.
Hello? Hello? Silence. Then, after a pause that likely seemed much longer than it really was, a male voice finally answered. “Hello?” I tried to briefly explain that we had been receiving a repeated message that seems to come from his telephone. As I spoke, I could feel that weird background silence sort of come and go, and I couldn’t tell if he heard my whole explanation. The person expressed no surprise or curiosity about the message attributed to his phone. In response to my explanation, he said simply, “you should probably check with your phone carrier.” And that was it. Call over.
I learned a bit, but not much.
Checking online sources, the number (808-427-xxxx) turned out to have no history, and no name or address associated with it. My search did not turn up any prior users, nor prior complaints. Odd in itself, compared to most searches that I’ve done in the past.
But the search did identify the number as a land line, and the telephone carrier as Onvoy.
Although I had never heard of Onvoy, it proved to be a clue worth following.
A quick look turned up an article identifying Onvoy as the phone carrier used by most scams.
Background check company BeenVerified looked at 24 months of data related to scam phone calls and created a list of the carriers most used by scammers to make these calls. The top two names on the list, Onvoy, and TextNow, might not be familiar to you because they are VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) providers. These carriers allow customers to make and take calls over the internet, unlike cellular carriers that use cell towers to handle phone calls.
From July 2021 through June 2023, a breakdown of scam calls found that non-fixed VoIP numbers were used to carry 60.59% of scam calls followed by 24.11% of such scams that were delivered using the network of a mobile carrier. 8% were made using a fixed-line VoIP and 7.29% used a fixed-line service.
A 2022 federal class action lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California, Lopez v. Onvoy, LLC (4:22-cv-01607), named Onvoy among a list of defendants it accused of violating federal law by “placing thousands of unauthorized telephone calls featuring pre-recorded messages with artificial voices containing highly deceptive and dangerous content that are made by VoIP Telecommunication Carriers to consumers who borrowed federal student loans.”
The complaint alleged that 60% of all spam and robocalls in the United States are delivered to consumers’ phones by the Onvoy network.
It provided this description of Onvoy and are lated company, Inteliquent, Inc.
Defendant Inteliquent, Inc. is a VoIP and “API Provider” with its headquarters at 550 West Adams Street, Suite 900, Chicago, IL 60661. Inteliquent merged with Onvoy, LLC under the name Inteliquent (the entity providing some of the phone numbers used to make the illegal robocalls described throughout this Complaint). An “API Provider” programs a robocall with an artificial voice that is delivered through VoIP technology to consumers’ telephones and records the content of the call. Inteliquent advertises on its website that “You can depend on us,” that it has 115,000,000 phone numbers powered by its network with 300,000,000,000 minutes of use on its network annually, and that it has 37% more local number coverage than other providers.
Defendant Onvoy, LLC also provides telephone numbers and Caller ID spoofing services and delivers these robocalls with prerecorded message created using API Voice Technology to federal student loan borrowers. Onvoy is also the holding company for Inteliquent according to its most recent FCC Form 499. Defendant Onvoy’s headquarters is located at 550 West Adams Street, Suite 1130, Chicago, IL 60661.
A second lawsuit, filed earlier this year federeal court in Oklahoma, provided additional details without suggesting more answers relevant to the ghost message.
Excerpt from complaint.
Exactly how our “ghost messages” fit into this broader system underlying telephone scams still isn’t known, but I do know more than I did a few days ago.
Oh, worth noting…The calls continue. Another copy of the message was received at 9:46 this morning, just a few minutes before we returned from Sunday morning breakfast and a shopping trip to our local Time Supermarket. Same message. Same originating number.
And now you can finally hear the ghost message recorded Sunday morning.
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Ian, you have nose of a true reporter…are you also. Virgo? The bottom line- is there any relief from these calls?
Here’s a strange scenario: I live in a close-circuit community and our telephone systems are with SPECTRUM.
Yeah, I occasionally receive Robo calls.
He or she was feeling you out. My guess is you don’t sound like most people as you are an investigative reporter. The potential scammer could tell you were tougher than most and ended the call.
The purpose may be to obtain enough of your voice on recordings to patch together a message in your voice. Maybe to use to access your financial accounts.
During a phone call to a personal vendor a few days ago, after going through the usual ID verification (mother’s maiden name, date of birth, zip code, etc.), the vendor added that my voice ID matched their records! I had no idea they do this now. But, thinking about it, now some vendors flatly say your call is recorded, not “may be recorded”. Now I have to reconsider conducting any transactions over the phone!
In September I received a scam call. Slightly different scam from yours but with the same objective –to get you to give them as much of your money as possible. It was so stupid I couldn’t believe anyone would fall for it, and I not so politely told the guy what he could do to himself. From his reply I could tell that made him very angry.
I have discussed the various scams with my husband and told him about the call I received. Still, three days later he received a similar call and fell for it. They got him to withdraw $9,000 out of one bank account and had him feed it into a crypto machine with an anonymous code. Then they sent him to a second bank to get more, where thankfully the tellers realized something was wrong, told him he was being scammed and refused to give him the money. Why our main bank didn’t I will never know, because when I complained they were more interested in covering their okoles than helping me recover the funds, which I now know will not be possible.
They ran the whole game over the phone from 808 numbers, and when he couldn’t get more money they said they would call back the next day. Which they did, but I had his phone and told them where they could shove it. They pretended to be from our neighborhood HPD substation and threatened to send a squad car, to which I replied please do, and they finally stopped calling.
Until the next day when they called our business line asking for my husband again, still trying to get more money out of him. There is so much more to this very long story, but my feeling is that it was the same people I yelled at when I received that first call. When I wouldn’t play they were gonna show me and get it from me one way or another.
All of your personal info is online as well as that of your associates and businesses. If you have ever tried to find someone you’ve lost touch with, this is horrifying clear to you.
HPD was less than useless and treated me like I was the criminal because I was upset. They asked me –a 60 year old lady– if i was going to hurt anyone. I said yes, if they come here I will hurt them, but they probably are not even in this country. I will never call HPD again even if someone is breaking into my house. This happened months ago and I am still traumatized. It is so wrong that this scam problem was ever allowed to get so out of hand, and help after the fact is impossible to find. As for my husband, he is still in the doghouse.
Sorry for any typos. It’s not easy to type this much on my tablet.
I feel for you, Kalikala. The money loss is bad enough, but the loss of a sense of safety and control is worse. The thing that really infuriates me is that they have the power to do something about it but the Federal Communications Commission and telecommunications service providers do nothing and let these scammers get away with it.
Thanks Lynn. My husband is embarrassed and would prefer to keep this whole thing a secret, but I’ve been telling everyone who will listen so people will beware. One person who had also been scammed told me about a movie called The Bee Keeper starring Jason Statham. It’s about getting revenge on the scammers. A little violent for my normal taste but it really hit the spot when I needed it most. A great performance for what it was.
One possibility is that they now know you are a person who will respond to unknown calls and are selling your number to other scammers… Maybe you could track if you get an uptick in junk calls over the next few months.
Great information. Thanks Ian!
An easy way to stop bogus calls is to BLOCK the number on your phone. It works for me.
Outrageous and equally bizarre – very sad to read the response from your friend Kalikala ~ almost sounds like the stories we have heard about offshore bandits in Nigeria… I am so sorry for your friend’s’ substantial loss.
Look for an uptick in such scams after the new “adminsitration” gets into ffice – no one will be watching that henhouse after January 20th.
I never answer a number I don’t recognize and I have a system on my cel called Robocall. I pay a small monthy fee and am never bothered by bandits anymore…
Aloha Makahiki Hou Kakou!