Hi, Pamela,
Notifying BBB or the local police would be an extremely great idea except for
one proverbial "fly in the ointment": The ubiquitous practice of that damnable
number spoofing. For one thing, I believe that number spoofing makes the "DO
NOT CALL" lists virtually WORTHLESS because there is no way to capture the REAL
PHONE NUMBER of these callers. Occasionally, you might get a true phone number
for the caller; but when I have Googled several of these suspicious callers, I
have found that a whole branch of an exchange (i.ei, (701) 238-****, covering
9,999 possible numbers) is listed as scam, suspicious, or the like.
One day when I received a call from a guy who became very nasty and used the
F-word when I wouldn't tell him my age, I googled his number and found it to
belong to a woman in a small town not far from our home. That call was to me a
"wake-up call" against calling any number found for one of these calls since I
could very easily be blaming an innocent person for calling me. As another
"wake-up reminder" we had a call one day while Debbie was on the phone with a
friend, and our Caller ID said the call was from our own number. That call was
obviously from a spoofed number, since you wouldn't call your own number.
Debbie and our friend both laughed at that Caller ID report.
I wish that phone companies would take action to eliminate all number spoofing
so that a caller would have to either have his number shown on Caller ID or
else come in as a "number unknown" so that a person could easily choose to
ignore all "number unknown" calls if desired. I am already moving more firmly
in the direction of ignoring all calls that report "toll-free call" or "out of
area" calls. Such calls are almost always junk ads or scams. How often have
you answered a call and heard something like "This is your final call...."
THEY ARE LIARS - ALL OF THEM! Since they can't tell the truth on that
statement (they keep calling), those callers can't be trusted for anything!!!
Yes, I know I am pessimistic about reporting to BBB, the police, FTC, or other
agency, but that's the way I see the situation these days. We simply have NO
IDEA who is placing most of these calls. Sadly, I have heard on our local news
about persons in our area being scammed out of much of their savings by these
thieves. It's sad indeed that at least one of them somehow found our Optacon
list; but we can render them ineffective by refusing to click on any of their
messages or send them any money or personal information.
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Pamela Drake
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2020 2:31 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages
David and all,
I would also suggest that anyone receiving such phone calls take a moment to
notify your local Better Business Bureau and even the police if you believe it
would be helpful. Yes indeed, scams are out there everywhere! The BBB has a
page on their site <bbb.org> which they call scam Trackers. You can report and
find a lot of scamms, nationally and locally.
On Jul 25, 2020, at 10:34 AM, David Plumlee <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I also want to warn all listers about a telephone-based scam which has come
twice to our house on two different phone calls. On one call, a fellow said
that he was offering me a grant of $80,000 which I could use for anything I
want, tax free, coming from something he called a reinvestment and recovery
act. I knew that nobody, especially the U.S. Government, is out there to give
me EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS with no strings attached! I recorded the
information he gave me on how to apply for the grant.
When I discussed the call with Debbie, she agreed that there has to be a "hook"
somewhere by which the scammer would get money from us while providing us
nothing; or maybe the scam was to get us involved with some crooks stealing
government money. We stayed out of it!
A few days ago, I received a call from a woman supposedly offering me a grant
of $15,000. Having already discussed this kind of scam with Debbie, I told the
woman on the phone that nobody is out there to give us that amount of money and
that we are not interested. I then immediately hung up the phone. More than
likely, the phone numbers from both of the callers were spoofed and therefore
untraceable. The calls probably came from someone overseas. I haven't yet
figured out how the scamming group was going to get money while they were
giving money to me with no requirement that I pay any kind of fee to get it;
but I'm sure there is a "hook" somewhere in those deals, and our best approach
was to leave both of them alone!
I take time on this list to tell of these scams because I wouldn't want any of
us to think, if we got such a call, that we could apply for a grant in order to
provide funds for research and development of a new Optacon. Most of us are in
no position to get scammed out of our own limited funds, and it is sad indeed
that scammers have apparently discovered this list and sent some fake messages,
perhaps "feelers" to see if anyone will offer to advance some money "down the
rat hole." I also share the opinion that we cannot expect a new Optacon
anytime soon - and maybe not at all. If I understand "the way the wind blows"
these days, education of young blind children has moved so far into recordings
and computerized speech that nobody will seriously look at the device which has
been so helpful to us.
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Carolyn
Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2020 9:19 AM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages
That was why in my post, I said that $10,000 was a lot to an individual, but
not to a foundation or the like, and not much money for R&D.
-----Original Message-----
From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Noel Runyan
Sent: Friday, July 24, 2020 6:31 PM
To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [optacon-l] Re: Fake Messages
Catherine and listers,
I will start by echoing a strong warning about getting your hopes up for a new
Optacon 3 product anytime soon, and I encourage you to be extremely suspicious
about anyone asking for money to fund new Optacon research.
With that said, I hasten to point out that Charles Pond's recent messages to
this list were not asking for money, although he did state that he needed
$10,000 to $13,000 in order to finish his new Optacon display development.
Clearly, that relatively small sum of funding would not come anywhere near the
many hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to develop the rest of an Optacon
3 device, assuming the tactile display development portion was successful and
working well.
I also encourage us all to be extremely careful when making and sharing
assumptions or suspicions about the poor health or death of individuals.
Does anyone on this list have any actual proof that Charles Pond is truly
deceased, or do we only have unsupported assumptions and irresponsible gossip?
In two of his recent posts to this Optacon list, Charles Pond mentioned being
his brother and writing for Charles.
These appeared to me to be the kind of ill advised humor one might expect from
someone who has been falsely proclaimed to be deceased.
In the last several months, I have had two direct Email exchanges with Charles,
and they both were very consistent with his former writing style and technical
issues. He mentioned Halbach magnetic arrays, a technical term for a special
kind of magnet I told him about several years ago.
I am sure that a poser would not have known to use such a unique technical
reference in Optacon discussions with me.
Certainly, I am comfortably convinced that Charles Pond, the one we've heard
from in the past, is still alive and has recovered enough from his severe
health problems to be able to continue some discussions about Optacon tactile
displays.
However, I am also convinced that we have not had independent observation of
and confirmation of any working prototypes of Charles's Optacon 3 tactile array
devices, something that causes most experts in the field to have serious doubts
about its performance and viability.
To be taken seriously by researchers in the tactile display field, Charles Pond
will need to be more open and willing to share details of his design concepts
and any prototypes.
Sincerely,
Noel
-
Noel H. Runyan
Phone: 1-408-866-7564
Email: Noel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-
At 11:35 PM 7/23/2020, Catherine Thomas wrote:
I think someone is having a joke at the list's expense. Idoubt vey
seriously that the messages are authentically from Charles.The english
is wrong, the writing style does not match and the tone iswrong. If
anyone receives any private requests for funds claiming tobe from
Charles, just delete them. This is only my opinion based onyears of reading Charles'
messages.----------
Catherine
------------------------------------------------------
-Catherine Thomas
braille@xxxxxxxxx /
-----------------------------------------------------------
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