America Law Cash Advance / "Law Firm" Scam Tampa, Florida

I was one of the lucky recipients of these scammer's calls today.

This is a "company" that has been playing this game for several years now.  They go by "US Cash Advance" (an actual store located in Kentucky that has had their name hijacked by the scammers), "Cash Advance USA" and "Instant Cash USA" among others.

The phone calls begin abusive and threatening, and go downhill from there.  Threats of jail time, being able to put holds on your bank accounts, stopping paychecks or government pensions and so on.  They are vile, nasty, and incredibly rude - and that's when you pretend to play along with them.  They call people's bosses and claim that the person has committed wire fraud, check fraud, among other illegal acts - I don't know if anyone has been fired over this but it needs to stop.  Now.

Some people have had the scammers threaten to come and perform unspeakable acts upon their mothers (While pretending to be a law office.  A law office threatens to "f" your mother?  And then the scammers proceed to give the mother's home address!).  Fortunately, as far as anyone can tell, they are not located in the US, cannot make good on any of their threats, and can only get what they frighten out of their victims.  They phone little old ladies to tell them that their children owe money and will be put in jail unless the mothers pay up, usually by going to WalMart and sending money through a prepaid credit card.

I got a phonecall from the fake "US Cash Advance" myself at 8:30 am this morning, they knew a frightening amount of personal information about me.  Fortunately I have never in my life taken a cash advance, so I knew it was a scam, and was hung up on when I started laughing at the threats.  Still it really creeped me out, with what they knew about me!

So what did I spend the day doing?  I filed a report with the local police precinct (not really a "crime" report, since they got no money).  I called my bank.  I contacted Equifax (https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoFraud_Online/jsp/fraudAlert.jsp - Equifax will contact the other 2 large credit-monitoring bureaus for you) and had a 90-day "Fraud Alert" put onto my name so that if they try to apply for credit with my information, I would be notified.

Then I filed an online report with the FBI here: https://complaint.ic3.gov/ctf.aspx
and contacted the FTC here: https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=en or at 1-877-382-4357

Also called the office of the State Attorney General (I live in WA, but yours should be easy to find online also).  The BBB will not be able to track them as the scammers never give out any form of address.

I have no credit cards or I would have called them as well.

Even though they have not taken your money, PLEASE file complaints because it allows the Feds to see the scope of the scam - for every granny they swindle, how many people put up with these jokers phoning their homes, jobs, relatives, friends (not kidding, I wish I were - they even threaten the FRIENDS with jail time if the non-existent debt is not paid!)?

The best part is when they call you back, you can tell them that you have contacted the cops, FTC, and FBI.  They have quit calling me, I can't imagine why *looks innocent*....  

Yes it is a pain, yes it takes time.  But if they were not having some success in their vulgar and horrid terrify the poor-and-helpless-into-sending-us-money-scheme, they would have given it up already.  Obviously it is working on somebody, I don't know how many complaints it will take to get them seriously investigated, but the more the better.

The FTC says to ignore them and they will go away - that has NOT been many people's experience, they just get nastier and call all day, calling your boss, calling your mother, your neighbours and so on.  Reporting them, then phoning them back and TELLING them that you reported their scam, seems to have done the trick.  I hope.  

I will update if they keep harassing me, but I seem to have made them realise I am not a target.  Unfortunately that means they have gone on to some other person who may not know straightoff that it is a complete scam....

They're frauds, pay them nothing.