Umbrella Recovery Team / Preferred Customer Corp. Fraudulent phone contract for magazine subscriptions La Quinta California

 On Feb. 14, 2014, I received a call from a man named Jacob who represents the Umbrella Recovery Team. He told me that a company named Family Readers Club had turned over a claim to them saying that I had entered into a phone contract on 07/05/2012 with them to receive 5 magazines for a total of 60 months.

They camed that I had given them my VISA credit card number and that they had collected two installments of 49.95 in the months of July and August of 2012 and then defaulted.

They claim that I owe them a total of $1,148.85. I never heard of these people or this company and I did not enter into no contract for 5 magazines. I don't even read magazines.

I told him that I need to see something in writing so he wanted my address and I asked what address he had on file and it was an address that had not been valid for sometime and knowing that this was a scam I gave him my email address to send a document with the claim.

The next day I received an email of a form letter not an official document stating that I entered an agreement on 07/05/12 and was to pay $49.95 for 24 months totaling $1,198.80 and I would receive 5 magazine titles for 60 months with no record of cancellation. The first payment of $49.95 was made by phone using: VISA XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX.

They proceeded to say that their client had given their office the opportunity to extend a one-time settlement of $599.95. If payment is not received 30 days from the date of this letter that they will be forced to report the remaining balance of $1,148.85 as a delinquen debt.

In fine print at the bottom of this emailed form letter it said:

Please make all check or money orders payabe to: UMBRELLA RECOVERY. *Unless this account or any portion thereof is disputed within thirty days from the receipt of your original notice, we will assume this debt to be valid. If you dispute this debt or any portion thereof within this thirty day time period we will furnish at your written request, a verification of this debt, or the name and address of the original creditor. This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information abtined will be used for that purpose.

There are so many things wrong with this claim beginning with the VISA number of 16 digits. They only supplied me with a beginning digit and the last 4 digit. I never have had a 16 digit VISA card number ending in those 4 numbers and I can prove it. It was a 9 digit number with those last 4 digits and it was a VISA PrePaid Debit card linked to my bank. My statements for that time period show no $49.95 payments to anyone.

How do I proceed with this?