I was contacted twice via telephone, followed by a letter. The letter stated that CAMCO had "acquired" an old Citibank debt of mine from 1993 with a balance of $1,722. When I called and spoke with Marcia, I was told that "with interest and penalties that debt had now grown to $2,321.54".
I asked for the Social SEcurity number that was associated with the debt and they gave me my Social number. When I told her that I had never been contacted by anyone about this debt, which was acquired before my divorce, she offered to settle the debt for $1,033.34 and asked if it was too much for me to pay.
When I said "yes", she passed me to her supervisor Mr. White. He offered to settle the debt for $500 via WEstern Union on my credit card or a post-dated check, information given over the phone with my bank routing number. That distressed me greatly. What also distressed me was the fact that Mr. White said "I can see you have a credit card with a balance of $%, a car payment to Mitsubishi, a mortgage with %... He knew a great deal of information about me.
When I questioned how he knew about me and the "urgency" around my paying money to a company that I had never heard of before and just now been notified about, he assured me that he "had been doing this for 15 years and it was not a job it was a profession". He also said that he "was a good Christian".
The clincher came when I stated my repeated uncomfortability and asked about CAMCO's website where I could verify that they do what they say they do. He said that he was too busy to receive emails. I repeated my question about the company website. He siad that he really couldn't answer any questions about the website, as he had not looked at it in some time.
It was at that point that I knew that what "my gut instinct" had been telling me for the 30 minutes that this whole thing transpired was true - this was a scam of some sort. I intend to contact any and all agencies that regulate this sort of thing to ensure this does NOT happen to someone else!!
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