I live in a U.S. Territory, an island called Saipan, waaayyy in the northeastern part of the world. My name is Ciara, and I am currently 17 years old.
Just this morning (several hours ago), a woman phoned our house. My grandma answered the call. The woman told my grandma that she was eligible to receive $12,500 from a government grant office in Florida.
I don't exactly remember what else she said about it, but she went on and gave her name (Sidney Miller) and her id# (112053) to sound convincing. My grandma was so excited by this. I was curious and yet somewhat suspicious, so I took the phone from my grandma to make sure. (And besides, I was afraid my grandma would say the wrong thing because she could not speak English very well.)
I spoke to Ms. Miller, who sounded pretty convincing at first, but I still had an uneasy feeling. But then I told myself: "Hey, what do I know? I'm only 17..." So I continued to discuss with Ms. Miller about processing stuff and transactions. When she finally asked for an account number, I immediately felt that something WAS up.
"Who asked for account numbers over the phone?" I thought to myself. My grandma poked me and then told me to give Ms. Miller my MOTHER'S account number. I hesitated, then felt slightly rattled, because my grandma kept insisting on giving away ALL of our personal information.
Of course, I didn't want to.
I looked at my mother's bank card in my hand and thought of all the money she had in that account. Then I whispered to my grandmother, "Grandma, give me another card number. I think this call MIGHT be fake..." My grandma looked confused, but she gave me another card anyway, which held less than twenty dollars in it.
Then I gave Ms. Sidney Miller the card number. She didn't really ask for anything else except for our home address.in the territory we live in, we only have Post Office boxes, so I gave her our P.O. Box instead. Then she informed me that they will be mailing something to us and we should expect it to arrive within 7 days.
I said okay.
Ms. Miller then had me record my information (my grandma's name, box address, and bank account#) on a voice machine. At the very end of the recording, the voice machine gave me my own "customer account number". I thought this was a tad bit strange. My uneasy feeling strengthened, but I chose to ignore it.
Further on, I was given the company's name, address, and customer service number. Here's what they gave me:
Advantage America
Government Grant Office
2431 Aloma Avenue Suite 158
Winter Park FL 32792
1-866-503-7345
Finally, after all the information had been exchanged, Ms. Miller politely bid us a good day and told us that she will get back in touch with us soon.
And that was that.
I went to school. And my grandma later on called up her son in Missippi, becaue she thought about what I said about the call being fake. She told my uncle all about the call and the callers, and you know what? He got mad at her. My uncle promptly told granny to go to the bank and cancel the account she had given away because the people that phoned us were FRAUDS. So my grandma rushed to the bank to close her account.
Later, I decided to go on the Internet to double-check on this "Advantage America" crap and lo-and-behold I found this site! ^_^ All the files I've read on "Advantage America" really describe exactly how the call we had this morning had gone: We were offered $12,500, $500 in shopping certificates, we were told we needed to pay $49.95 for a processing fee, and yadda yadda yadda.
And that was it.
Thank God I wasn't too drowsy this morning to think about WHICH credit cards were okay to use. Thank God for my wicked senses and cool ability to smell trouble and avoid getting too deep into it. Heh. THANK GOD, THANK GOD, THANK GOD! If I had gone to school a tad bit earlier this morning, my grandma—in her crazy old-lady mind—WOULD HAVE given away my mom's account number and would have lost us MOST of our hard-earned money.
I don't think I can ever picture myself begging for food on the side of streets! Ugh.
So now here I am, writing to help warn America, help warn the WORLD, of "Advantage America" and all its evilness. EVIL! Please, people, BE AWARE! A REAL government agency would have its agency number ACTUALLY SHOW UP on your caller id, no matter which part of America it's located. If it only says "UNKNOWN" (like mine did), do not, I repeat, DO NOT release any important information.
And that's a wrap, folks.
Ciara
Saipan
Northern Mariana Islands
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