A call was forwarded to me at work by our customer services department from a caller asking to speak to the manager of one of my subordinates (let's refer to her as Joan) who I learned later had received a similar call from this person. The person calling spoke with a heavy Pakistani/Indian accent who identified himself as Henry Williams and demanded to know if I was Joan's manager. I acknowledged that Joan worked in the department I managed and asked how I could assist the caller. He stated that she had defrauded his company and he wanted to know what I was going to do about it. I told him I had no responsibility for her activities outside of work.
At this point he started to yell at me about her being my responsibility and so forth. I asked him again just who he was and for whom did he work. He said he was an investigator and he was working on a fraud case. I asked him again about his employer because he seemed to be presenting himself as a law enforcement officer. I asked him directly if he worked for a police department and with great agitation he communicated that he didn’t but that he worked for a fraud investigation company and that Joan had defrauded his company of a lot of money. No amount was ever provided.
I tried to refer him to our human resources manager but he would not have any part of that and repeated that since I was Joan’s manager that I was responsible for this debt. I finally told him I felt he was threatening me and trying to extort money from me. I was going to terminate the call and call the police. He really started ranting at that point and asked multiple times with a tone of incredulity if I was going to report this matter to the police and each time I said I was. He asked me if I wanted their number and I said “yes, if it wasn’t too much trouble”. He then asked if I was sure I wanted to do that and implied with a threatening tone that to do so was not a good idea.
At that point I hung up and directly called the non-emergency number for our municipal police department and filed a report. The number that registered for the caller in my caller ID was 571.403.5102. When I attempted to call it to speak to someone in authority at the company I reached a recording indicating the number was not in service. I then reported the matter to our human resources manager who in turn discussed the matter with our corporate attorney. As a result of this experience, our customer services reps will be trained on screening calls for those of this type of matter.
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