Over the period of 2 weeks several men with foreign accents called claiming to work for the Federal Government handing out "social" grants to people who qualified. Apparently I qualified, and thus the phone call. After talking to these guys they told me all i had to do was register over the phone and I would recieve the paperwork in days.
This immediately threw up a red flag for me. Being the poor college student I am I know how rigorous a task it is to get a grant from the government. They do not just simple contact you, it entails a lengthy process and can be quite stressful. But humoring them I continued the conversation as I began to look them up on the internet.
I asked to speak to a supervisor and conveniently one was standing just a few feet away. After an impressive couple tapps on the phone keys to imitate a phone transfer a man picked up the phone and continued the same conversation that the previous guy had tried to futily to progress. They funny thing was that the guy who was talking in the background of the other conversation was still babbling through the whole "phone transfer" to the other office. Man that guy either gets around or is really loud, annoying none the less. I asked the man his name and he replied Jack. I asked him if it was possible to see something in writting before I made any commitments and he merely replied my information was due the next day so it would not be possible until I finished signing up. After asking the guy if his name "was Steven, right?" He assured me that it was and then I was impressed that he immediately jumped right into the registration speach. But what was even more impressive was that these foreigners where so willing to change there names from Shadu Mikar Laddin to simple american names that we could easily pronounce and unfortunately never trace. What can we do besides ship them home? I don't know but i sure don't want to send them back to where they came from our boys over seas are having enough trouble just staying alive over there, they don't need the added stress of phone fraud and fake government grants to haunt them at night and clog their only free phone time.
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