Fraud Activity - Looking for Help/Info...PLEASE READ
Hey Fellow Geekers,
I have got a serious question that I'm hoping someone WAYYYY smarter than me can shed some light on. I'll try to be brief:
About a month ago, I was having issues with my Hero. After spending a week of troubleshooting w/ the help of Sprint Tech Support over the phone, it was determined that my phone was malfunctioning and that it was faulty hardware. I was sent a refurb and sent the defective one back in the Sprint supplied envelope. I tracked the package on their website and it arrived safely and was logged in as such.
About a week after that, my wife's Touch Pro wasn't holding a charge, so I took it over to the local Sprint repair location and asked them to take a look at it. They stated that the battery was fine, but would order me another one because I stated it just wasn't holding a charge. They weren't able to order a battery, but were instead able to offer a refurb Touch Pro 2 (we have insurance on both phones, BTW). I accepted and two days later, we made the swap.
I don't remember the exact dates of the exchanges, but it was in late March/early April (I believe right around Opening Day for MLB).
Then, on April 10th and 11th, I started received odd international phone calls and my phone was acting strange. Two of the callers left messages in foreign languages. I kept the messages on my phone because I thought it was rather odd, but never really thought much of it. I received a few more calls from the same number and programmed it into my phone so I could check the option under the contact to "Send all calls directly to voicemail" so as not to be bothered by obvious wrong numbers. A few days later, my wife received an odd international call at 6am. This was the only call of that nature. Naturally, we thought nothing of it after the fact.
Fast forward to today. My wife calls me at work and asks if I changed something in our calling plan, because she's been unable to call her brother in San Diego (long distance call) and was unable to call a friend long distance last week. I advised her to call Sprint Tech, because something appeared wrong with her phone.
I get a call back from my wife 10 minutes later, explaining to me that Sprint Tech advised her that our numbers (both mine and hers) had been flagged beginning on April 10th for suspected fraudulent activity. Apparently, someone had made $1300 worth of international phone calls between our numbers and an automatic long distance call restriction was placed on our numbers. Neither my wife nor I were ever notified of the restriction, or the suspected fraudulent activity. Had my wife not tried to call long distance, we would have never known.
I called Sprint Customer Service (as their Fraud department is closed until Monday) and they were amazed that nobody had notified us of the restriction. They were also unable to shed any light as to how this could have happened or WHY we were never notified. The customer service rep than asked if I knew a particular man they had listed in as calling in about the account (albeit, calling about a different number....I have NO idea what that's about), and I had not.
I am fairly concerned over this, as I can't get any information as to how this could have happened, or if any more of my information is vulnerable.
For instance, is there a possible scenario where whoever is responsible for the calls could get my SS#? How about access to my phone's contents? I have no idea how a phone gets cloned, what that involves, or what accesses someone could get by doing that, so I'm' hoping someone here, either a tech savvy person, a Sprint Rep or someone who has experience with this (not the actual cloning, but a victim or fraud). Is cloning the only way that these calls could have been made? Is it a mere coincidence that after owning a cell phone for over 10 years and being with Sprint for 6, I am a victim of fraud not more than 2 weeks after swapping out 2 defective phones? Could someone at Sprint have used the ESNs from the defective devices?
Again, I am sorry to be so long winded, but I am truly concerned about this and anyone who can shed some light and provide any possible information would really help me out.
TIA
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