When scammers verify that your number is legitimate, they will often sell the number to others, or even start spoofing your number so it looks like you are calling other people.

When that happened to the woman in this story, she kept getting calls from people who were getting spammed by her number, so she told them to call the police on it so the phone companies would be pressured to fix it.

This only happened after people called her back yelling to stop calling their numbers, even though she wasn’t the spammer.

Dealing with Scam Calls – PLEASE Call the Cops On Me

So, this happened a year or two ago (2018/2019), on my home phone number.

SPAM calls are very annoying.

Like most of us with a land line (cheaper than TV/Internet in my northeast US region, don’t judge) I was getting a TON of spam calls.

All about my car warranty (which I never had/purchased), my wife’s student loans (who never went to college), IRS collections, energy sales, etc. – you name it they called.

It is best to just ignore these calls.

Well, we decided to start picking up and harassing the scammers – BIG MISTAKE. They don’t take you off their call lists, instead they start to spoof your number so that YOUR NUMBER shows on caller ID for everyone they call.

It got so bad that we changed our VM from ‘Hi, you’ve reached the [OP’s last name], please leave a message!” to “If you received a call from us and don’t recognize our number, it is a scam. Please report this to local police, as we have reported it to our police and nothing has changed. Scammers are taking us all, and nothing will change if we ignore the calls”

Wow, this is really crazy.

YES, it was that bad. We were receiving 10+ voicemails per day, most threatening ‘STOP F’ING CALLING’, ‘GO F A [insert racial slur animal here]’, ‘I’M CALLING THE POLICE’, etc.

We turned off our ringer, disconnected our phone so only our fax machine/printer picked up and hoped for the best to no avail, thus I started the IDWHL approach:

This makes sense, hopefully it helps.

I had a few calls that I picked up during this timeframe, and the IDWHL calls were surprisingly wholesome. A typical call transcript (paraphrased, of course) is below:

[Phone rings]

Me: Hello?

Caller: STOP ******* CALLING ME!!

At least they will know what is happening.

Me: Hey, I know this isn’t what you expect, but I think you have been had by scam calls. They are spoofing my number to call you, and I’ve reported it to my local police.

I made the mistake of answering and trying to give them a hard time, so now they spoof my number to call others and punish me.

You can Google it and verify my story, just don’t answer their calls no matter what you do. Please also call your local police and report my number and the calls so we can get these calls to stop.

Wow, she is really sharing lots of information with them.

My name is [OP’s first name] and I live in [town, state]. I am just as sick of these calls as you are. PLEASE REPORT MY NUMBER TO YOUR POLICE. Maybe then there will be some legislature or pressure on the phone companies to stop this nonsense.

Caller: Oh, hey, sorry, I just get so many of these calls and I’m frustrated beyond belief. Sorry to bother you. [except for Karens, but the rest of the conversation on my part remained the same]

Getting everyone to complain is important.

Me: Seriously, report my number to the police and BLOCK IT – we have no prior business, and let your phone company know as well. I am with [phone provider] and the only way they will make changes is if we all complain enough so they HAVE to deal with it.

I am happy to speak with local police about the issue, and just for the record I do not want ANY information from you. Let’s deal with this guerilla style.

That’s good that people were understanding.

Conversations from that point typically ended with apologies and mutual understanding, or promises to call the police and report my number, to which I always reiterated ‘please do – this is how we make the world a better place’ or some similar sentiment.

Maybe not the most extreme IDWHL, but I hope you enjoyed the read. I am happy to answer questions, and will provide any insight or clarification requested.

Hey, if it helps to slow down the scammers at all, it is a good thing.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

No, most people just have cell numbers now days.

These spam calls can be dangerous.

Here’s a good idea.

Yup, just ignore them.

Well this is interesting.

Spam calls are so annoying.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.