Attention small business owners: The phone messages that announce “you’ve been approved for a small business loan” are nothing but a trap to steal your money and more.
The latest version of the loan scheme comes via a friendly sounding woman who goes by the name of Rachel.
You Mail Inc. CEO Alex Quilici told News 6 the trap is set when Rachel asks the consumer to pay fees before you get your newfound credit line.
“The basic idea of the scam is they’re going to get you to put in fees, your personal information, even your tax returns, in order to finish the final qualifications for the loan,”
Quilici said.
There are at least three versions of the robocall message, believed to be recorded by a professional voice actor.
Rachel sounds convincing but fails to mention what financial institution she represents.
“As far as I can tell," Quilici Toldtold News 6, “They are actually trying to target people with businesses.”
Quilici said a list is easy to develop by checking registration lists on GoDaddy, Whois or other domain registrar options.
Each recording follows a theme that announces you have been approved or preapproved for a $250,000 line of credit.
The messages can be disarming because they are very conversational -- much different from the standard robotic voice recordings that
consumers have received over the last decade.
Quilici’s company, YouMail, offers a system that blocks unwanted calls.
YouMail’s customers started reporting the new loan messages, and Quilici’s staff found Rachel was the top unwanted caller on the company’s complaint list.
“We really started seeing calls with exactly the same message," Quilici told News 6, “which is you’ve been preapproved for a loan. We started researching it and discovered it’s really the entry point to a scam.”
This link will provide a recording of the latest loan by phone scam: https://directory.youmail.com/directory/phone/8134731059