Fraudsters using robocalls to scam seniors have started targeting them with fake Medicare calls. In January, 36 million of these scam calls were reported. Medicare recipients should not divulge private information to any other than their Medicare providers. “doctor, pharmacist, hospital, health insurer, or other trusted healthcare provider.”
Business Insider reported that seniors are often receiving unanswered phone calls from scam artists pretending to be representatives of Medicare. In January 2023, over 36 million Medicare-robocalls were made to US telephone lines. The true number may be higher. These calls aim to steal the victim’s identity and rack up charges to Medicare as part of a larger scheme to defraud taxpayers and the federal government.
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Aaron Foss is the founder and CEO of Nomorobo. Nomorobo offers a premium service which screens calls to prevent users being spooked. Nomorobo boasts a large collection of 350,000. “honeypot”You may also set up fake telephone lines to send spam calls. These honeypots provide valuable insight into how robocalling scams work and what you can do to prevent them. Despite low response rates, these schemes can be cost-effective and effective. In an attempt to reach a tiny percentage of people uninformed, companies call millions upon millions of phones. Typically they target the elderly.
These scams are difficult to stop because call spoofing is a common problem in phone spam. Con artists can alter the origin of calls to make it appear that they were calling from a different number. It has been recommended that beneficiaries not divulge Medicare numbers to anyone except their Medicare administrator. “doctor, pharmacist, hospital, health insurer, or other trusted healthcare provider.” according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
When caller ID was first made available, AT&T was the only provider with a system that allowed users to enter anything as their caller identification. The government later deregulated telecom, which reduced caller ID’s utility and allowed con artists to make use of the system.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced STIR/SHAKEN protocols to combat spoofed calls in 2021. This reduces the overall number of robocalls by checking a user’s caller ID. Scammers are still able to forge numbers and have begun to target. “bigger”Scams such as Medicare fraud or bank fraud can bring in huge amounts of money.
Federal Communications Commission orders that gateway providers utilize a “reasonable Do Not Originate”The DNO (Deadline Not Observed) List is a list of telephone numbers used only for inbound calls. This helps to stop some scams. This list is allowed by telecom companies to combat spam calls. The provider can use this list to drop calls with caller IDs from numbers listed on the DNO registry.
The easiest way to prevent Medicare fraud is to add the 1-800-MEDICARE number to the DNO Registry. Scammers would not be able to use this number to make fraudulent claims about Medicare. “Nobody should be able to make calls from there,” Foss said. “These criminal organizations have just had free roam of the phone network and that’s why we have this problem, so we at least have to put some speed bumps. We at least have to make their job more difficult. DNOing 1-800-Medicare is very simple, very straightforward, and should be should have been done a while back.”
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Breitbart News reporter Lucas Nolan covers issues related to free speech, online censorship and other topics. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan
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