I've had the same cellphone number for... 14 years, now?
Lately, I've been getting the occasional call asking for some random other person. Sometimes it's an obvious "call some random number, ask for some random name, then try the 'well, maybe you'd like this offer'" scam. Sometimes, maybe the random other person gave out a random phone number, which happened to be mine. And yesterday morning?
I was driving, so I took the call on my speakerphone, which doesn't have the best sound quality - and the car isn't the quietest environment around. The caller was asking for someone who clearly wasn't me, but I couldn't make out the name. The caller eventually asked, "Do you know her at all?", to which I said no.
Then the paranoia hit. The name had roughly the right number of syllables and general shape of phonemes to be someone I knew slightly, a decade ago.
Suppose that was a Fed on the phone? Maybe there's some investigation involving her, and for some reason my phone number turned up in connection with it? Now I'm on record as denying that I know her, and maybe a search of her old emails would reveal otherwise.
Mind you, I think an actual recording of the phone conversation would establish that I couldn't hear clearly and didn't know who the caller was talking about, but an Official Fed Transcript, maybe not.
The False Statements law is a scary thing.
But, then: I consulted my call log, found the number, and did a search. Not much information, other than that it appears to be a cell number, and it's been reported as a scammer at least once. So, probably not a Fed.
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