r/Scams • u/Afterhoneymoon • 17h ago
Scam report Morphine scam likely
Hi, so this hit home because I legitimately am on morphine so I believed them, but after searching Reddit, someone got the exact same call. An Indian woman calling from a Sacramento number said she was from the department of public health and that someone had filled a *forged* morphine prescription under my name in Washington DC and she was calling to see if it was me and that they would be pursuing criminal charges, but that it's good to know it was not me and she would transfer me to her manager and that's when I got really suspicious and I told them if this was a real issue the police can call me because someone posted in this form the exact same story so unless both of us were scammed by the same person, it seems unlikely that multiple people have their identities being used to fill a morphine prescription in Washington DC but the weird thing is I get morphine once a month so it really freaked me out...
This is in California just like the other person who posted about the opioid abuse scam.
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u/me4watch 17h ago
Caller ID does not work. Period. Never believe what it tells you.
Stop answering calls from non-contact numbers. They can leave a voicemail if they are authentic. Then you find an actual number by looking at the actual website and dialing it yourself.
Good for you realizing it was a scam. The next step that they would use would be to create a sense of urgency that they would try to capitalize on. A good approach is procrastination. Very few things started by unknown persons are urgent. Be lazy and slow especially when it comes to money or threats by weirdos.
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u/Afterhoneymoon 17h ago
I've been applying for food stamps and stuff and when the state or county calls, they are very stingy about ever being able to be contacted back again. They will like leave a message and for a week I'll try to get a hold of them and then they say I missed my appointment (an appointment that they send you a notification only about via snail mail and I usually get a day or two after I missed the appointment lol) or whatever so I've been nervous nervously answering all calls in hopes that someone's responding about my food stamps for me and the kids, but you're right about caller ID not ever being accurate.
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u/MidtownMoi 17h ago
You explain exactly why you and others cannot just ignore any unknown numbers. Would be nice to have no medical, financial, family, friend, legal or educational issues which generate calls from unknown numbers but many people cannot afford to just wait for someone to leave a message, and need to answer the phone..
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u/me4watch 17h ago
I’m sorry things are so unfairly difficult for you.
Avoiding scams has a cost in that you can indeed miss important calls. It recently happened to me when my bank tried reaching me about a payment I had made. I called them back but it took a while to be transferred to the right department and by then they had rejected the payment as fraudulent. I even asked them to leave a note that I would be remaking the same payment to the same company the next day, but it triggered the same alert and the same call. This time I answered.
I blame the telecoms for not implementing secure Caller ID, just as I blame google for letting scammers buy ads with misleading website names. They should be liable for the losses caused by scammers using these loopholes.
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u/Western_End_2223 15h ago
There are protocols for secure caller ID, but they rely on trusting other phone companies. If Joe's Telecomm says that it has verified that the call is from a particular number, Verizon has to accept that when the call is handed off to it.
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u/me4watch 11h ago edited 11h ago
I was thinking of an improved system over the current one. Perhaps a public key private key encryption would work. If we approached it as a liability issue things would likely improve. There have been enough cases of people losing their life savings because of imposter scams that you would think something would be done to address this core issue.
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u/63crabby 17h ago
"Stop answering calls from non-contact numbers." EXACTLY! Since I've started doing this, I've not been bothered by any spam or scams calls.
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u/Icherishthat 17h ago
Sounds like a database got hacked. Wonder if you fill from same pharmacy database
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u/CitizenTed 14h ago
"Gotcha. So someone used my name in a forged script in DC. Sounds like a job for my attorney. Please give me your contact info and he'll get back to you."
...and we're done.
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u/90210piece 17h ago
Why would filling a prescription be a legal issue?
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u/Afterhoneymoon 17h ago
Sorry, I was in an adrenaline rush. They said that my identification was used to fill a forged prescription for morphine in Washington DC. When I'm in the SF Bay Area. BUT the ironic thing that hopefully was just a coincidence and not that somebody has my medical records I actually do get a prescription for morphine and the other person that got this call was about to get surgery and painkilling drugs...
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u/carolineecouture 16h ago
They may have picked morphine because it's a controlled substance and it seems extra scary.
All that said the call made no sense in the slightest. If the police want you they will come and get you and not give you a head's up.
Good luck.
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u/90210piece 17h ago
I hope it was a coincidence but there certainly could have been a breech that is helping to facilitate the scam.
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u/BackItUpWithLinks 17h ago
It would be a legal issue if someone else was trying to get morphine in OP’s name
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u/trahnse 17h ago
Narcotic scripts can be tracked (idk if they can track across states though) If someone is filling narc Rxs under your info, your legit Rx could be denied because they can see "you" already filled another Rx recently. I'm not sure if there's more to the scam, but a person could really screw over the patient that needs the meds by doing this.
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u/90210piece 17h ago
There is no national database but walgreens or CVS would have multi-state info.
Thenoerson who has the legitimate prescription wouldn't have any legal liability yod a criminal was filling prescriptions in their name.
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