Jail phone scam targets Algonquin

It was 4:30 a.m. when the phone rang in the Rizzo household last week.

Karen Rizzo of Algonquin answered the first two calls, but hung up both times because she didn't understand the Spanish recording.

When she answered a third time, a voice on the other end said there had been a terrible accident in Chicago and that Rizzo was listed as an emergency contact.

The voice then told Rizzo to dial *72 and a Chicago-area phone number for information about her loved ones.

"A phone ringing at that time anyway is scary," Rizzo said. "I was sound asleep and then to hear that, that was creepy."

Rizzo was "scared to death," because she thought the accident involved one of her two sons who attend college elsewhere in the state.

But when she read "prison" on her phone's caller ID display, she figured something wasn't quite right.

So instead of dialing *72, she called the cops.

Rizzo very nearly became the victim of a scam originating from the Cook County jail, said Chris Filippini, a spokesman for the Algonquin police department.

The scheme involves inmates, posing as dispatchers or police, who dial random phone numbers and prey on people's emotions, hoping the person on the other end will call *72 plus their phone number, which the caller provides.

Sometimes there's a recording involved, Filippini said.

But when you dial *72 plus their phone number, you give the caller carte blanche to make calls from that phone at your expense, Filippini said.

"It's basically a call forwarding feature and that number is authorized to make calls billed to the residents' numbers," he said.

Because the calls appear to be random and are in both English and Spanish, there is no set group the callers are going after, he said.

"We don't know who they're targeting because we don't know what the dialer's thinking," he said.

So far, only two such incidents have been reported in Algonquin, Filippini said, one occurring last Tuesday and the other the next day.

Luckily, neither person fell for the ploy, he said.

Rizzo ended up getting a total of six phone calls that morning, all of which came from "prison," and made her feel "violated," she said.

And after calling local and state police, her next move was checking on her sons Mark and Steve.

"So I woke my kids up at 5 in the morning," said Rizzo, an office secretary at Perry Elementary School in Carpentersville. "Thank God they were OK."

Avoid the phone scam

Here are tips on how to avoid becoming part of this phone scam, which allows inmates to make phone calls at your expense.

• If someone on the other line says there's a family emergency wants you to dial *72 plus a phone number for more information, hang up and check on your family members instead.

• Don't dial *72 unless you know the people and want to pay for their phone calls.

• There's a number you can call to block your phone number from receiving these calls. But police urge you not to call unless you've actually been asked to dial *72. That number is (773) 890-7100. Ask for internal affairs.

• If you fall victim to the scheme, contact your phone company and file a report with the your local police. Be sure to save all documents and phone recordings related to the incident.

Source: Algonquin Police Department.