Mar 15, 2016
Prerecord call to cell phone on DNC. Wanted to help me reduce/forgive my student loan debt. Made up some numbers and (surprise!) I qualified for the program. All they needed was my username/password at studentaid.ed.gov so they could review my student loan information. They weren't from the government, but claimed to be working for the government for this program. Tried to get to a "loan consultant", but they wouldn't transfer me until I gave them my user/pass to verify my account. Having gotten these calls before, I knew they guy would check to see if it worked, and obviously I'm not going to him a real one, or sign up fraudulently for a joke account on a gov web site. So he eventually hung up on me.
I've emailed a couple of Federal agenecies, including DOE on this scam, hoping they'd put a "Warning: Fraud" alert on their web site about this sort of thing, but none of the responses seemed to indicate any care, or "it's not our [dept]'s job, it's the [dept]'s job". At least the FTC cares a little bit.
Did manage to keep the scammer on the phone for about 16 minutes, though.