This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Sugar House resident Mary Beth Jarvis Clark expected to have a few voice messages on her cell phone when she returned home Sunday from a trip to southern Utah.
But 19? That was ridiculous.
It was also just the beginning of a major headache for Clark. By Monday afternoon, she had received 75 calls - all mistakenly directed to her cell-phone number by what appears to be a typographical error in a mortgage-fraud scam.
"I just hope it stops and that I don't have to change my [cell-phone] number," said Clark. "I have young children who have it memorized and other contacts, so I'd prefer not to change it unless it's a last resort."
It may come to that, said Francine Giani, director of the state Division of Consumer Protection.
"I'm not sure she has any recourse other than changing her number," said Giani, adding that she was eager to look into the sequence of events that flooded Clark's phone with calls.
Clark's problem arose after an unknown number of people received fraudulent letters in the mail indicating the rates of their mortgages, originally taken out at one of several banks (including Zions First National Bank, Wells Fargo and Wachovia), will be changing and that "a payment increase will occur" if the recipients did not call a number with the prefix 877-361.
The letter, signed by an individual identifying himself as "Rob Smith, loan servicing department," offered an incentive - act now and "you may now qualify to skip next month's payments."
But people who dialed the 877-361 number somehow found their calls routed to Clark's cell phone, which does not resemble the 877-361 number in any way.
She even asked two of the callers what number they were calling, tried the number herself, "and it made my cell phone ring."
Clark filed a complaint with the Salt Lake City Police Department, but said she was told there was little the police could do at this point.
She also called her service provider, T-Mobile. But Clark said she was told that changing her cell-phone number was about her only option because the listed 877 number was an invalid, unregistered toll-free number.
A T-Mobile spokeswoman, who declined to give her name, later told The Salt Lake Tribune that Clark's case "will be elevated to an executive customer-care team so they can help her get to the bottom of this. They know the ins and outs of everything, so they may be able to give her some answers."