LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – It is something you are probably annoyed with every day: spam calls. Most of us simply ignore them but one local retiree who has lived in Vegas for almost four decades has turned those calls into a hobby in hopes of one day getting them to stop.
“Sometimes I’ll get a call 5:00 in the morning… I used to talk to them, try to deal with them, plead with them,” explained Gayle Patrick. The retiree will now not pick up any call unless she’s sure she knows who is on the other line but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know who is calling.
“This is every phone call that has ever come by date time, exact time, what shows on my Caller ID, and then I write the number down,” Patrick shared showing a spiral notebook to FOX5’s Kim Passoth. Since April 4th, 2024, Patrick has been documenting every call to her home phone.
“There’s 24 to 25 calls per page. I’m now on page 32,” Patrick reported. In her “Spam and Robocall” log, there are now 767 call/ entries, 252 of them marked as personal, but 515 of them are spam. The retiree says though logging the calls has become a hobby she is passionate about, it doesn’t mean they are still not annoying and disruptive.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m futzing around the house or I’m in the backyard. You know, I hear the phone. I go run to it to it…to make sure that it’s not something important. You have to look,” Patrick contended.
“You know the ones that get me and irritate me the most is when they use actual company names,” Patrick stated. Patrick recounted one call came up on her Caller ID came up as the Nevada Treasurer’s Office. Scammers are even now leaving messages like this one:
“Our computer shows that you have some back taxes. I’m calling to inform you that you can now apply for them to be forgiven.”
Though Patrick is well aware it’s a scam, she worries about other seniors who don’t. “You know, it’s gotten really out of control…It’s got to stop somewhere,” Patrick argued. When Patrick hits a year of logging, she plans to submit her log to government officials or anyone who is interested in seeing it.
FOX5 reached out to the Nevada Attorney General’s office. We learned state law prohibits non-exempt telemarketers from calling Nevada consumers on the Nevada portion of the National Do Not Call Registry.
Here is a link to find out if you are on the Do Not Call Registry and to file a complaint:
Nevada Do Not Call Registry
The Nevada Attorney General’s Office also shared this information:
Fight Robo Calls
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