My husband almost fell victim to one of these scams. She called my husband in regards to a Southwestern Bell bill that was over 800 dollars, said she would settle for 300. My husband stated you will need to talk to my wife..knowing that something sounded fishy, she continued to call him, but he would be too busy to talk to her, and would ask her to call back during the evening, after a month, I finally got to speak to that LITTLE $W#%@#$... She got an immediate attitude with me, I asked her about the account, asked when the account was turned over to her? What the original amount was? From When? The original telephone #on the account, she played off that my husband stated that it could have been from his past, but when she finally found information, it was nowhere that my husband had ever lived, the scary thing is that she had all his previous addresses, all of the phone numbers that I had had at my house that wasn't even through Southwestern Bell and before my husband and I married... When she finally gave me a phone number, it was a phone # in Minnesota..Quite a bit aways from TEXAS!!!! I told her that I would take it up with SWB which had not been a company in over 10 years...So the debt was not valid anyways,.. I finally told her that if she wanted me to consider paying the damn thing, then she needed to prove that it was valid debt...I asked her to send proof so she did reluntantly and when it came in the mail, it showed that the account was paid and balance was $0.00........SO What did we learn HERE!!!! ALWAYS ASK FOR PROOF of DEBT!!!!