Scam Type
Phishing Scam
Date Reported
2023-04-24 00:00:00
Victim Postal Code
33013
Total Dollars Lost
0
Scam Description
On April 19, 2023, I received a scam phone call from +1 571-272-1000 (one of the USPTO Contact Center phone numbers). The purpose of the call was to “make a personal verification from USPTO in regard to my recent USPTO Trademark application”. After talking about this matter for several minutes and providing me with some information about my Trademark application, the scammer specified that, as part of the process, I had to pay a $225 fee to keep my application alive for the next 6m and asked me to provide a payment method. After stating that he did not have access to the card info that I had in the system “because he was calling from a different department of USPTO and this was a complete over-the-phone process “, I provided my credit card info for this payment. A Confirmatory e-mail was supposed to be sent after the call.
Since the confirmatory e-mail never arrived, I called USPTO the following day to double check, and the USPTO customer service person confirmed there was no issue with my application, and no call was made from them, so, we realized it was a scam call. No payment was completed on my card since after I noticed it was a scam, I let my bank know about the incident.
