CAPE CORAL, Fla. — Although it has nothing to do with Halloween, ‘Ghost Numbers’ may be the scariest thing you hear of this fall.  

The owner of Mullins Memorial Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Cape Coral is one to attest to that. Over the last few months, he’s encountered the ‘ghost numbers’ three times.  

A ghost number is when someone, usually up to no good, spoofs a phone number while calling another number. 

“Ghost numbers are where someone will spoof the number that they’re calling from,” explained cyber security expert Dennis Underwood, the CEO of CyberCrucible. “Nowadays a phone number is just one more piece of data that’s being transmitted to and from the Telecommunications carrier.” 

In other words, for this case someone is calling people using the number belonging to Mullins Memorial, tricking the person on the other end of the line to pick up because they know who’s allegedly calling. However, when they answer, the person on the other line isn’t who they say they are. 

“To the consumer, it looks like they’re talking to the people they trust to care for their loved one,” said Shannon Mullins, owner of Mullins Memorial.  

At least three of his customers and even friends have received a simple phone call from his business and even Mullins’ cell phone. The most recent happened over the weekend.  

The crooks are using his number without him even knowing.  

“My friend Terry received a call from me and she’s like, ‘This isn’t Shannon, but this is Shannon’s number,’” Mullins explained. “What they’re doing during those calls is asking for the credit card information because we overcharged you. It’s fraud.” 

The act of placing a ‘Ghost Call’ is easier than you would think. There are many resources out there that even let you do it for free or a few dollars. In seconds, anyone in the world could be placing a spoof call.  

“It’s incredible how inexpensive these tools have gotten,” Underwood said.  

“Use my reputation to defraud a grieving family. To me, that’s pretty low,” Mullins added.  

How can you prevent one of these calls? The simple answer is: you can’t.  

The call is coming from a familiar number, often saved in your phone.  

What you can do is if you pick up and sense something fishy, hang up. Then reach back out to that person by phone, text or email to see if this was really them.  

“Call them back, send them an email, send them a text message,” Underwood said.  

Thankfully, that’s exactly what Mullins’ customers did — and not a single one of them fell for the scam.  

Click here to read more about Called ID Spoofing.