The 818 Now

A fraudulent — known as smishing — text message from “California Credit Union.”

This morning I received a fraudulent — known as smishing — text message from “California Credit Union.” 

The real California Credit Union, which has a branch at 701 N. Brand Blvd. in Glendale, warned of smishing attempts by scammers on its website: “CCU is not sending text messages to members or non-members,” the website said. “CCU will never send a text message, e-mail or call you directly asking for any account or personal information.” 

The text contained a warning about my credit union service and instructed that I call the 248-number sent with the text. 

A robotic-sounding voice answered instructing me to enter my credit card number — I dialed a fake number.

The voice proceeded to tell me that the call would be monitored or recorded for “quality assurance.” Twice more, the recording asked for my credit card information, and I again entered a fake number. 

I’ve since called the number again, and was greeted with, “This mailbox is full, and cannot accept new messages at this time.”

Several postings on 800notes.com, a Web forum dedicated to people’s complaints about annoying calls from mystery phone numbers, said that in the time it took to write this post, five people had received the same text.

Like me, three people claim to be Glendale residents and use Sprint as their cell phone service provider.