In recent days, thousands of Mexican citizens have reported a situation as strange as it is unsettling: phone calls from numbers with the +44 prefix, corresponding to the United Kingdom.
At first, they seemed like isolated errors, but a clear pattern was revealed, messages recorded in Spanish with supposed job offers, or calls that cut off after a single ring. The mystery quickly exploded on social media.
The calls seemingly offered international jobs, but in reality, they were phone scams known as the "wangiri" method. This is a technique already detected in other parts of the world, now adapted to the Mexican context.
How does the wangiri method work?
The Japanese term "wangiri" means "one ring and cut". This is how this scam operates:
the criminals briefly call from an international number, hang up, and wait for the victim, out of curiosity or suspicion, to call back.
By doing so, the user is connected to a line with high per-minute rates, even activating unauthorized subscriptions and incurring excessive charges on their bill.
In other variants of the same scam, the scammers speak directly with the victim, offering them fake job opportunities and asking them to add a WhatsApp number. They then begin to extract personal data or request money for fictitious procedures.
