Wow, scammers are diversifying... from phishing to vishing....

Why am I not surprised that some of the payments were traced to Nigeria?

Many of the attacks bombard individuals with automated requests for personal data, in a variation of their email-scam cousins. But others are more vicious, flooding entire phone systems when demands are not met. “You can blast out 100 million calls from the comfort of your keyboard,” (Federal Trade Commission). [...] employees at the facilities were contacted by callers who said they were debt collectors seeking repayment of loans taken out by the workers. If the employees did not pay up, the callers threatened, the lines at the employees’ workplaces would be brought down. The attackers then overwhelmed the lines with repeated calls, causing busy signals for legitimate callers.

[Colorado Bureau of Investigation] traced payments from the victim in one such attack in Colorado to Nigeria via an intermediary in Florida.

These more traditional swindles, which ask individual recipients to provide personal or financial information, appear to be up sharply as well. Automatic dialing software and Internet phone services make it easy to place huge volumes of calls from anywhere in the world. Because making phone calls over the Internet is so inexpensive, the practice can be lucrative even if only a tiny percentage of the people provide information. Often, swindlers create messages in a synthesized voice and say they are from a financial institution. The call prompts the recipients to enter personal data through their phone keypads. Personal financial data obtained this way can be easily sold on the black market.