How can you discern african american voices on a phone?

If you had agreed to money, they’d have probably asked for your checking account number, and social security number, and credit card numbers, and a whole lot of other personal information so they could “deposit the money directly into your account”.  Barring that, they’d have asked for some earnest money from you to show that you are serious about the changes.  Sounds like the Westboro Baptist Church of Nigeria.

Those guys are lawsuit happy, so unless they threatened to take you to court, it probably wasn’t from the real thing

I’m assuming they got my number via my DNS record for SEB. I’ve said before it’s not too hard to track it down on the Net.

Again, not sure what the intent of the call was, but if you guys hear me on some morning radio DJ’s prank call segment then at least you’ll know why.

It does sound like some kind of prank or attempted scam.  Personally, I would have deflected the entire thing by requesting they call back when I had the time to deal with their complaints in depth.  I would have blocked out an entire afternoon for them.  In the meantime, I would have gotten the address of their church and the name of the one who was talking to me.  With that info, you can tell if they are (or are trying to make you believe) that they are the nasty Westboro and not one of the others.

And of course if they don’t call you back, then you know they were kidding or that their ‘problem’ isn’t really that important.

Les, this sound to me like somebody was checking out you and SEB. Seeing, if you would compromise your opinions for money.

And our survey said, “SEB is not for sale”.

WHY?
..because Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church don’t give a rats about their public image.

..and a Prank? To qoute Cenk Uygur from “The Young Turks”, “It’s weak sauce”.

Interesting. You sure it wasn’t Landover Baptist Church?

You lucky dog! I’d be happy to have those Westboro clowns call me. I could have a real good time with them. Maybe I need to post something on my blog to draw them in.

There are a few lawyers in that Phelps family, which leads me to believe if they thought they had a case against your postings, they would make it. They’re not afraid of litigation. The fact that they’re trying to entice you to remove the postings makes me think they know they don’t have a leg to stand on.

(Unless you make some defamatory statements or infringe on some of their intellectual property, they don’t have any legal claim. It’s protected speech.)

That said, be careful what you say to them on the phone. I’d hate to see them twist things around into something they might feel like pursuing.

My guess is that they are trying to “whitewash” their online image by reaching out to you. I wouldn’t be surprised if those callers were some third-party hired to contact owners of sites critical of WBC.

How were they going to pay you? It could be a ruse to get your bank info or other personal ID? Other than that, sounds like either a prank or some other Westboro Baptist. How did they get your phone number? I’m posting via iPhone at the moment and can’t do a whois easily, is your phone in your DNS record?

So I told them that if the church were to distance themselves from Phelps that I’d be more than happy to make that fact known and modify my entries to mention that they were attempting to disassociate with him, but it would depend on what they did to disavow him.

As AngryArcheologist said most of the church are his decendants. So that isn’t likely.

Be carefull – this guy is a real jerk (yeah you obviously know that already) and is very quick to sue people who he sees as a threat. He’d stoop to picketing your home and place of work or flooding your office with faxes.

Very strange indeed.  I wouldn’t discount the press release yet…this maybe something that has to be hashed out first if they are going to distance themselves and they may have to speak with others of a like mind of their congregation and that may take time. 

Interesting.