Chocolte Starfich Inc

The past occasionally shows up to bother us in the present.

screen shot of a scammer’s text

I got the above text today, June 15, 2026. The context is that back in the 2005 - 2018 time frame, when Rachel from Cardholder Services was making life miserable for anyone with a cellphone, I would answer as many calls as I could. After 2013, I would often give my name as “Edward Snowden”. If the caller was from “google” and wanted to list my business in search results, I would give “Chocolate Starfish, Incorporated” as the business name. I only had one scammer hang up on me because of Chocolate Starfish. Apparently that’s not a well-known term outside of North America.

I believe the last time I bothered to jerk a phone spammer around was the summer of 2019, 7 years ago. I don’t recall what the call was about or anything, but that’s the last possible date I gave my name as Edward Snowden, and my business as Chocolate Starfish, Inc. We can learn two things from today’s text:

  1. Scammers keep information forever, and maybe sell or trade it to other scammers.
  2. Scammers don’t bother to clean their information. Both “chocolte” and “starfich” are obvious misspellings, and Edward Snowden is an obvious pseudonym.