Florida Patients Receive Spam, Scam Calls on Hospital Room Phones

Chest pains sent Nikki Leman, 84, to the hospital in April. Her daughter Leanne Depa said the phone in her mother’s hospital room at St. Joseph’s South in Riverview started ringing the next day. Depa responded, thinking it was someone from inside the hospital. But she told ABC Action News the call came from a robo-dialer talking “about Florida having a death benefit, or something like that.” Depa hung up. But 20 minutes later the phone rang again. This time the caller was talking about health insurance. She said automated dialing began the next day.