Is it illegal to answer a phone call with a deliberately wrong name?

Depends on what wrong name or information you give. Impersonating official government representatives is illegal. Impersonating someone with the intent to steal and/or do other serious harm to them is illegal.

But just saying you’re someone else, or going along with a scammer’s scam to waste their time, or pretending you’re interested in a telemarketer’s sales pitch to waste their time, is not.

So don’t identify yourself as police or FBI.

BUT you can take a page from many shady telemarketers, and just use some invented term that sounds official but is not. “Fraud Department” or “Spam Hotline” or “Spam Busters – they spam you, we sue them” of no named organization, is fine, as long as you don’t then try to defraud them (i.e. don’t tell them you need them to pay you a fine).

I find though that many times, even sales people who seemed to have been from an actual company, will hang up if I ask them almost any question that is off their script.

It’s your phone number. You can answer it however you want. I typically don’t answer spam/potential spam calls either. I have answered other numbers but I don’t give my name, just a “hello”. I’ve had the caller then start asking who I am and I start the game. “Who were you calling?”

I had one guy the other day calling me saying he was a detective at a town about 30 minutes away, telling me that there was a warrant out for my arrest from the county for some b.s. reason. His call kept cutting out so I hung up. He called right back and started cutting out so I hung up again. He then called my wife. By this time I had already filled her in so she started playing 20 questions with him. Meanwhile I called the PD he claimed to be from and told them what was going on. They told me it was a scam, that this same guy had been impersonating this detective for a while. I asked to speak to the detective and they told me he had just left minutes before. They crank caller finally got hung up on by my wife and decided to try me again. I answered the phone, he identified himself and I immediately asked him “What time did you leave work today?” He repeated who he was and I asked the same thing again. He asked if I heard what he had said and I said yes I did and asked if he heard what I asked. He started getting frustrated and then threatened me telling me the apprehension squad was getting sent to take me in. He then quickly hung up. That was a couple weeks ago and I still haven’t seen that squad.

The point is you are under no obligation to be particularly nice or honest with anyone, especially unsolicited phone calls. You don’t have to be nasty, but you don’t have to give them anything. As far as answering as saying you are a police department, if it is a crime it is a very minor one. When I was a kid the popular answer was “County Morgue. You stab ‘em we slab ‘em.”

I seem to recall you asking this question or a very similar one before. I can’t remember how long ago. Maybe a year?

You are free to answer however you wish.