Sounds like it could be part of some sort of spear-phishing or other social engineering. If I was going to phone up people I didn't know and lie to them to get

Sounds like it could be part of some sort of spear-phishing or other social engineering. If I was going to phone up people I didn't know and lie to them to get them to tell me privileged information, I'd definitely pretend to be from a real company, and I'd choose one that would have a real reason to be contacting them. The fact that they were only looking for peoples names and numbers points towards this even more tbh. Working their way up the chain of command and all that. Let the police know in any event, so you have a trail of deniability if things turn nasty at a later date. Or they could just be dodgy recruiters. Greyhat recruiting is pretty much social engineering anyway.