A phone number is not hard to find online if the target individual has kept the same number for several years. There are dozens of so called people search sites

A phone number is not hard to find online if the target individual has kept the same number for several years. There are dozens of so called people search sites setup by data brokers. You can start a search just based on a name and then narrow down by the address you have. Pay about $10-20 or less if doing bulk searches and most of these sites will reveal a lot of information about a person. I tried it on myself couple of years ago and it listed every phone number I had since college. (25 years ago). Including landlines. Not to mention names of close and extended family members, their names , ages, address etc. What I'm curious about is how the scammer knew that the author was a Verizon subscriber and not a subscriber with ATT or T-Mobile or one of the dozen or so MVNOs.