January's emerging phone scam trends are based on calls tracked in the Pindrop honeypot, which Dewey claimed has collected as many as 285,000 phone numbers.

Pindrop has been tracking thousands of robocalls since 2014, which originated from numbers that are no longer directly tied to a consumer or business.

Other popular phone scams were inspired by news headlines, while others took advantage of consumer confusion about finance and law. In addition, phone scammers increasingly targeted small business owners in addition to consumers, Pindrop found.

"We see a great deal of innovation among the attackers and a lot of cooperation among them," Dewey said, adding phone scams lead to a complicated set of problems for even the largest financial services organizations to solve, let alone smaller financial institutions such as credit unions.

Matt Anthony, Pindrop's vice president of marketing, pointed out the firm learned of one phone scam from a credit union, in which fraudsters bought unused phone numbers similar to those belonging to legitimate financial institutions. Then, each time a consumer mistakenly dialed one of those numbers, fraudsters presented themselves as representatives of the institution with the goal of mining information.

The scam works in reverse too – fraudsters have placed calls using registered numbers similar to those belonging to financial institutions in order to look legitimate.

Dewer also warned that caller ID is completely untrustworthy, and noted while people have become suspicious of certain types of email, they seem to be more trusting of phone numbers.

"It is just as easy to spoof a phone number as an email address," he said.

Here are the top five phone scams in circulation today:

1. Google Listings

This first appeared in 2015 and has grown exponentially since. Pindrop counted eight different variations of these robocalls, with callers promising front-page Google placement and others vowing to assist with Google Plus profiles or to help optimize web pages for Google SEO. Other versions of this call came from phony Bing and Yahoo representatives. Fraudsters used high-pressure sales tactics to get victims to provide their credit card information to pay for taxes or other add-on charges.

When Pindrop Labs researchers analyzed a sample of 563 recordings of this scam call to different phone numbers, they discovered the majority of the calls could be traced back to just 75 fraudsters.

2. Health Insurance

There are four main variations of this scam, which tricks consumers by promising cheaper health insurance or assistance with Obamacare enrollment. The scam often incorporates popular news items, and preys on consumer confusion around health insurance and upcoming tax deadlines. Scammers collect sensitive personal data from their victims, which they then utilize to commit identity theft.

3. Free Cruise

This scam, which lures consumers in with promises of a free dream vacation, peaked in 2014 but has remained popular. Fraudsters use high-pressure sales tactics to get victims to give them their credit card information for incidentals.  

4. Home Security Systems

This was the second most popular scam in 2014, and while it's slowed down, it's still in circulation. Fraudsters offer a free security system including a pricey, long-term system-monitoring contract and administrative fees. Pindrop Labs researchers analyzed a sample of 110 recordings of this scam call to different phone numbers, and discovered the majority of them could be traced to just 13 callers.

5. MasterCard Settlement Scam

This scam preyed on confusion around recent MasterCard settlement news. Callers attempt to collect banking and other personal information from victims, which they can then use to commit identity theft.