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It's unfortunately too easy to spoof phone numbers. And with the way telephony works, the recipient's carrier will never know if the originating call actually came from the actual number or from somewhere else. There are a ton of VoIP carriers out there that allow their clients to customize the caller ID number without any sort of enforcement on who the custom number belongs to. Most big carriers let their customers use a custom caller ID only if the phone number they're impersonating belongs to them. It's useful for businesses with multiple offices, so outgoing calls will always say the same phone number to simplify callback from their customers. I remember one time I was setting up an Asterisk phone system for my parents. It was the first time I played with that sort of thing, and I wasn't quite sure what settings to put where. Then I accidentally discovered a mistake when I called my cell phone and saw a caller id of just the number 1. Who knew that would have worked. I fixed it and now the caller ID says the right phone number, whether they are using the main account or the backup account. I was thinking about playing some fun tricks on my friends now that I know how to spoof caller IDs, but I decided against it as it is a federal crime, even though I know I would never get caught.

As an aside, when I moved to Texas, I never got my cell phone number changed. That way, I know that if I get a phone call from some random number in my old area code, it must be an unwanted call, in which case I just hang up. Also, lately T-Mobile has started warning their customers if an incoming call is legitimate call by using the CNAME "Scam Likely" if the phone number doesn't come back with a listed name. That's kind of a bonus.