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Telephony Fraudster Gets Lifetime Ban from Telecom Business
coondoggie passed us another NetworkWorld link, this one discussing the banning of a shady telecom tycoon convicted for 'cramming'. "The owner of three companies that billed more than $30 million in bogus collect call charges, an activity known as cramming, to millions of consumers throughout the country, has been banned forever from all billing on local telephone bills. Willoughby Farr agreed to the lifetime ban as part of a federal court order settling Federal Trade Commission charges that he directed a massive unauthorized billing scam for more than two and a half years. The settlement contains a monetary judgment of $34,547,140, which will be partially satisfied by Farr's transfer to the Commission of all but $7,500 of his frozen assets, the FTC said."
So what's it cost to set up a 419-scam workshop in a west African country these days? About $7000?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
The settlement contains a monetary judgment of $34,547,140, which will be partially satisfied by Farr's transfer to the Commission of all but $7,500 of his frozen assets, the FTC said.
He billed about $30M in false charges... and it seems like that money is being used to pay the fine.
Please, someone tell me I am wrong.
So, lets see... If i smoke a joint in some states i go to jail. If i bilk millions of people out of tens of millions of dollars i get.... probation, and a fine.
This is so bs, asswipe(s) should be thrown in jail. Sounds like someone's back got scratched.
What a great "call" on the judge's part.
It was even "collect."
Classic.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Why are all but $7,000 of his assets being seized? I'd take everything he had, including his underwear.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Why isn't this money being refunded to the consumer? When I read stories like this, and the ones where the FCC levies fines for unacceptable practices I see the consumers that were affected getting screwed. I may be missing something here, but I AM ANGRY!!
Does claiming to be Detective John Kimble count as fraud?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
The "Local telephone bill" as an entity probably won't around in another 10 or 20 years.
Either he's turned a new leaf or he's hasn't. If he has, the ban is moot. If he hasn't, he'll find another way to be a crook.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I mean, the man's nearly destitute now. How's he supposed to start up a different set of fraud companies with just $7,500?
What's the world coming to?
Can someone tell me why it's even legal to put these charges on the phone bill? On more than one occasion I've had to deal with services being crammed this way, and I don't even think it was from this guy, the service that billed me was not mentioned in TFA. Why should we allow this sleaze to continue? Does anyone know of a way to opt out of this, similar to declining long distance and 1-900 calls on your phone?
When someone commits theft on this level, why not kill him? In some states we have "three strikes, you're out" laws, with a lifetime in jail for the third crime. This guy committed literally millions of crimes. To keep things in proportion, he should be killed. That's presuming he's guilty beyond reasonable doubt, of course.
Now, you could say the "three strikes" thing is three convictions, not three crimes. But there's nothing to stop the prosecutors from prosecuting each crime singly. Get to the third conviction, jail him for life; get to the Xth, kill him. Simple. Fair. Proportional.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I know lots of human beings, including me, that have at one time or another worked crappy jobs with no more then $20 in the bank at the end of the month.
So can this scumbag. For the rest of his life. Losing most of his paltry check to garnishment every pay period. Hopefully he can find a nice refrigerator box to live in for all I care.
Let him suck it up. He's lucky he's not in 'pound him in the ass prison'. He would be if I were in charge. The prisoners families get financially raped every time they make a collect call out. They'd love this pig fucker on the yard.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You mean to tell me that there are authorized billing scams ? I get it, that must be my monthly cellphone bill.
What he got was fine for the crime. Basically fines of all the money, not allowed to work in the industry.
Punishment fits the crime, and taxes don't go into keeping him in prison.
The problem is that smoking a joint laws are too tough.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
fraud companies are cheep to set up.
No legal paper work, leases on equipment based on the credit of your new sham company.
A motivated could set up a phone scheme fraud for nothing, not pay any of the bills, and make a lot of money in a month and then disappear.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So when I kick down your door and wave a pistol in your face but walk away with only money, "all I took was money"? And I get off with just a fine?
I think the pass that's given to white collar crooks in the U.S. is just sad; all it does is promote the bullshit technical legalism that passes for morality as well as furthering the business philosophy that technical manipulation of markets and the financial system is the same as real business, let alone industry.
Now can we go after the scumbags that charge eight bucks a minute for collect calls without warning about it?
You mean to tell me that there are authorized billing scams ? I get it, that must be my monthly cellphone bill.
Monthly phone bill, period. It's not like the Telcos manage their landline billing practices any more honestly than the cell phone companies do. Hell, a few years ago I moved, and had SBC come out to hook up my new lines. I got a bill for $350 for "installation" (after having been promised a thirty dollar charge.) According to SBC, the technician spent almost a whole day "wiring" my house. Which is ridiculous, since the place was wired in 1971 when it was built. In actual fact, he spent about fifteen minutes in the house, did a crappy job (ever heard of punch down wiring, dimbulb? Wire nuts? I'm sorry, but bare wires twisted together in midair is not acceptable), got the lines backward, and had ring-and-tip reversed on both so I couldn't dial out. SBC refused to credit me because "we have to go by what the technician said." Fuckers. I went out and bought a punchdown block and did it myself the right way, after spending three hundred and fifty bucks to have them not do it.
Bloodsucking leeches, all of them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You should have threatened to sue and sic the FCC on them. The FCC loves to crawl up telcos' asses looking for places to attach a fine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This dude has both those things available to him.
Why on earth would we let him keep any of his stolen money.
Do we let bank robbers keep just a little to 'get on their feet' as well?
Fuck him!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Taking all the stolen money back is not a wrong. No matter how much you say it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I did ... they didn't seem to care. "Go ahead, make my day" was the attitude I got from SBC's people. The government does have QOS standards in place for the RBOCs, and they can get fined for failing to meet them. As I understand it, the Telcos find it cheaper to just pay the fines and continue to do business as usual.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I have no desire to carry that mental image any further, but its hard for FCC or anyone else to crawl up telco's arses looking for places to attach a fine simply because there is so much stinky traffic going the opposite direction all the time.
Lets see, he had employees?
He directed them to commit a crime?
He committed that crime how many times?
Sounds like a RICO charge should be filed, but then again this is the FTC not the justice system.
You see FTC is administrative, not judicial, they just think they are.
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
"I don't know any doctor who's gonna say to you, "oh, you're not feelin so great? Here, just smoke this joint, yeah, yeah, that'll make you feel better.""
You may want to unbury your head from the sand. Those exact words have been said to thousands of terminal cancer patients (marijuana has positive effects for treating the side effects of chemo/radiation treatments - a powerful anti-nausea, and also an appetite stimulant, as well as gentle non-opiate based pain killers) and also AIDS patients on drugs that have nausea/loss of appetite side effects. Your statement is most telling in that you first state you don't agree to the "culture" part of marijuana. People like you are against something, so in your mind nothing positive can ever come of it, no matter what the facts say. Great attitude. So do you drink alcohol or smoke tobacco? Do you have a problem with them being legal? Because those two drugs kill and do far more harm than marijuana ever could. Your "shoehorn" theory is also full of holes. Can you please cite somewhere that marijuana has been legalized only to be followed by "cocaine, LSD, and heroin" also being legalized? No, real nice. Before you write off any uses for marijuana, do yourself a favor and do a little independent research of your own before just copping the stupid bumper sticker slogans of the anti-drug crowd. Your statement about marijuana being "poison" is also inaccurate, as there is no such thing as a lethal dose of marijuana, and there has never been a death attributed solely to marijuana use. Remember - just because you personally don't agree with something doesn't automatically invalidate facts.
"One MORE thing: anyone wanna tell me why I gotta type in letters from picture that has a jagged line in it? What's a "script"?
In case you really want to know and aren't just continuing your trolling, it is called a "captcha" and it is to verify that you are indeed a real human being (in a loose sense of the word) and not a computer generated "script" to do things such as post crappy advertisements, or fill up genuine discussions with goatse/minicity, or other asinine posts.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I'm not quite willing to say that what they do adds up to a murder, I'm not some golem that can stand to compute that sort of thing, but it is despicable. It's little bits of evil that end up hurting the world.
Not really sure what to say. GOOD WORK MY MAN.
It just ain't the way we do things in a civilized country. Three strikes and your out that way? My god man I couldhave you on the chair in an hour. Just observe you in traffic I am sure you commit more then three violations on a single trip, it is almost impossible not too.
The legal system ain't perfect, a sure sign of it is that there are so many different systems.
The difference between for instance the dutch system and the US is that the dutch system doesn't have consecutive sentences. For instance in a rather horrid case a man abducted and raped a young girl then ran her over with his van and left her to die. Sadly under the dutch system he ONLY has to serve ONE sentence, the highest one. In the US he would have to serve sentences for each part of the crime.
Both systems have their reasons, the US one obviously to make sure really nasty criminals get what they deserve, the dutch to prevent people whose crime just happens to have a long list of offences don't serve a dis propotionate amount of time. Say that both countries give the same jail sentence. Rape gets you 3 years. Now say that stealing gets you one, resisting arrest gets you one, dealing in stolen goods gets you one, not carrying ID gets you another. In the US a person who steals a pair of pants, sells them, hits a police officer when arrested and doesn't have his ID on him would serve 4 years, while a rapist only serves 3.
Offcourse the dutch system has the earlier mentioned real case where a person who kills someone over a drug deal gets the same sentence as a child rapist.
To be fair, the dutch system has REAL life sentences, you don't get out until you die or are pardoned by the crown (these sentences are rare) and we also got something that got Amnesty Internation knickers in a twist. TBS. It is given to the criminally insane and means you serve your sentence and then have to under go treatment until cured, a sentence without limit. In the US this would be very much against the law, you have to be given finite sentences, this is part of the UN human rights it is one if the reasons hollandis on the list of human rights abusers.
Neither system is however perfect, you partially claim that a person should serve a sentence for each crime he commited not the package as a whole. By your logic if I expose myself to someone in their own home I should get a lesser sentence then if I did it on the street and I would fry if I did it on public tv. Does this take into account that a person being flashed in their own home would be far more frightened then someone seeing my willy on TV?
The US three strikes and your are out system sees pot smokers serve life while child rapists are out in a couple of years. Yes it was introduced for a good reason, to stop career criminals who just kept re-offending. In the netherlands revolving door criminals are a big problem, young people who know and accept that they will get tiny sentences and just keep offending again and again because the individual sentences are too light.
Oh and by your logic, if I steal the live savings of two people I would walk, but if I steal a penny from a hundred I would fry?
Simply put, his crime ain't all that serious, so what if a lot of people lost some money, the overall impact of his crime isn't that serious. Courts wisely regonize that part of the decision on how to punish someone is how much impact it has on society. It is for this reason that you had that story how geman prosecutors would no longer spend time on amateur copyright infringement because its impact on society was not worth it.
You do realize that your suggestion would make the RIAA very happy, all they need to claim is that you made available to the entire world and you would get the chair.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://www.seebs.net/log/archives/000237.html
Hundreds of comments on that one. Gives you a pretty good picture of the nature and scope of the operation.
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