Slashdot Mirror
Telephone Scammers Ordered To Pay $50M
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission said a group of telephone scammers will pay out nearly $50 million to settle charges they deceived over a million people in a bank information fraud scheme. As is unfortunately the situation in many of these case, the $50 million restitution, while substantial, is dwarfed by the almost $172 million the FTC says Suntasia Marketing bilked out of its victims." The company used "negative option" programs, including memberships in discount buyer's and travel clubs, to keep dinging victims' bank accounts. The FTC said the eight interrelated companies running the scam employed more than 1,000 people.
Negative options is a situation where unless you elect or explicity tell the company not to charge you for or enroll you in their services, they take it as a "yes" and continue to bill the costs. The sneaky bit here is that people were enrolled in "free-tial" programs and then tricked into revealing their back account information. When they failed to explicitly say no at the end of the free-trial period, *bam* the scammers started billing.
In the US items sent via mail like this are legally considered gifts. Attempts to charge for them after the fact can be prosecuted as mail fraud.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Here's the one I got messed up in.
The bride tells me we need new curtains for the living room. We surf, and shop, and surf, and shop and end up at JCPenny. I use my debit card and the bride got new curtains.
JCPenny turns around my info to a subsidiary called Stonebridge, and I get spammed for insurance, and other stuff. Other stuff like a bullshit 'membership' which somehow I failed to opt-out of that charges my card $10/mo. Well, 3 months later I finally get that charge removed, with large amounts of swearing on the phone (hey, if 2 months of 'nice' phone calls won't work, break out the profanity).
I still recieve Stonebridge insurance scams in my snail-mail, after months and months of calling them and asking (yep ... more swearing too, although unsuccessful so far).
Never do business with JCPenny as they appear to have other instances, and multiple ways to rip you off.