Regulators Smash Global Phone Tech Support Scam Operation

SternisheFan sends this excerpt from ZDNet: "Regulators from five countries joined together in an operation to crack down on a series of companies orchestrating one of the most widespread Internet scams of the decade. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other international regulatory authorities today said they shut down a global criminal network that bilked tens of thousands of consumers by pretending to be tech support providers. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, speaking during a press conference with a Microsoft executive and regulators from Australia and Canada, said 14 companies and 17 individuals were targeted in the investigation. In the course of the crackdown, U.S. authorities already have frozen $188,000 in assets, but Leibowitz said that would increase over time thanks to international efforts."

Comments

Heh, I remember them

[jawtheshark]

I got them on the phone once, and I let them loose on a VM. If I had a bit more time, I'm sure I could have had much more fun with them. I know someone who fell for it, and I asked them (the victim) one question: "Why in the world would Microsoft call you? They already have your money, they don't care from that point on." It baffles me totally that anyone would fall for it.

Re:Heh, I remember them

[Spottywot]

I've had them on the phone on more than occasion, the funniest time was was probably the third time they called, it was an asian sounding woman who told me my computer was sending them messages that it was infected. I asked which one as I have three, she said I could go to any one, anyway I humoured her to find out what the scam was. She took me to a remote access site (which in itself seemed perfectly legitimate), anyway at this point I'd seen enough and called her out as a scammer, her response made me laugh, 'Hey you!' She said, 'Stick the phone up your ass!' and then she hung up on me. Awesome customer service :) Glad they've been caught.

Re:Heh, I remember them

[r1348]

Stick the phone up your ass? I see you went for Premium Service...

Re:Heh, I remember them

[dwywit]

Ditto - I had an indian-sounding fellow that I took for a ride. I asked him which computer, as I have many, and he said all of them...., then I asked which which IP address, 'cos he sure didn't have the internal network address, again he said any of them...
 
I strung him along for about 5 minutes, and he got more and more upset, finally calling me a f#cking arsehole then hanging up.

Re:Heh, I remember them

[tehcyder]

My dear old mum got them once and had them on the phone for about an hour (she was bored).

They finally hung up when she told them she had made a mistake, and the screen she was looking at was not actually a computer monitor, just the TV.

A Horse of a Different Color

[CanHasDIY]

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other international regulatory authorities today said they shut down a global criminal network that bilked tens of thousands of consumers by pretending to be tech support providers.

... When asked if the FTC had any intention of going after the other international crime ring, responsible for bilking the world's population for trillions, the FTC officials simply replied, "Are you kidding? Those bank guys throw hella parties for us, why would we want to discourage that???"

Where were they getting the phone numbers?

[2phar]

I would like to hear more about how these guys got their phone number lists.. they seemed to have unlisted numbers together with correct names. In Ireland particularly, I only ever seemed to hear about this from people who were customers of a certain large ISP.

Re:Where were they getting the phone numbers?

[houghi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_dialing

Do you really think they care or take trying anything else?

It still amazes me that people here think that cyber criminals are some sort of super efficient people who want to try to have a hit each and every time.

People like this are like spammers. They are not interested in how many say no, as long as enough say yes. They will just start dialing and get as many as possible.

If they get many from a large ISP that is more likely because they are a large ISP and not anything else. People who are with the smaller ISPs are smart enough to just hang up.

Re:Where were they getting the phone numbers?

[Rudisaurus]

In Canada, anyway, they simply scooped the entire national DNC list and used that. Nice, eh? At least the FTC charged them with unfair and deceptive trade practices under the FTCA in addition to DNC list violations. The former probably has more teeth. Enforcement may be a bit more of a problem, however.

I got a couple calls from them...

[Vylen]

Which I found amusing at first, especially since I run a Mac ;)

The first time they called, I hung up immediately since I had better things to do. The second time, though, I got fairly annoyed at the guy who sounded like he was on the other side of the world in a shack somewhere. I wanted to probe him and ask questions - he claimed to be calling on behalf of my ISP, but did not disclose a name. He wouldn't answer any of my queries and kept on talking and talking - until silence and hung up.

And here I was planning on setting up a Virtual Machine and let them tinker with it to see what they did if they ever called me again - guess that ain't going to happen any more!

Re:I got a couple calls from them...

[Hognoxious]

Did you get a call later pushing Judy Garland DVDs, poodle grooming services or buttplugs?

Re:I got a couple calls from them...

[tehcyder]

They called here two nights ago. We're an Apple-only household, so I just said "I'm sorry, you have the wrong number and hung up."

You threw a double 6 and cast the Spell of Smugness. Congratulations.

Today

[AG the other]

They must have missed some. My aunt got a call this afternoon from them.

Re:Today

[lurker1997]

I just heard about this on the radio driving home. I am in Canada. Our equivalent of the FTC fined two companies, one 500K, one 18K. They also asked that the companies respect our do not cole registry from now on. My understanding is that in Canada at least, they can still call, just not if you chose to give your number to the DNC registry. Seems a bit light of a punishment.

Well, I'm glad to hear they're being dealt with.

[west]

Interestingly enough, when I smelled scam a year ago and asked for particulars (company name and address) I was given them! The company was a pronounced like Symantec but spelled differently. I Googled them after hanging up and found about 40 want ads from them looking for tech support people in India... Even the scammers use the internet to recruit.

I've received about 30 of these calls over the last year. The last time (yesterday) I lambasted the salesman for working for fraudsters, I was told "Well, don't blame me when your computer breaks down". *sigh*

What I want to know is how or why their credit card privileges weren't terminated a year ago.

Wait a second I never heard of this

[fustakrakich]

Are they saying Tech Support calls you?

This must be some kind of joke

Re:Wait a second I never heard of this

[mordred99]

To quote a typical slashdot meme ... "Must be Russia"

I assisted the AFP on one call

[Centurix]

They've rang us a number of times but the last time it came through with a caller ID, which was surprising. I've had a fair bit to do with VoIP here with Optus and I recognised that the number had a block ID which was reserved to Optus, so I used their block allocation lookup and found it allocated to a specific company with an ABN (Australian Business Number) and then rang my sales guy there to see what could be done to track them down. He was surprised and said he would pass it on to their internal scam monitoring department and within half and hour I received a call from them asking me about the call and asking if I would be prepared to talk to the Australian Federal Police, who then rang me 10 minutes after that and grilled me about the call too. Didn't hear anything more about it.

Re:I assisted the AFP on one call

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

...within half and hour I received a call from them asking me about the call and asking if I would be prepared to talk to the Australian Federal Police, who then rang me 10 minutes after that and grilled me about the call too.

Is anybody else bothered by the fact that this is the last post Centurix has ever made?

Re:I assisted the AFP on one call

[Macgrrl]

You joke, my husband used to do L2 corporate internet support and was on the phone to a customer on time when the police raided the premises - from memory he put it on speaker so the rest of his team could hear it.

Re:Well, I'm glad to hear they're being dealt with

[Wolfling1]

I've received two calls in the last week so I'm not sure how the USFTC can claim to have 'shut them down'.

My strategy these days is to ask them to hang on 'for just a minute' and then go and leave my phone under a cushion for 20 minutes. I figure that wasting their time is the most effective way to fight back.

Stubborn can beat them too

[EmperorOfCanada]

I helped a guy who got scammed by these guys but it turned out that he was so stubborn that he just wouldn't do what they wanted and just argued with them that they were wrong. So about all that got hurt was the home page on his browser.

Personally I just wasted their time and would thank them for calling and say my computer was acting up and all slow. I would tell them it was booting but to be patient as it would take a few minutes. Then I would say oh something says it installed something and I need to reboot again. I would do this over and over until they hung up. Didn't take my time as they were on speaker phone and I would only talk to them during compiles.

Also the phone conversational radio show Wiretap by CBC seemed to keep them on the line for a long while.

ESecurity FTC Scareware Story Link

[SternisheFan]

Link to ESecurity's scareware story... http://www.esecurityplanet.com/malware/ftc-wins-163-million-judgment-against-scareware-marketer.html

Re:Please Please Please

[SternisheFan]

Tell me it was that god damn MyFuckingCleanPC (a.k.a. MySlowPieceOfShitPC) company that got busted...

PULLEEEZZZZEE!

"The fake 'scareware' programs included WinFixer, WinAntiVirus, PopupGuard, WinFirewall, InternetAntiSpy, ComputerShield, PC SuperCharger and ErrorSafe," http://www.esecurityplanet.com/malware/ftc-wins-163-million-judgment-against-scareware-marketer.html

Recorded the conversation.

[Barryke]

They called me once, i recorded the conversation and trolled the guy. http://barrystaes.nl/scambait/

I always assumed they where in Indonesia and used compromised voip exit servers in their victims country..

Re:Well, I'm glad to hear they're being dealt with

[west]

Well, given the arrests, if I get another call, I'll be seriously attempted to answer something like..

Scammer: I'm calling from Microsoft and ....

Me: Wait a moment, its all over Google News in the last hour. They're raiding 23 workplaces all over India for you guys... Oh, right. Google India is probably blocking it until they're finished the raids... Wait... There, I've got it up here on my screen. OH MY GOD!

They've updated. The police have found bodies! OH MY GOD. Lots of bodies. Why? Why? Oh Jesus. [Reading] Police suspect the criminals decided to eliminate all witnesses who could testify against them. Oh My God. Jesus. 48 men and 6 women in 3 locations? Dear God, what sort of psychos are you working for? Look it up. Look it up on American Google, if you can get through.

Oh God. I'm so sorry. Oh God. This is crazy! They used machetes in one location! I'm so sorry. You don't deserve this. Nobody deserves this. I'm so sorry.

Click.

Actually, I don't think I'd have the guts to pull that off. But oh boy, am I tempted.

Re:A pic of the goatse guy when you need it

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have created a Vm with the goatse guy in the background and let him have and listen to his or her reaction upon seeing it. I would then go on claiming that was the last guy who called here. Want to be next?

Called me three times in 3 months

[hackertarget]

Yes I received calls, 3 in about 3 months, they did not stay on the phone long.

1st time - Caller: "You have a problem with your Microsoft Windows".
Me: "I run Linux"
Caller: Hangs up

2nd time - Caller: "You have a problem with your Computer".
Me: "How do you know which one, I have 6"
Caller: Hangs up

3rd time - Caller: "Your computer...."
Me: Hangs up

It is good they have been taken down, after working on helpdesks in the past I imagine many non-technical users would fall for a scam such as this.

Re:Another story on this (plus, a trick they pull)

[bmo]

That's legitimate software, as is Teamviewer, a related remote access and desktop sharing tool.

http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx

Remote tools like this are used every day by remote sysadmins. The scam was to get you to install it yourself so they could connect from their end, take your banking information, and clean out your accounts. It looks like the reason why they picked Amyy was because the license fee for "unlimited simultaneous connections" is relatively cheap ($99 for top tier) compared to Teamviewer's rather expensive license for unlimited connections - $1499.

And then through the remote tool, they would make your machine unbootable when everything was done. There have been people who have let these guys run loose in a VM to find nothing, only to watch them start disabling services and delete system files.

Teamviewer, Amyy, other remote access/desktop sharing tools are third parties to all of this and aren't part of the scam.

--
BMO

How did they pay?

[spud1955]

I assume that the people who were scammed had to pay via creditcard. Why didn't they just block that? Worked against wilileaks Sorry if this is a dumb question

I've had 4 calls from them in the last few days

[beanpoppa]

I tried to keep them on the phone, as keeping them busy is the worst thing you can do to annoy them. I spent the entire 45 min ride home from my daughter's gymnastics on with them yesterday. She was amused by the conversations. The funny thing is, I don't know how these guys can make any money. I spend much of my day working with people with Indian accents, and I'm pretty good at understanding them. But these guys are inaudible. I have a sense of what they are trying to tell me to do, and I still can't figure it out! "Press the 4-flagged windows key on the lower left quadrant of your keyboard". Forget about when the guy was trying to tell me what URL to go to. I wanted to know what service they were using, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what URL he was trying to tell me to get to!

Grandma's on Ubuntu... Confusion ensued...

[goodgod43]

I switched my elderly mother to Ubuntu a few years back and she recieved one of these calls. Acording to her it went something like this.

Caller: This is *** from *** we noticed that there is somthing wrong with your computer and we are calling to help you fix it.
Her: Okay, let me get on my computer. What's wrong with it?
Caller: We have recieved notification from your computer that it has spyware on it. It has notified us and we are calling to help.
Her: Okay, I'm in front of my computer. What do I do?
Caller: First, click on the start button.
Her: I don't have a start button.
Caller: It's the icon on the lower left that says start.
Her: I don't have one of those. I have Yoobunto, Ewebantoo, I don't know, my son put it on here...
Caller: Please just click the button that says "Start".
Her: But I don't have one of those.

This apparently went on for several minutes. Finally she hung up and called me. If she was running Windows, she probably would have gone along with the scam. This is not to say that the problem is with Windows, but rather that, as long as MOST people use Windows, there will always be an idiot to be found and these scams will occur.

But imagine the problems these callers would have if Debian, (or Debian based), systems were the norm...

Caller: Okay, which desktop do you have installed?
Her: Desktop? What do you mean?
Caller: What does your screen look like?
Her: Flowers. I found I nice picture of lilacs.
Caller: Umm... Can you open a terminal?
Her: What's a terminal?

I don't think these scammers would even gotten started.

6 more shut down since Tuesday

[SternisheFan]

From TGDaily: FTC nabs more scareware scammers Posted on October 4, 2012 -05:30 by Emma Woollacott Flushed with success from successfully closing a 'scareware' case on Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission has succeeded in getting six more such outfits closed down.

"The FTC has been aggressive –and successful –in its pursuit of tech support scams," says FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. "And the tech support scam artists we are talking about today have taken scareware to a whole other level of virtual mayhem." The six operations were mainly based in India, but their victims spanned the globe: most lived in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK. Five used telemarketing boiler rooms to call consumers, while the sixth placed ads with Google which appeared when consumers searched for their computer company’s tech support telephone number. The scammers then pretended to be working for legitimate companies such as Dell, Microsoft, McAfee and Norton, before claiming they'd found a threat on the user's computer that could cost as much as $450 to fix.

The six organizations concerned have been named as Pecon Software, Finmaestros, Zeal IT Solutions, Virtual PC Solutions, Lakshmi Infosoul Services and PCCare247. The FTC is pushing for compensation.

http://m.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/66620-ftc-nabs-more-scareware-scammers