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'This Is Your Second and Final Notice' Robocallers Revealed
nbauman writes "A New York Times consumer columnist tracked down the people who run a 'This is your second and final notice" robocall operation. The calls came from Account Management Assistance, which promises to negotiate lower credit card rates with banks. One woman paid them $1,000, and all they did was give her a limited-time zero-percent credit card that she could have gotten herself. AMA has a post office box in Orlando, Florida. The Better Business Bureau has a page for Your Financial Ladder, which does business as Account Management Assistance, and as Economic Progress. According to a Florida incorporation filing, Economic Progress is operated by Brenda Helfenstine, with her husband Tony. The Arkansas attorney general has sued Your Financial Ladder for violating the Telemarketing Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services investigated Your Financial Ladder, but the investigator went to 1760 Sundance Drive, St. Cloud, which turned out to be a residence, and gave up. The Times notes that you can type their phone number (855-462-3833) into http://800notes.com/ and get lots of reports on them."
These fuckers relentless harassed my grandmother in her final days despite my efforts to put her on the do not call list and working with her telephone company to try to identify them.
Take all their money. All of it. Take it all and put it into something that helps the elderly.
Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you've got the power inside you right now. So, use it, and send one dollar to Happy Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. Don't delay, eternal happiness is just a dollar away.
Why is it that the attack-dog AGs of the world are ready to go when somebody runs wget contrary to a site's terms of service; but people like this are allowed to operate unchecked?
To the absolute surprise of no one.
I think fraud is simply in Florida's DNA. I mean, what is Florida in the early to mid 20th century, if not "buying swampland for cheap?" Now, it's the height of US insurance fraud, medicare fraud, mortgage fraud, and identity theft, in addition to the drug smuggling and human trafficking that comes along with major ports of entry into the U.S. It's a crazy, crazy place and reality is far removed from the Mickey Mouse and orange juice that Discover Florida is selling.
And before you blow me up, know that I say all this as a long-time Florida resident...
but the investigator went to 1760 Sundance Drive, St. Cloud, which turned out to be a residence, and gave up.
But the telco has to know where they are sending these calls. Either a landline, digital service or IP address. Either give it up to the authorities or become a co-defendant in the fraud case.
You download one stinkin' Lady Gaga song and they can find you. Why not now?
Have gnu, will travel.
It looks as though things in the US are the same as over here in little Britain: it's absolutely impossible to defraud people unless you provide a fake name and address.
Wouldn't it be nice if at least one of the two countries could manage to pay somebody a living wage to actually check company registrations before they're allowed to trade at all, and at reasonably frequent but irregular intervals afterwards? Maybe between the two we could manage it? I think we've got about sixpence available from the taxpayer, how about you guys?
All too much to hope for, I suppose. What fuckups we are.
As they publish a new number just hammer their numbers with incoming calls. If they have a 1800 then they will be paying per minute for the call.
I sent my Senator (Mark Warner (D) Virginia), who sits on the relevant committee, a constituent request asking if anything ever happened as a result of filing "Do Not Call" violations. They sent me a Privacy Act form (so they could query the registry using my personal data.)
And that was the end of it. I never heard back.
On a related note, I think the FCC should make Caller ID both required and un-forgeable. (An individual could still choose to not have his Caller ID revealed, and that would be indicated on your Caller ID display.)
Means nothing for you.
If someone hacks something the government cares about then they manage to find that person.
Call around a couple of times and threaten schools and/or officials and they can find you pretty quickly.
A Random company robo dials 1/2 of the continental fucking U.S. and all of a sudden these fuckers can't seem to figure out where they are coming from or what the hell can be done about it.
I got 2 of these, both from a Washington state area code. Of course the caller ID could be fake...
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
There is a lot of money in violating the telemarketing rules. One illegal voice broadcaster was paid over $6 million by just one customer in only 10 months [1]. Large fines against violators are often uncollectible and ignored by scofflaws [2]. Violators often engage in money laundering and brag about their “bulletproof” broadcasting facilities that can’t be traced [3]. I personally received over 300 prerecorded telemarketing calls in some years, and I was able to track down the people behind only a tiny fraction of those calls, despite my concerted efforts in recording calls, filing lawsuits, subpoenaing phone company records, and hundreds of hours of my own time. Anyone who tries to find the source of these illegal calls will find the vast majority lead back to shadowy, untraceable names such as Transfers Argentina, Asia Pacific Telecom, TeleEurope, and Castle Rock Capital Management. Trying to track down a text message spammer is a similar exercise in futility.
Many studies have show that massive penalties don't work as a deterrent because perpetrators never plan to get caught. What does work is increasing the likelihood of getting caught.
[1] See declaration of Roberto C. Menjivar at 30 (totaling the amount paid to Voice Touch by National Auto Warranty during a 10 month period at $6,013,500). Document 42 in FTC v. Network Foundations, LLC., No. 1:09-cv-02929 (N.D. Ill. 2009).
[2] See Order of Forfeiture, File No. EB-02-TC-120 (released Jan. 5, 2004) (finding Fax.com liable for the maximum fine of $11,000 for each of the 489 fax violations, for a total fine of $5,379,000).
[3] Menjivar decl. at 20–22.
Ok this is interesting but this is Slashdot, not some consumer forum for ripoff disasterbation hate-ons.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
All you dirty hippies who are calling for the heads of these "Second and Final Notice" folks must really hate free-market capitalism.
These are the Job Creators, after all. And anything that's done to stop them is regulation, which is a dirty word.
We need to just let the free market work and these problems will go away, right?
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's true but we're talking about telco - they could be anywhere if they wanted to scam old poeple. Why are they in Florida instead of say California? Or Texas? Or Massachusetts? Could it be that Florida law enforcement is lax?
On Android: Create a contact (I call it "Spam"). Click settings->More and add to reject list. Whenever you get a spam call, select "update existing contact", select "Spam" and no more calls from that number. For a home phone, use a VOIP provider (I use and can recommend Galaxy Voice). They should have a web page that lets you add numbers to a blacklist. Also select the "anonymous call rejection" feature which will block all calls where the caller id has been intentionally blocked. By doing the above it is very rare for me to receive a spam call.
The sad thing is that there are enough people buying this shit to keep the robocallers and spammers in business.
I routinely get robocalls wanting to reduce my credit card debt. A good trick, since I don't have any. I always wonder how the political polling people can possibly pretend their conclusions have any validity, since everybody hangs up on them.
And so on. A medium that used to be useful has been poisoned by abuse.
I view Do Not Call as intrinsically self-defeating. Like "opting out" of spam, it provides a list of known-good phone numbers. If the robocalls originate from offshore, there is little the local authorities can do about it anyway.
...laura
To find a way for it to be unprofiteable. Take away the money and telemarketers, robocallers and such will dissapear completely overnight.
But thats the real trick is how does the government make it so they cant profit? Just blocking them, raiding them, fining them and such wont do a bit of good because they will always find a loophole, some phrase they can say to negate the law and take one down another will arise. No you get rid this of this by making it unprofitable across the board.
We need more modern telephones. It shouldn't be that hard. When I get email on my computer, I have a spam filter that weeds out more than 90% of all the crap. I open my mail client, it connects to my ISP and sucks down mail. As its sucking, its automagically shoving stuff into the garbage can. I can browse, but basically all I have to do is click on empty trash, and its all gone. Now with the phone, I have no filter. I can screen calls with the answering machine, but it still rings. What I really want is a phone that has a list of filter numbers. When they call and I don't want to talk to them, the phone doesn't ring, just a light comes on the phone showing the phone is filtering a call, and 2 seconds later the phone automatically hangs up. If I pick it up, I can't hear them, and they can't hear me. When they call me the first time, I push a button on the phone to add them to the list. I can also add numbers to the filter myself. I understand that there are people who abuse the do not call list. The government also plays the 'unsolicited marketing game', and likewise, they consider charities to be 'fair game'. I want a phone that does what I want. It shouldn't be that hard.
Just make sure that these guys IP addresses are seen to be the ones seeding "Iron Man 3" and at least a dozen top 40 albums and watch real sharks at work.
I think that may be part of how they can get away with this practice. I get numerous similar calls by "Rachel", from a variety of phone numbers per the Caller Id. When I tried calling some of those numbers, I got ones that were disconnected, and, in another case, someone who sounded like an ordinary person at home who was totally bewildered by what I was asking about - I think they were genuine, and their number was being spoofed by Rachel's cronies.
What do the rest of you think of that hypothesis?
FWIW
Where are the predator drones when you need them?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I doubt its the same people, but Rachel (at Card Holder Services) calls me quite a bit. I'll use a little social engineering, talk to the rep, acting both friendly and desperate. Seems like the people taking on the other end (after you hit a prompt that Rachel gives you) are a bit desperate themselves for work. On a number of occasions I'll have a heart to heart with them, explain their employers are scam artists stealing money from clients under false pretenses and that they should probably start looking for legitimate work right away. Sometimes they're quite complicit with the scam. Frequently I've gotten elevated to their manager, I forget what his name is, but I've spoken to him on a number of occasions. Given my employment background, its partially my job to put a stop to these kinds of abuses. I've frequently reminded their manager to google search my first name, a certain keyword and linkedin, it'll return a career profile of someone who definitely has an interest in seeing them shut down. Ultimately I lose patience or they lose patience, finally they make it clear they have the upper hand as they'll continue to robo call me relentlessly, threatening to have their systems call me multiple times a day. Unfortunately now they do so and I'm stuck screening calls to voicemail from numbers I don't recognize. Of course as many of you are familiar, even if the call goes to voicemail doesn't deter them from keeping my number on their calling list.
I usually try to counter sell something to the telemarketer on the other end... Like car insurance. Or sometimes I'll start whispering that I have 10,000$ in debt, then blow a whistle into the phone. I've given up on actually having something done about them, so I've decided to fight back the only way I can... Physical pain by whistle, and wasting their time(ergo money).
In order to track slimeballs easier, businesses should have a publicly listed Business ID Number and be required to use it in all print ads and provide it when requested over the phone.
Table-ized A.I.
Too many capital letters here. This must be serious shit.
First see here: http://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-events/10-biggest-cases-of-revenge.htm#page=1
If that address is correct, let's all go and sign them up for some free catalogs and the like.
way to deal with telemarketers came from a friend's father. He acted interested in the product. When (at the end of the long call) he was asked how he would like to pay, his answer was "do ya take food stamps?" They asked if he had a credit or debit card, or a bank account. His reply was "nope, I only got food stamps". They hung up on him after at least a 45 minute long distance call on their dime!
I guess someone has already invented a captcha box to get rid of robocalls.
Is there a problem using this kind of device?
I can't remember but it seems to me that it has already been discussed here on slashdot, hasn't it?
We don't have that kind of problems in my country, so I haven't looked for a solution like such.
Then why didnt she have it? That's like saying my college shouldn't have charged me tuition since I could have found out everything they taught me myself by reading books in the library or something. Nevermind they provided me with a service I requested.
Publish the number in several public places. Start with max sentence, but periodically call to "reduce" their sentence... but only if they make the call.
There are legit reasons to "spoof" the caller number. For example, companies that call out from multiple sources but have one main-office line.
In my case, I have a VOIP line with no incoming #. I previously used my cellphone # for call-display so that people know that it's me calling.
"A New York Times consumer columnist tracked down the people who run a 'This is your second and final notice" robocall operation.
That is certainly good news, but have they been arrested yet? They have certainly broken enough laws to "go away" for a very long time.
Banking regulations, wire transfer regulations, currency regulations and limits, etc etc etc. The money system is highly regulated. Follow that.
And then cook 'em ALL up in a big RICO pot where all the executives and individuals involved can each be on the hook for $100,000k and 20 years in prison.
The big problem with Internet fraud is that there's this narrow focus on how easy it is to do tasks "anonymously" on the Internet, without realizing that it takes an entire support system -- ISPs, hosting, money transfers, etc. It's one thing to send stuff out and just be annoying -- you can spam from a coffee shop. But if you want to make money, you have to collect money and that requires some kind of support system.
If the government started doing this it wouldn't take very many prosecutions of Mercedes-driving executives otherwise engaged in "legitimate" business to start paying closer attention to who they business with.
It won't make this kind of fraud go away completely, but it would make it much more difficult.
Shameless self promotion: http://robocall.challenge.gov/submissions/13334-the-phone-cop
I cannot believe no one has said it yet. I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR ROBO OVERLORDS!! /sarcasm off
I'm old, not dead. Well that's my 2 cents worth, your mileage may vary. I say what I think, not what you want to hear.
The US is simply doing it wrong - one of our politicians suggested outsourcing the imprisonment of the hardest criminals to Russia....
Yes, I kinda support that idea.
In Soviet Russia, the jails get sent to you!
It really must suck if your name is Rachel.
Whenever you call someone, people either hang up or call you some nice names.
That's the reason I do not believe in God (the supreme being?) [thus, no hopes for the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything]: in a perfect world, we STILL DO have spammers.