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Court Shuts Down Alleged $120M Tech Support Scam
wiredmikey writes A federal court has temporarily shut down and frozen the assets of two telemarketing operations accused by the FTC of scamming customers out of more than $120 million by deceptively marketing computer software and tech support services. According to complaints filed by the FTC, since at least 2012, the defendants used software designed to trick consumers into believing there were problems with their computers and then hit them with sales pitches for tech support products and services to fix their machines.
According to the FTC, the scams began with computer software that claimed to improve the security or performance of the customer's computer. Typically, consumers downloaded a free, trial version of the software that would run a computer system scan. The scan always identified numerous errors, whether they existed or not. Consumers were then told that in order to fix the problems they had to purchase the paid version of the software for between $29 and $49. In order to activate the software after the purchase, consumers were then directed to call a toll-free number and connected to telemarketers who tried to sell them unneeded computer repair services and software, according to the FTC complaint. The services could cost as much as $500, the FTC stated.
According to the FTC, the scams began with computer software that claimed to improve the security or performance of the customer's computer. Typically, consumers downloaded a free, trial version of the software that would run a computer system scan. The scan always identified numerous errors, whether they existed or not. Consumers were then told that in order to fix the problems they had to purchase the paid version of the software for between $29 and $49. In order to activate the software after the purchase, consumers were then directed to call a toll-free number and connected to telemarketers who tried to sell them unneeded computer repair services and software, according to the FTC complaint. The services could cost as much as $500, the FTC stated.
did this take so long to occur. It amazes me both that people fall for this, and that the credit card companies allow these services to operate under merchant accounts.
If we consider the aggregate harm of these scams, they're on the order of mass murder, possibly up there with actual war. Thus the punishment should fit the crime. It's not even like these people have the Moist von Lipwig excuse of scamming the scammers.
This sounds a lot like getting medical treatment in America.
Just change a few words and multiply the numbers:
Typically, consumers downloaded a free, trial version of the software. The business analysts always identified numerous suboptimal business processes, whether they existed or not. Consumers were then told that in order to fix the problems they had to purchase the paid version of the software for between $290,000 and $490,000. In order to customize the software after the purchase, consumers were then directed to call a certified partners network and connected to consultants who tried to sell them unneeded upgrades and tools. The services could cost as much as $500 per hour.
...and you get a typical SAP implementation scenario.
lucm, indeed.
I kind of figure something was up when PC Cleaner said my linux machine had currupt entries in the registry; but al you can say is P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Given that: 1) people were actually spending money with strangers who called them on the phone, and 2) how many home Windows machines are infested with malware, this shows that you could make a hell of a lot of money by modifying the operation just slightly--have people download legitimate scanning software which would only report real problems. You trade away some of your profit margin in exchange for not going to jail. (Granted, you might still run afoul of telemarketing regulations, but that's a whole lot less serious than fraud, civil vs criminal.)
BOTH of this shit companies have damaged clients of mine and cost them insane amounts of money to repair the crap they broke.
Luckily they never got far enough in with my customers that they could damage their backups. So actual business data loss was minimal...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"Hello I am being Jim and I am with the Microsoft. I am calling you to tell you that your computer is infested with the viruses."
Alternately it's "The Internet" rather than "The Microsoft". (For some reason, you have to include the "The" both for Microsoft and viruses.)
Man, they're annoying. I'm not sure why I find them more unbearable than the usual offshore telemarketer. Perhaps because the lies are so brazen. The last time, I asked him if his mother knows he cheats people out of money for a living? He insisted no, he's trying to help me! He got really excited about it. Probably because he desperately needed this call's rupee for food that night.
Surveying friends and family (including a couple hundred facebook friends), calls at first seemed random, but in more recent months, appear to specifically be targeting people over 50. The most recent calls have asked for me by name. This leads me to believe that they're using someone's pilfered (or purchased?) address list. Has AARP had any breaches lately?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
right?
Agreed. They desperately need to burn in hell.
I've been blessed by customers who contact me when they get suspicious calls or emails, and can be trained to not click on scareware popups. When a computer is infected, it's almost always because someone's kid got access to it. But I still deeply resent these scam calls. They're directly interfering with *my* livelihood!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
SERIOUSLY, just kill them. Just rip their intestines out and hang them by them. I am so fucking sick of people walking into my repair shop and telling me I'm wrong, they're not scammers, they didn't fall for anything, and they don't want to lose their alleged lifetime membership to unlimited support. In fact, everyone stupid enough to fall for this bullshit should be thrown into a volcano with the people who originally did it.
I have had this exact thing happen; "press F8 when booting to get into safe mode"...."but I just said I'm not running windows, there is no 'safe mode'....what should I do?"...usually results in a confused silence.... :)
@Random_Adam
Sometimes a sig doesn't have to be funny!!
Maybe Charlie Manson wants to consummate his marriage second hand since he's not allowed conjugal visits.,/i>
Go ahead. You stick your wang in that bit o crazy. I'll pass.
This isn't free speech. Freedom of speech means that you can stand on a street corner, speak your mind, and the government can't say "We don't like your opinion so we're sending you to jail." Freedom of speech doesn't mean that you can lie to people to get money from them. This is called fraud and is illegal. Try claiming "free speech" if you are on trial for fraud and you'll see how quickly the judge brings the hammer down on you.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
That we don't prosecute enough false advertising and deception with intent to defraud claims!
It's hard to blame the root cause of the problem on anything but the current levels of corruption infesting our Government. Instead of agencies built to enforce regulations doing what they are intended, they are investigating bullshit to make corporations more and more money and keep the cronies in office so that their circle continues to have revenue while the "common" people suffer.
Yup, stories like yours are a shame. These scams have been known about for at least 4-5 years (if you don't remember the my clean PC bullshit.. well, you could be a n00b), but instead of putting these shitbags out of business we have agencies focusing on Youtube videos that have background audio of a song, or grandma downloading a free MP3 file, or heaven forbid a goddamn whistle blower that must be lambasted and castrated.
Don't get me wrong, "Greed" is a problem but it's a problem we have known about for at least as long as we have been able to write and read. The whole point of Government is to enforce regulation and prosecute snake oil salesmen to protect the populace from greedy fucks that gain power (in some/any form). The fact that this shit has gone on for this long demonstrates that our Government is a failure. Massive bureaucracies are a failure! (The problems with journalism today, or more properly the lack thereof, fall into these categories so I can't blame them separately).
I'll get off my soap box now.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This kind of fraud is much like multi-level marketers and other spammers.I'm afraid that those fradulent companies which are even less traceable, and have overseas offices to avoid US prosecution, will fill the ecological niche very quickly.
I've gotten two of these phone calls in the past few months. The first time I followed their instructions up until the point that they wanted to take over my computer. They pointed me to a legitimate screen sharing application. I gave them the wrong access code. Once the caller realized I wasn't going to fall for the scam, he got ANGRY and told me that *tomorrow* he was going to destroy my computer. I challenged him to do it now. :-) I should have told him my IP address was 127.0.0.1.
I still wonder *what* he was going to do once he took control. Setup a remote control SPAM bot? Encrypt everything? Or simply ask for $500.00 to "fix" all the problems?
If I had an old throwaway system, I would have pointed him to that...but then I would be worried that he would have been able to infect my other computers on my network...maybe.
Randy -- regardlessitwasfun
...but is that one of the scammers that was shut down?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
so many times I've had this happen... you're a milk bone to the telemarketing dogs if you run a small business.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
freedom of speech does not extend to the right to commit fraud.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I used to do this on IRC with scriptkiddies... I told them that I was behind a proxy (usually true) but my "real" IP address was 127.(somenumber).(somenumber).(somenumber) and then watch them ping-o-death themselves. The nineties were fun.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Have I answered your questions satisfactorily and offered good customer service?!
http://cart.mn/CstmrServc
I cannot wait until the Republican Congress gets the government out of the way and lets small businesses get on with their work.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
You mad bro?
I hope you're not that blind to miss the obvious answer, here.
Make shitty scareware to get you to download the REAL spyware.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I've gotten two of these phone calls in the past few months. The first time I followed their instructions up until the point that they wanted to take over my computer. They pointed me to a legitimate screen sharing application. I gave them the wrong access code. Once the caller realized I wasn't going to fall for the scam, he got ANGRY and told me that *tomorrow* he was going to destroy my computer. I challenged him to do it now. :-) I should have told him my IP address was 127.0.0.1.
I still wonder *what* he was going to do once he took control. Setup a remote control SPAM bot? Encrypt everything? Or simply ask for $500.00 to "fix" all the problems?
If I had an old throwaway system, I would have pointed him to that...but then I would be worried that he would have been able to infect my other computers on my network...maybe.
Randy -- regardlessitwasfun
Hey! don't give that out, that's my IP address!
I've gotten a few of those calls too and played the same game. But before he could (in his thick Hindi accent) express his outrage, I verbally abused him until he hung up.
I do have a spare Windows VM for the next time, assuming I have time to block all network access except the screen sharing app. That could be fun. A waste of time, but possibly amusing.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
...in his ear. He said a problem was detected on my Window's computer. Being every box in my house is running one Linux distro or another I had a problem picking myself up off the floor. Just think of how many people would fall for these scams if everyone really had Window's on some device in their house.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I agree completely. We need a law that says simply: It shall be illegal to do any misleading advertising.
Financial penalties would rapidly escalate and repeated offences would subject company owners to jail time.
The offender would be required to publish in a similar venue a statement admitting to, and apologizing for, the misleading advertising.
The test of misleading would be if average people would believe something untrue after viewing the ad.
As recently as this week I've still been getting one of those goddamn calls every couple days. I just hang up on them, usually after saying something along the lines of "Do me a favor and kindly jump up your own ass."
My father gets them too... He likes to string the bastards along for a while though. Constantly asking them stuff like where they're calling from and why, requesting specifics until he catches them contradicting themselves and then tells them off and hangs up. (Personally, it drives me nuts listening to him do that, I'm just like "Oh my god hang up on those assholes already!") He does the same thing to the medicaid scam phonecalls but those are far less frequent.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
You ever want to really confuse them? Tell them your keyboard doesn't have a Windows key, like my old IBM model M. They'll spend all kinds of time walking you through trying to find it..
"Please to be looking at the left side of your keyboard, do you see the button C T R L?"
"Yes, I see it."
"The Windows key is being right next to that one"
"No, there's no key right next to it, there is one that says A L T a little further over"
"No, there has to be a key between that has the Windows logo"
"I'm telling you, there isn't. Why don't you tell me what you're trying to do and I'll find a different way"
"You are lying! You have a Windows key there, you have to"
"Nope, old keyboard. What are you trying to do?"
Then you listen to them flip through the script and again insist you must have a Windows key if it's a Windows computer.
It's great fun. I've wasted 90 minutes of their time this way. Another thing I like to do is, when they say there's a problem with my Windows computer, I ask them "Which one? I have several", which is true. I ask them for the machine name, the IP, everything they should know if they're getting a trouble report, right?
The goal is to get them to hang up on YOU.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
/thread
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I talked with one of them on Saturday. After spending about 25 minutes acting like a total doofus - I asked him if it made any difference which enter key I used because they are shaped differently. It was really fun thinking up stupid things to ask him. After about 25 minutes, we were at the point where he wanted to open an internet connection, I called him out and hung up. (I had also drank a lot of coffee and really needed use the bathroom) He called back 5 times to cuss me out. Name an insult and he used it (I have one, but I'm not one!) After the third call, my wife wanted to talk to them and he asked her for oral sex, she accused him of stalking and said she would notify law enforcement. Perhaps we could start a contest to see how badly the scammers have been annoyed.
My personal best is about 50 minutes, before I got bored with them. I told them I only had flaky dial-up service. I kept playing the modem connection sound, then tell them that their software was downloading. After waiting for 5 minutes, asking them rude personal questions in the interim, I tell them that I am at 90%, then shout a lot of expletives, saying that the connection went down, and need to reconnect. Once they passed me off to their tech support people because I told them the issue was on their end of the dial up connection.
This is just another example of government interference in the market place and driving free enterprise out of business! Let the industry regulate its self!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I wonder if everyone who knows these calls are a scam were to do the following, if it would kill their throughput enough to stop them: "Hold on a minute... my computer is off. It's a little slow to boot. I'm going to put you down for a minute, just hold on, I'll be right back." Then just put the phone down on a table and walk away.
Of course, once enough people were using this exact scam on the scammers, they'd know that anyone giving them this routine was to be hung up on. I'm certainly not willing to invest any time stringing them along to keep them busy.
It's a shame. I'd love to get one over on these jack asses. I get two or three calls "from Microsoft" a year now. I did get a chuckle out of the last one, where the guy told my wife he was calling from Microsoft, she replied only, "No you're not", and they hung up without evening anything else.
There are always issues. If that's how you define free speech, it's interesting to see how broadly fraud can be defined.
They call me regularly to tell me there's a problem with my Windows computer and they wish to help me. I really like stringing them along.. Sorry, but my Linux desktop doesn't have a Windows key.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
...but instead of putting these shitbags out of business...
You seem to be assuming that they're operating from countries with competent law enforcement available to cooperate with ours, and that they stay in one place long enough to find them. Both assumptions are incorrect.
Your straw man is not a very good one. If you read TFA you would have seen that _all_ of the companies in the decisions are US companies.
As part of the legal maneuver, the state of Florida joined the FTC in filing two separate cases against companies who allegedly sold the bogus software and the telemarketers who sold the unnecessary tech support services. In the first case, the defendants selling software include PC Cleaner Inc.; Netcom3 Global Inc.; Netcom3 Inc., also doing business as Netcom3 Software Inc.; and Cashier Myricks, Jr. The telemarketing defendants include Inbound Call Experts LLC; Advanced Tech Supportco. LLC; PC Vitalware LLC; Super PC Support LLC; Robert D. Deignan; Paul M. Herdsman; and Justin M. Wright.
In the second case, the defendants selling software include Boost Software Inc. and Amit Mehta, and the telemarketing defendants include Vast Tech Support LLC, also doing business as OMG Tech Help, OMG Total Protection, OMG Back Up, downloadsoftware.com, and softwaresupport.com; OMG Tech Help LLC; Success Capital LLC; Jon Paul Holdings LLC; Elliot Loewenstern; Jon-Paul Vasta; and Mark Donahue.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Your straw man is not a very good one. If you read TFA you would have seen that _all_ of the companies in the decisions are US companies.
Yes, but... Those are the companies which our government DID shutdown. Your post that I responded to was complaining about the government not shutting down such scams. So if you really want to get picky like this, your argument itself was a misdirection. So, show me the scammers that are operating out of the USA, and which the FTC is not taking action against.
What? Not got any examples? Because the ones still being run are in India? Yep, thought so.
What? Not got any examples? Because the ones still being run are in India? Yep, thought so.
The examples are in the complaints that took YEARS to receive any action on. There is no reasonable or efficient mechanism for dealing with these companies in the US. How long were each of those companies listed in the order operating in the US? Some were operating for as long as a decade, so perhaps you should validate facts before attempting to claim that everything scam related is from overseas.
Researching a few facts is all that is required to demonstrate that your arguments are invalid.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.