Smartphone Reseller Cheated Customers Out of Millions, Feds Say (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes:The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued a Nevada-based company called Laptop & Desktop Repair LLC (LDR) for allegedly bilking thousands of customers out of millions of dollars in promised funds for the resale of their smartphones. LDR operated dozens of websites that promised customers high returns for their smartphones and tablets using an instant quote generator. The customers, believing that this website would pay the highest price for their used gadget, sent their phones to LDR. Once LDR received the gadget, it would offer the customer a "revised quote" that was often only three to ten percent of the original quoted price. Customers only had three to five days to dispute the revised quote, the FTC's complaint claimed. The FTC further alleged that when customers would call LDR to request their smartphones back, the company would put them on hold for extraordinarily long periods of time, the call would be dropped, and an LDR employee would say the phone had already been processed. If the customer persisted in threatening to report LDR's actions, company representatives would offer slightly higher resale prices.

Comments

Yet another civil case..

[dcooper_db9]

When an individual steals it's prosecuted as a crime. Stealing a candy bar can get the thief a year or more in jail. When someone forms a company and conspires to steal it's treated as a civil matter. The proprietors shouldn't be in court, they should be in prison.