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24 People Have Now Been Sentenced In India-Based Phone-Scam Case (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A total of 24 people who pleaded guilty to their involvement in a massive years-long phone scam often involving fake Internal Revenue Service and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services officials have now been given prison sentences from four to 20 years. The indictment was originally filed in October 2016 against 61 people and includes charges of conspiracy to commit identity theft, impersonation of an officer of the United States, wire fraud, and money laundering. If victims didn't pay up, callers threatened arrest, deportation, or heavier fines. There were also related scams involving fake payday loans and bogus U.S. government grants, according to the criminal complaint. The lead defendant was Miteshkumar Patel, who was given 20 years.
They made the mistake of being somewhere where they could be arrested.
The Microsoft people who call my wife are pretty obviously in India.
The investment scammers I have been getting lately are also calling from some third-world country I would think. I read somewhere Indonesia is popular.
If they make enough money I'm sure it's not hard to bribe whoever they need to so they can stay in business.
A whole 24 people? That should solve the problem.
The root of the problem is the American telecom companies that enable these scams by offering spoofing services to criminals. Some big fines on Verizon and AT&T would do way more good than going after some low level scammers in Mumbai.
Twenty four in a population of 1.5 billion, and churning out IT people by the 100-thousands each year. For jobs they resort to working at a "call center." 24 - barely an atom-layer shave off an iceberg sized problem. Let me know when the calls have all stopped. And then you have Karachi, across the border - even more "call centers."
I always wonder with these big scams, do the people creating them know that they're likely to get caught and spend decades in prison, or do they think they'll actually get away with it?
I've come up with tons of get rich quick schemes/scams but the fear of lengthy jail time has always kept me honest. Is the only difference that these people don't think enough bout the risks of such ventures in advance? Or do they get years into it, then one day wake and think oh shit, we might got to jail for this but it's too late?
I used to enjoy them, my best was 16 minutes and screaming abuse at the end, but I got 4 in one day, so I blocked all incoming international calls. They dropped off for a while, but now they're spoofing local numbers. Sometimes I answer, sometimes I don't.
I've got some hindi swear/abuse phrases ready to go (stuff like "you're the result of a toilet cleaner fucking a goat"), but my best was asking the girl from "Windows technical department" what her mother would think of her activities. She went silent for about 10 seconds, then hung up.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
try the tactic of asking in a sexy voice "what are you wearing" and other creepy stuff. Some of the stammering replies or total silence can be just as amusing. I am sure they have been abused and insulted so much that most of the insults just wash right over them so I like to try and get them off balance when I am looking to end the call quickly due to being busy. I am surprised they haven't got my number blocked in their systems as I must cost them a lot of time/money.
then you both have no clue. The feature that allows this to happen is actually a business feature utilised by millions of legitimate businesses. Unfortunately like many things in this world when it was built into phone systems throughout the world (this is not a US only problem) there wasn't much thought put on the security or potential abuses of the technology. Now it is hard to turn off without screwing over a fuck load of companies with legitimate reasons for using it.
Amateur. YouTube has a few people who can get scammers on the phone for at least an hour, approaching 4 and a half. Though to be honest, a good chunk of it is simply dead air - they ask the victim to go out and buy gift cards or something (which is good for a couple of hours of scammers on hold).
And scammers have an "emergency out" - if they get exposed, they immediately lock the machine and syskey it to ensure it is unbootable. Of course, it all happens in a virtual machine, so restoring the damage is trivial, but it's funny.
Some YouTube channels:
Kitboga. He's had scammers insult him, make death threats and all sorts of fun.
This guy enacts revenge on the scammers by infecting their PC. Most of the scammers are just doing a script, so their PCs are often wide open and infectable, so it's possible to get RATs and such installed on their PC.
This guy investigates scammers computers. His latest video involves a bank login scam where he manages to install a RAT on the scammer's computer. He watches as a scammer attempts to register for and log into some elderly guy's bank account (luckily, the bank actually sends something to customers when this happens, so the scammer not only had no chance. He also alerted the bank who locked the online account for fraud.
Yes, it's fun watching scammer's computers and call centers get infected. Perhaps they can call themselves for tech support.
I admit, I get a lot of those calls. It's amazing how they always use the most robotic of voices. Also, apparently retailers are alert to the scam as well - several times they've been stopped when they see people buying thousands of dollars worth of iTunes or other gift cards. Though, someone was so embarrassed they made up a whole story about being "arrested" and transported and caused the police to issue an alert.
then you both have no clue. The feature that allows this to happen is actually a business feature utilised by millions of legitimate businesses.
...to trick their customers into thinking their call center is actually not in Bangalore. Yeah, what a noble cause.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, it was designed to present outgoing calls as originating from (for example) the main switchboard / reception phone number
Spoofing from one number to another controlled by the same legal entity is reasonable. Allowing criminals to spoof a random phone number that they DO NOT OWN is not.
The telecoms can shut this activity down very quickly if they are given sufficient financial incentive to do so, like maybe $10M per day in fines until it is fixed.
I don't consider a local company being allowed to spoof the number of their foreign call center a benign use. As a consumer I have a right to know if the company I'm doing business with is outsourcing their support services so I can make an inform decision about whether I want to do business with them.
It should be outright illegal for an individual or entity to spoof a caller ID number. The choices should be identify yourself or don't. If you choose not to ID then I should have the choice to automatically reject your number, as in it always goes directly to voicemail.
That solves the problem. Businesses and politicians don't like that solution? So what. I'm paying the phone bill. What gives them the right to intrude on what should be my private communication line to friends and business I want to talk to?
Legitimate purposes
remote call centres to provide a local return numbers that can then be cheaply routed
Lying about where your call centre is isn't a legitimate use.
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However such a service could be controled at the Telco level. To insure a call can be tracked back to its source.
So a legitimate business will contact their telecom and say number xxx-xxx-xxxx will call and we would like to display the number as yyy-yyy-yyyy and zzz-zzz-zzzz
Having the end user able to spoof on their own end, just doesn't cut it in 2018
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.