Auto Warranty Robocall Scammers Busted 358
ectotherm writes "The nice people behind the recorded phone messages stating 'By now you should have received your written note regarding your vehicle warranty expiring...' — the ones who instantly hang up when you ask for the name of the company — have been busted. Fox News did a little background digging on the four people charged." Don't know about you, but I received three or four postcards in the mail from these scammers, as well as uncountable robocalls. The FTC says they cleared $10M since 2007.
My call... (Score:5, Insightful)
...went something like this.
"WTH is this? Scammers?"
*Press 1*
"Hello, what's the make of your vehicle?"
"May I ask who I'm speaking to?"
*click*
--
After receiving (and hanging up on) a few more of these calls, I can't say I'm sorry to see their asses getting handed to them in court.
What a deal (Score:2, Insightful)
I get the stupid post cards too (Score:3, Insightful)
I get the stupid post cards too.. Makes me wonder how they know my Honda warranty is going to expire? Despite the fact I purchased the extended manufactor 2 year warranty? The knew about the first year but didn't know about the extended warranty so I can only guess somehow they been digging through public records about car purchases or ca registurations. Sounds like complete invasion of privacy to me!!
However, I never recieved one phone call from folks like that... Hmmm
stop them in less than 2 years next time (Score:5, Insightful)
I never got it... (Score:5, Insightful)
I never understood how these scams work, they hang up on you once you ask anything, but don't you need to know where to send your money? If you just give them credit card info won't they need an address for their merchant account or whatever credit card processing system they have? Why does it take so long to catch these people, isn't it possible to just follow the money to the scammers?
Re:Fox news?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's some potential explanations:
Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
Busted only when they bothered someone "important" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I never got it... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're gonna scam people why the hell don't you connect the d*** call?
Incompetence led to their downfall? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Knew it was a scam very quickly (Score:3, Insightful)
I understand that this is an over-reaction, but if they were sentenced to death and I were an executioner I think I would cheerfully pull the switch to fry their brains.
Sad to say, but me too. I would probably add a gleeful giggle as well.
Re:Knew it was a scam very quickly (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Busted only when they bothered someone "importa (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. I even reported a handful of calls to the FTC (using their website) just a few weeks before Chuck Schumer declared war on these guys.
I got a letter back from the FTC telling me that they couldn't do anything because "I didn't provide them enough information". I gave them the time of day, the CID, and what the robo greeting said. But I guess because I didn't talk to a human, it didn't count.
This should be considered a major FAIL for the FTC and the Do Not Call list. Which is a shame, too, because the DNC has been a great success with this exception.
It's embarassing that it took the FTC this long to catch them, and to add insult to injury, it only took them about a month after Chuck Schumer made a stink.
I hope that after these criminals are tried, a second investigation starts to find out why the FTC had their head up their ass.
Re:Incompetence led to their downfall? (Score:3, Insightful)
That would make sense if they were calling the same number several months apart. Calling just hours apart, though, as happened to many people, does not fit that theory.
The Real Problem (The Phone Companies) (Score:5, Insightful)
Scams like this undoubtedly generate hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars a year in revenue from long distance and 800 number services, which probably include helping the scam artists hide their contact information from their victims. The phone companies had no interest at all in this problem, even when clearly thousands of legitimate customers complained about it. Not only were they making money from the scammers annoying calls, but the phone company also offered me the chance to pay an additional monthly fee to stop solicitation calls. When I asked point blank, they admitted that the service would not stop the robotic calls about which I'd called to complain. In addition to that, the phone companies were charging air time to victims, when the robotic caller dialed cell phones (like mine).
The phone companies, all of them, are complicit in this scam, and should be jointly prosecuted with the scammers.
Re:The Real Problem (The Phone Companies) (Score:5, Insightful)
"Never attribute to malice what could more easily be attributed to stupidity."
The phone techs you talk to when you call AT&T have access to a lot of tools and information you may not have access to, but ultimately, they are limited to handling the kinds of issues they have been trained to handle. Getting new material to these techs takes a long time and a lot of work. Chances are, they didn't help you because they don't know how to respond.
The revenue these slammers generate is a drop in the bucket compared to legitimate AT&T business. Your average scammer's wet dream would be to pull in the kind of money that a single dial up provider spends on their monthly phone bill.
Re:The Real Problem (The Phone Companies) (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd go for "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" since if they get so many complaints but still don't know how to handle them, they obviously don't care enough about customers to try to understand what's going on.
Allow me a car analogy
Mind what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
No. See "Common Carrier [wikipedia.org]". You really don't want the phone companies to be able to refuse service to anybody...
The real problem is the government's indifference — took millions of complaints over years for them to enforce the law...
Re:Mind what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
"You really don't want the phone companies to be able to refuse service to anybody... "
I disagree. They should be, and are, able to refuse service to consistent abusers of the phone system itself. It's the law that companies making automated calls like this must have a legitimate phone number provided for caller ID. It's the law that they take you off their phone list if you request it. It's the law that they abide by the do-not-call list.
They were breaking the law and abusing the phone system from the moment they engaged their robocallers without such requirements being met, which means AT&T (or whoever) had every right to disconnect them upon doing due diligence to investigate the complaints of their customers, or at least threaten to do so if the company making the calls didn't clean up their act.
Companies that do this kind of business must be flagrantly obvious to a company like AT&T -- there are *millions* of outgoing calls, and the automated nature of them would be easy to detect from the logs. As far as I'm concerned, any company that signs up to do that kind of business should receive special scrutiny. Maybe they should be required to be licensed before they can attach their robocall equipment to the lines and start the calling. Don't follow the rules? You're service is suspended.
Re:stop them in less than 2 years next time (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I get the stupid post cards too (Score:1, Insightful)
If you file change of address forms for your bus, even if it has never been at the exact same address as your "permanent" address, it is probably linked.
I once got mail for a gal with the same last name as me, just because she once lived in the same suburb as me, but moved out a few months before I moved there.
I filed CoAs, as I was moving a fair bit then, she didn't. Considering the various legal stuff I occasionally got addressed to her, despite never living at an address with anything in common other than the zipcode, I can understand why.
Re:Busted only when they bothered someone "importa (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, reporting these guys is usually useless. They spoof the caller ID info (this is where the phone companies should be atomic dope slapped) and the associates, if you get one, are well trained in not telling you anything that would be useful on a report. Full name? Nope. Company name? Nope. Address? Hell no. Return number? Nope.
In reality, if they were taking it seriously all the FTC would need is your phone number, the time of the call, and your provider. Then they could get records from the provider (ie. AT&T) and know where the call came from, who it's registered to, and so on. The phone companies make damn sure to have that info, because otherwise they couldn't get paid.
Which, of course, is why the FTC were able to move so fast once Senatorman got called.
Re:The Real Problem (The Phone Companies) (Score:4, Insightful)
The phone techs you talk to when you call AT&T have access to a lot of tools and information you may not have access to, but ultimately, they are limited to handling the kinds of issues they have been trained to handle. Getting new material to these techs takes a long time and a lot of work. Chances are, they didn't help you because they don't know how to respond.
And this is totally irrlevent. You call AT&T about a problem, and you should expect them to do something. Saying "oh the poor tech doesn't know anything" is horseshit. He's still a part of AT&T, and by making excuses for the poor tech you're making excuses for AT&T.
Re:Why can't the greedy crooks ever learn.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing some devils advocate here...
Do the math on some of those.
Bomb threat was in 1991, guilty party is now 36. He was 18.
The indecent was in 2001, again he was 20. One can technically be charged with indecent exposure for mooning someone or forgetting to latch the door on the crapper.
No specifics on the trespassing either.
Battery is a bit more severe, but again no details. We don't know if it was a beating or a fight.
Firearms, likely in relation to the bomb threat but then again it could be as banal as a minor transport violation.
You do your time and you make amends. I'm not excusing it, but we sentence people to X years for crimes with the understanding that after X years they've done their time. Not life. Wait until you make a mistake, or rather "get framed", and have that follow you around forever.
Good show reading the article though, some of those are buried down in the last few paragraphs. I only noted the bullet points early in the artcile
Re:Fox news?! (Score:3, Insightful)
They actually do that all the time. You just don't know about it because you don't get your news about fox news from fox news.
Re:Mind what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is the slippery slope. While it's a tired analogy, in this case, it's completely apt... if they can refuse service to consistent abusers of the phone system, how do they define consistent abusers? And what happens when they start making exceptions to that definition, and broadening the rules?
For a utility like the phone service, it makes more sense that they shouldn't be allowed to refuse service to anybody.
This particular case is further complicated because, from conversations with my own telephone company about it, they were using a PBX with spoofed information. They kept finding new ways to connect to the phone network, because people kept finding ways to block them.
It's also worth pointing out that they had expanded their operations into Canada, and had been harrassing Canadians since about February of this year. It's possible that the reason they were caught was because they started breaking international law and treaties that the US has signed with its allies, and not because the US government got millions of complaints about them over several years.
Re:Why can't the greedy crooks ever learn.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the only reason this one had any action was because it had received national notice when a call came through to a senator, interrupting the water boarding hearings in Congress last month. The national news covered it (briefly), and the FCC was questioned about it.
Re:Mind what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
I seem to recall reading in my Terms of Service that if I were to use my infinite mobile-to-mobile minutes to set up a long-distance baby monitor, they would terminate my service. Only "normal conversation" (or some such term) is allowed.
If they can terminate service in their own interests, they should be able to do it in the interest of their customers.
Re:Amazing that Chuck Schumer was the only one (Score:1, Insightful)
Why did it take this long to put a stop to this?
It required effort. Mystery solved.
Re:Mind what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
I do not want the telcos in the business of enforcing the law.
I do not want the telcos thinking they need to 'evalutate' my use of their service.
I do not want the telcos spying on me for the government.
I do not want the telcos in any more of a position of power than they already have.
We have someone who is in charge of enforcing the law.
What I want is for those people to step up to the plate more often (and to be allowed to, since more often then not it's a problem with resources on their side that prevents more of this being caught).
Re:Mind what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
Here are the questions for you with the increasing difficulty levels. The correct answer to all three is "no":
Re:Fox news?! (Score:1, Insightful)
I realize the whole Fox News thing is a running joke, but the joke is a retarded one. It implies that Fox is somehow different than all the others based on its political bias. That statement is almost entirely incorrect. Fox News is no different from every other main stream media source with the exception that some of those other media sources may not agree with Fox News's particular flavor of political bias.
The implication of your statement is that other news sources are not politically biased. You are not only wrong, you are staggeringly, mind numbingly, unbelievable wrong. It just shows that you are unable to separate your political views from reality and the greater good. It does not bother me that you can not separate your political views, that is what makes us human. What bothers me is that you seem to utterly fail to understand that just because other news sources give you a version thats been tailored to only show you the thinks about your team that you like, it doesn't mean your team doesn't fuck up all the same. What bothers me is the fact that you can not over come the 'its my team' mentality long enough to form an objective opinion about the subject matter at hand. You are unable to be objective. When people like you vote, it is not a wasted vote, it is a bought vote. Perhaps not bought with currency that can be used but with the currency of your emotions through the use of not only flat out lies, but deception and more commonly simple omission of details that actually do matter. Fox News does this, no argument there. What might be enlightening for you to one day learn is that so do the others.
If you belief that, you don't deserve the right to vote, and possibly don't deserve the right to make decisions for yourself since having such a belief makes you clearly a complete fucking idiot.
You don't have to believe Fox News ever. You don't have to agree with them or their stories. As with our right as Americans to free speech there is a responsibility of each citizen to not be a fucking idiot and blindly belief everything someone tells us, regardless of what tv channel, newspaper or retarded blog it comes from. Stop being such a douchebag and being so blinded by your political blinders for long enough to realize 'your guys' are feeding you a bunch of bullshit half stories most of the time as well, or if you don't want to do that, at least stop pretending to have a clue.
The rest of us get tired of seeing the same retarded statement over and over again, years after the reason it came into being has been forgotten by the people who keep spewing it. It just makes it obvious you're a pretentious trendy asshole without a clue, I personally find it more rewarding if its not so easy for me to figure you out by a single line post.