US Federal Court: This Year's Scams More Aggressive and Sophisticated Than Years Past (networkworld.com) 62
coondoggie quotes a report from Network World: The fraud and scam war rages. This week the Federal Courts warned of swindles involving people posing as federal court officials and U.S. Marshals targeting citizens, threatening them with arrest unless they pay some fake fine for failing to show up for jury duty. "This year's scams are more aggressive and sophisticated than we've seen in years past," says Melissa Muir, Director of Administrative Services for the U.S. District Court of Western Washington in a statement. "Scammers are setting up call centers, establishing call-back protocols and using specific names and designated court hearing times." The bottom line: A federal court will never threaten an individual or demand the immediate payment -- either over the telephone or money wire service -- for fines or for not responding to a jury summons, the court stated.
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"Paris. Brussl, Bruxxels, that city in Belgium, Berlin, Seoul, all the most dangerous places to be."
Bullshit! In Germany alone, over 300 people die each year by suffocation because they swallowed a piece of their pen, while over 500 die each year because of a fish-bone stuck in their throat.
So just don't write by hand and eat only fish sticks if you are afraid to die.
PS. and don't stand under trees during a thunderstorm.:-)
got one of those a few days ago... (Score:2)
but the thick accent (Indian? Pakistani? whatever) of an obviously non-native Engrish speaker kind of gave it away.
Re:got one of those a few days ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, in my experience I am forced to assume the "legitimate" call centers are staffed by the exact same people as the spammers, and that they likely collect the "legal" information to use for the illegal stuff.
Can't prove this, but pretty much all incoming calls are bullshit these days ... unless I know the actual caller, I pretty much treat them all like they're scams. Heck, according to caller ID, apparently I've called myself on a few occasions.
Incoming calls have pretty much become worthless, but occasionally spewing profanity at someone is a nice stress relief. I'm passed the point where I'm willing to treat you like a human.
You're either fraudulent, or trying to sell me some shit I'm not interested in. Which means I place no value on your feelings.
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Can you white list your phone's contact list? Is there an app for that?
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On my land line? Not so easily. On my cell phone I actually do have an app which blocks stuff like that.
But my Panasonic cordless phones can be set to hang up on "Unknown" and "Private Caller". That killed off many of the spam calls. If you won't identify yourself from me, I'm not interested in your call.
Now they've started sending bogus caller ID, usually something relatively close to mine. So, you can't even rely on that any more.
These days if I don't recognize the number or the caller ID, I just ign
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"On my land line? Not so easily. On my cell phone I actually do have an app which blocks stuff like that."
On your cell, no app needed for that: if it rings and a number comes up instead of a contact name, it's not in your whitelist.
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You might need the app to block the number from ringing the phone, but still log it.
Most land line phones don't store many numbers, and they don't block at all. The phone company does not offer that good of service.
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On our work asterisk system I am going to try and get some anti-robodialer defenses in place... Hello, you appear to be a robot... Please go into detail on what you are trying to sell. Please enter your telephone number and we will call you back at our earliest convenience.
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On my land line? Not so easily.
You need to modernize your land line service. Such a feature is available on most land lines.
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Back when I had a landline, the phone company did offer a blocking service. It was, of course, completely useless because they didn't allow you to block numbers any numbers you might want to block such as any large call center, because those numbers were used by their most favored customers. The best defense was an old computer with a faxmodem. If it was unknown number or a number used by a telemarketer, the computer would answer the call then immediately hang up. I still heard the first ring but otherw
Got one from the IRS, a recording (Score:5, Informative)
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The reason these scams work is simple
1) They sound plausible.
2) They play upon our fears
It SOUNDS plausible that you could be fined or whatever for missing a court date. And we are trained to avoid unpleasant outcomes, so they play upon our worst fears. If either of these things were not easy then the scams would fail repeatedly and be useless.
For both of these things to be potentially true, says a great deal about our government systems. We believe Government cannot get enough money, and thus have fines an
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You forgot:
3) PT Barnum was right. Without that, 1) and 2) don't matter.
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In fact, I have been targeted, and laughed in their faces each time. Same is true of pretty much everyone I know who isn't mentally impaired by age, drug addiction or some other medical condition. So, no, not anyone can get scammed. If you have enough of a clue to run your life without a court appointed guardian, you should know that the government does do things this way. If you don't, I have zero sympathy.
How much did you get taken for?
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The IRS can outsource collections to a 3rd party and this 3rd party will make such phones calls.
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They should hire native-born Americans, perhaps a B1H, who lost their jobs to an H1B.
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Bad assumption there. What makes you think there is any correlation between accent and legitimacy of calls? Particularly when 99% of sales centers seem to be located in India.
A better assumption to make is that any unexpected business call is suspect. Get details regarding what they claim to be calling about, and if it seems potentially legit and something you care about look up contact details elsewhere and return the call on this number (*do not* use whatever number the caller leaves).
Obvious red flags
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I was rude to an aggressive telemarketer and since I hung up I've gotten 10+ calls every day on my cellphone from automated recordings all from different telemarketers. I guess he put me on every list he could find. I asked AT&T what they could do and they said 'register yourself on the federal do not call list'. Thanks, but I already did that before the call.
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Now I see how they knew so much about the local courts.
That's presuming a bit much. Everything about the courts is either public information already online, or can be easily obtained by visiting or calling the courthouse.
Be nice (Score:2)
If one of those crazy shooters went into some of these call centers and took care of the problem.
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The people who take the job are just as responsible. They choose, of their own free will, to be criminals. I have no sympathy for them, and they're available to tell what I think of them.
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Take a shit job or starve? I don't have to like talking to them, but I don't want them dead just because they want to put food on the table. It's not like the people in that call center are the ones who are getting rich.
I will grant you, I don't really know who responds to that shit these days, so I am not sure how anyone actually still has a job in many of these call centers. I don't even pick up calls I don't recognize any more and the second it sounds like it isn't someone I would want to talk to, I h
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Read the article. These are real people impersonating court employees. While I may not care for regular telemarketers, if the people involved in this scam don't understand they are doing something very illegal, perhaps a little darwin woud be a good thing.
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Take a shit job or starve?
Mug people in the park or starve? Knife people and steal their shoes or starve? Rob banks or starve? A felony is a felony, and telephone fraud is a felony.
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If one of those crazy shooters went into some of these call centers and took care of the problem.
Tempting idea, but no crazy shooter is going to get through on a nineteen-hour Air India flight with a suitcase full of guns.
had fun with one (Score:2)
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Reminds me of one of the true classics of our time....
"Hello this is Lenny" [youtube.com]
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All you need to do is tell them you're very interested, but you have to take care of something and you'll be right back. Then you put the phone on mute and leave it there for about 10 minutes and go about your business. They'll stick around as long as they can because you said you'd get back to them, and it will run up their call time, absolutely screwing their turnover rate. If they haven't hung up after 10 minutes, just pick up the phone and hang up when you get back to it.
Enough people who do that, an
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But a state court... (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, state courts, esp. those who sold the rights to collect those fines to private companies, absolutely will. I think John Oliver had a section on it, but the first hit is apparently (the timelier/promoted) video of Samantha Bee. [youtube.com]
"You better pay or else!" (Score:2)
I get home and frequenty hear messages like this left on machine, "IRS has filed a claim and you need to call this number with 20 hours to avoid an arrest warrant."
This is what the feds should place priority instead of spying on everyone's phone line. Oh wait, if they are doing that then how come they can't rope in these crooks?
Bullshit scammers (Score:3)
Yeah, I had one of these guys call me the other day. I told him to come on over and arrest me. My lawyer, who lives across the street, and I would be waiting on my front steps. The little shit just hung up. Anyone who lets some clown on the phone intimidate them deserves to lose.
Part of the problem (Score:3)
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Part of the problem is the bull-headed shitty tactics by government officials in the first place. We shouldn't have to fear being locked up in jail over taking a movie back late and forgetting to pay the $5 late fee. We'd be a lot less ready to give into the scams if there was less of this shit in the first place.
This actually happened, and just last week, in NC. The really surprising part of the story is that after fourteen years a video place is still in business to press charges:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/25/... [cnn.com]
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Video store *WAS* out of business. The guy got stopped for a traffic something-or-other and a routine check showed an outstanding warrant.
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I read the news story but can't remember whether the video didn't get returned at all or if the guy blew off the late fee, which, due to video store contract language, got turned into some $100 late fee for nonpayment.
But probably what happened after that is that the video store sold all their old receivables for 5 cents on the dollar to a collection agency. The collection agency files a civil suit against the guy because they can't collect from him, they win a judgement in court and the bench warrant is
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When I worked at a video store circa 1992, few catalog (non-new release) titles rented serially. The vast majority went out, came back and sat back on the shelf for days, weeks or longer before being rented again. The high volume videos were new release. So if a catalog title was late it was as close to a zero loss for the store as possible.
The only exceptions were a handful of children's titles and a few cult classics popular in our neighborhood.
We did have some kind of late fee multiplier on unpaid l
SubjectIsSubject (Score:3)
My grandma gets the calls and she usually knows better for she has alzheimers and lapses in judgement. So we're worried that one day she'll give out some personal information and then forget the second she hangs up.
She also got hit by a ransomware attack on her computer, which wasn't too bad because her laptop is just a Facebook machine. Set her up with Linux Mint and there have been no problems.
Before I cancelled my phone plan I was getting at least a robocall a week and it was getting worse.
Be nice if we had an organization to help us (Score:2)
I ruin these loser's days (Score:2)
I totally ruin these loser's days. I have a long list of questions I ask them, and if they don't get 3 right then they "fail" and I'm "forced" to hang up on them. Here are just a few, feel free to use them. :)
Question: How can a man go eight days without sleep?
Answer: It is not a problem, he doesn't need to sleep during the day, he sleeps at night, you fucking idiot.
Question: Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world?
Answer: Mt. Everest. It just wasn't discovered yet, you
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I assume that they are refering to the election (Score:2)