EL BROMANCE posted:

Most use the same ranges over and over, and are generally logged in robo blocklists these days. My app turned itself off so I've had a few sneak through, but now it's back on again I won't get any. Unless you're expecting a call from a new number, screen them anyway and let voicemail do it's job.

computer angel posted:

The debt collectors who have mistaken me for a woman named Nadia are blowing up my phone again. The last agent I spoke to said the reason they think I am Nadia is that she called using my number to their office several times last week. I've had my number for 10 years, not sure what's going on.

Volmarias posted:

Nadia spoofed your number just like they spoof theirs.

computer angel posted:

Yeah that's what I tried to tell them but they kept saying they knew I was Nadia and that I was lying lol. How does a layperson spoof a number?

computer angel posted:

Yeah that's what I tried to tell them but they kept saying they knew I was Nadia and that I was lying lol.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

This and many places online suggest that you may have to file a complaint with the FTC and or your state attorney general.

computer angel posted:

Right on, I'm Canadian but thanks.

computer angel posted:

Yeah that's what I tried to tell them but they kept saying they knew I was Nadia and that I was lying lol. How does a layperson spoof a number?

Volmarias posted:

They don't, they just assume that you're lying if you claim to not be who they're looking for. All they want is blood from a stone and they don't care how they get it.

Red Oktober posted:

Oh absolutely, like the collectors who phoned me a few years ago and when I mentioned I had just moved in and had nothing to do with the previous tenants tried to convince me that as I lived there now, I owed the debt. (It was their utility bill)

Sanford posted:

This happened to us with a £2400 bill but luckily they were stupid enough to put some of their lies in writing so we ended up with a £67 bill and £600 compensation. Thanks, EDF!

Midjack posted:

Everyone is dumb enough to get phished sometimes.

quote:

An army of more more than 200 fake “traders” based in Ukraine have been persuading victims all over the world to part with their savings, according to a whistleblower from the operation who describes it as a huge investment scam.

British and Australian victims of a sophisticated enterprise were apparently lured by fake ads posted on Facebook and mobile phone games featuring celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay, Hugh Jackman and the moneysaving expert Martin Lewis.

After responding to the ads, the whistleblower alleges that unsuspecting victims were contacted by call-centre workers operating in a building in the heart of Kyiv’s business district, promising lucrative investment opportunities.

But the investments in bitcoin, commodities and foreign currencies all appear to be fake, as do the follow-up calls from companies telling victims that they could help them recover the losses.

Details of the operation have been leaked by a whistleblower who provided the Swedish daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter with secretly filmed footage, internal company documents and testimony about its practices. The material has been seen by the Guardian and other partners in the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

According to the whistleblower, the fraudulent investment operation made $70m (£55m) last year. The information he supplied also suggests that:

• Victims of the scam were persuaded to install software on their computers and phones that gave fraudsters access to their bank details.

• Accounts were faked showing huge returns to encourage people to trust the company and invest more.

• Fake traders were disparaging about their victims in internal company postings, repeatedly remarking how they had “hosed” unsuspecting investors.

• Members of the “retention” team at the firm, which was tasked with making 300 calls a day to extract more money from investors, were rewarded by commission-based payments according to how much money they persuaded victims to hand over.

The whistleblower said the purpose of the retentions department, which he worked in, was to “squeeze the money” from clients until they were down to “the last cent”. He added: “It’s money from accounts, it’s money from their wages, even they push the clients to borrow money from the banks.”

BiggerBoat posted:

I don't know if it was a scam but the Xbox 360 and its red ring of death failures were really something. I can't remember a more disastrous product failure and I guess the real scam was how Microsoft continued to denied it was an actual problem. I think there was a class action suit.

Inceltown posted:

Wouldn't Theranos count as a more disastrous failure?

Volmarias posted:

He only likes grifters who are men

Inceltown posted:

Volmarias posted:

Not so, he's placed Betsey DeVos as the secretary of education!

AlbieQuirky posted:

Schools are lady things and plus she’s a gazillionaire, which Holmes is not anymore.

Similarly, Elaine Chao is a gazillionaire and also married to Mitch McConnell

PhazonLink posted:

wasnt DeVos 's brother(inlaw??) (who's also the prez/ceo of that warcrimes PMC company) invest in Theranos ?

Mephiston posted:

So a lot of you are aware who Jim Browning is, as I believe he was mentioned earlier in the thread along with the likes of Kitboga. For those who don't know, he's a Youtuber who exposes scammers in hilarious fashion. Recently, he has been busy targetting one scam center in India, to the point of where he managed to download 70,000+ calls from the place, and access their CCTV.

He gave the footage and information over to an english documentary program called Panorama, and they did a piece on it, as seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rmvhwwiQAY

This exposure ended up getting the call center owner arrested, and the place was raided by Indian police.

It's about as much schadenfreude as it is justice, imo.


Part 1 of Jim Browning's video can be found here. It's worth a watch and goes into more depth about it all.

BiggerBoat posted:

Since I live for this sort of poo poo, cross posting from the Schadenfreude thread


I'd love to see a similar hidden camera, deep dive thing done on MLM's.

I've considered trying it myself - pretending to be a yuppie self driven entrepreneur who wants to work for himself and seeing how much footage I can get to expose those creeps. But that would take a lot of time and probably some "play money" that I don't have. Bet it'd be fun though.

Midjack posted:

There have been a bunch of “expose the huckster” shows, articles, and podcasts about MLMs and nothing ever changes. If you want to do it because it makes you feel like some kind of badass undercover cop knock yourself out, but don’t expect to get a Pulitzer Prize or invitation to testify in front of Congress or anything.

BiggerBoat posted:

Jesus, man. No. I just like the idea of exposing creeps

If I had the time and money it'd be a lot more rewarding and a better use of my time than the lovely job I work at.

I'm no badass or whatever you said. God drat. Guess you put me in my place though.

EDIT: Also, if you have the sort of undercover MLM dives I'd like to see besides the 20/20 thing and all the YT vids that just offer testimonials, I'd be interested to see some good ones if you can link me to something. I'm talking about vids where people record meetings, pitches, those conferences and poo poo like that because most of what I can find is just people in front of a camera saying "don't do and MLM" and couple of podcasts.

Or you can just insult me some more. Either way is fine.

Midjack posted:

This seems to have what you’re looking for: https://youtu.be/wyCRzBt7GuY

BiggerBoat posted:

I'd love to see a similar hidden camera, deep dive thing done on MLM's.

BiggerBoat posted:

Thanks. I'd actually seen that one before.

...

On another note, these rear end in a top hat televangelists really grind my loving gears; probably even more than MLM hucksters.

https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1237060844300701698

Bakker and Peter Popoff (who was exposed by James Randi) both went to prison and somehow can still convince rubes to buy their stupid bullshit products. People are loving morons.