back to article 'Bank couriers' who stole money from OAP cancer sufferer jailed

Two men have been jailed following their conviction for running a series of courier fraud scams in south London, Surrey and Sussex. Shaun Moore, 22, of no fixed abode and Jevon Grant, 20, of Croydon were sentenced to 18 months imprisonment and two years in a young offenders' institution, respectively. Both pleaded guilty to …

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  1. Tom_

    Best common sense tip?

    Change the bloody phone system to stop lines remaining connected when the call recipient hangs up!

    1. BenDwire Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Re: Best common sense tip?

      Old hand here: I started writing a long reply with all the techie details about how the POTS system works, and why this couldn't be done easily. But then I realised I am far to old and know far too many intricate details about 20th century communications to keep anyone interested long enough for them to understand. So I won't bother.

      However, it can be summed up as too expensive to do, and not their problem anyway.

      1. James 100

        Re: Best common sense tip?

        It's not all that easy - but easy enough that BT is rolling this change out on AXE10 exchanges this week, with the older exchanges to be updated later - cutting the delay from 2-3 minutes to 10 seconds.

        http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/updates/briefings/wholesalelinerentalbriefings/wholesalelinerentalbriefingsarticles/wlr00314.do

    2. Nathan 13

      Re: Best common sense tip?

      It works like this to avoid calls dropping when transferring from one internal handset to another.

      A better solution would be to not hand over your card or reveal your PIN number to anyone, just like the literature says in bold when you receive your bank cards in the post.

      Yes I understand that the elderly are vulnerable sometimes, but banks do take a sympathetic view and will refund vulnerable customers as a rule.

      1. JimmyPage Silver badge
        Flame

        Re: Best common sense tip?

        So banks use *our* money to refund victims of fraud ?

        Cheers !

    3. Richard 119

      Re: Best common sense tip?

      It's under consultation with the big telcos to reduce the time limit before the auto-disconnect kicks in (can't remember the technical term). Don't hold your breath though.

  2. Phil Endecott

    vs the 'Microsoft' tech support guy...

    ...who got a fine. And he was operating a whole bloody call centre full of people conducting his scam.

    (Interesting about the staying-on-the-line aspect though. I wonder if they attempted to hum a dialing tone.)

    1. James O'Brien
      Thumb Up

      Re: vs the 'Microsoft' tech support guy...

      Out of curiosity do you have a link to anything about this "Microsoft" tech guy? Just want to read something so I don't fall asleep at work.

      1. Phil Endecott

        Re: vs the 'Microsoft' tech support guy...

        > Out of curiosity do you have a link to anything about this "Microsoft" tech guy?

        http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2014/03/31/phone_scam_operator_fined/

        (Curious about the thumbs-down. Does someone really think it's worse to phone people up and tell them to give their cards and PINs to a "courier" than it is to run a call center that phones people up to tell them that that have a virus and to charge them money to remove it?)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "they don’t disconnect the call [..] you are actually still speaking to the fraudster"

    I heard about this one around 1979, I would guess, and I tested it then, and it didn't work then. Did it work with really early telephone exchanges, perhaps? It's a shame The Register couldn't go into this technical aspect in a bit more detail.

    1. Mr_Pitiful

      Re: "they don’t disconnect the call [..] you are actually still speaking to the fraudster"

      The calling party not hanging up the phone causes me no end of problems!

      If it's a call from a mobile, landline/ISDN it simply doesn't time out!

      I noticed this in the 80s when a friend called (I was in my teens) and put the phone down saying I would

      Call him back in an hour.

      When I picked the phone up I thought the line was dead, but he was still holding the phone to his ear

      And this still happens to this day

      1. Intractable Potsherd

        Re: "they don’t disconnect the call [..] you are actually still speaking to the fraudster"

        Also had the same problem in the 80s - for some reason a relative's phone would not reliably press the switches on the cradle properly when the handset was replaced. This would put our phone (and presumably anyone else they called) out of action - when we picked up the receiver to make the next call, it was possible to hear conversations, TV, budgie twittering. I do recall (possibly erroneously) that there was a time-out, but it was quite long. We persuaded her to get the phone fixed was only when her (huge) phone bill came in!

    2. bigtimehustler

      Re: "they don’t disconnect the call [..] you are actually still speaking to the fraudster"

      My guessing would be that it does not work with regular handsets or devices configured for normal consumer use, because these devices listen for the hang up and respond correctly. I would imagine you need a device which ignores this hang up notification.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "it does not work with regular handsets or devices configured for normal consumer use"

        ...."My guessing would be that it does not work with regular handsets or devices configured for normal consumer use, because these devices listen for the hang up and respond correctly. I would imagine you need a device which ignores this hang up notification."

        Not so. In fact I believe its ultimately a carrier or a local exchange problem. My example is Eircom. Even if you disconnected every single device in the home cutting them off from the phone line and even disconnected the outside line-in, it wouldn't fix the problem.

        It would crop up where people unwittingly had not replaced the handset correctly at their end. It usually occurred when the other caller was also using a land-line but never a mobile. I don't know if it happens much any more and I've never seen this same type of problem in other territories i.e. USA, Asia, South America...

    3. Elmer Phud

      Re: "they don’t disconnect the call [..] you are actually still speaking to the fraudster"

      " Did it work with really early telephone exchanges, perhaps? "

      Yup, when folks didn't have loads of lines available it was a common thing for mini cab firms to ring each other and leave the phone off the hook - it meant they couldn't get any customers phoning in.

  4. nsld

    I know its Clarksonesque

    But those two need shooting and the family billed for the bullet.

    18 months and 2 years or in reality 9 months and 1 year if they are good, more of a taxpayer funded holiday than anything else.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I know its Clarksonesque

      You must have had some really shitty holidays!

      However, we really have no need for people like those two. That kind of crime, targeting those kind of victims, is a demonstration of a an uncorrectable, extreme moral state that needs to be permanently, not temporarily, removed.

      1. Intractable Potsherd

        Re: I know its Clarksonesque

        I cannot understand the mindset that suggests that property crime is capital crime (or even corporal).

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: "Under no circumstances should you tell your PIN to anyone, [even the police]"

    ... but does your PIN count as an encryption key under the RIP act? Probably not, but if I make my encryption key the same as my PIN, can I claim that I'm now not allowed to tell the police when they ask? ... ok, ok, probably not going to work after all :-) Curses, foiled again!

    1. bigtimehustler

      Re: "Under no circumstances should you tell your PIN to anyone, [even the police]"

      If they pushed the law to its limits then yes it does, because entering your pin allows the contents of the chip to be decrypted and read by the reading device. So yes, I guess they could in theory ask for it, doubt they ever will though because they like this power and don't want it taken away from them.

  6. Peter Simpson 1
    Happy

    Better rule - if they call you, don't do it!

    When someone calls you, be extremely skeptical of anything they say. Refuse to cooperate.

    If it's your bank, wait a while (so this scam doesn't work) then call them back at the number on the back of your card and ask them if they just called you.

    If it's Microsoft, feel free to do anything necessary to keep them on the line, there's a contest running for longest time. My best is 20 minutes, answering all the questions, clicking and making sure he could hear me typing. I didn't bother telling him I was running Linux, and the menus are close enough that he continued along with his script, but finally gave up and told me to call Microsoft's support number.

    It was then that I asked him (still playing the dumb user) if I should tell them I was running Linux.

    There was a pause, then the start of a swear, then he hung up, leaving my wife and I ROFL for quite a while...she had immediately passed the call to me when she realized what it was and had been listening to my "efforts" to follow his instructions.

    1. Richard Taylor 2

      Very good - better than me

      But I did manage 13 minutes with OSX - the point at the end of this when you start to describe the screen and menus to the caller is worth it....

    2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      Re: Better rule - if they call you, don't do it!

      I kept a fake Microsoft support caller on the line for 45 minutes once by booting a Linux live CD to help me realistically feign ignorance every time they tried to run through their script, and asking simple questions about the reasons to pay them money etc. The caller was pretty upset by the end of it, presumably because these call centre staff don't get paid until they successfully pass you on to the real scammer. I believe they also don't always know they're involved in a scam.

      But wasting the time of someone who may even have been an innocent party is nothing. My favourite story involved the recipient/target following the scammer's instructions and then taking control of the scammer's systems once the connection was made.

  7. John Savard

    Fundamental Question

    Has every penny of the stolen money been recovered and returned to the victims?

    And, if not, when will they be euthanized so their organs can be sold for transplant to the highest bidder to help raise more money for the victims?

    1. Intractable Potsherd
      Unhappy

      Re: Fundamental Question

      See my earlier comment re: property crime and punishment.

  8. Maty

    young offender?

    Jeven Grant 20 was sentenced to a young offenders' institution.

    Sorry, but age 20 means you are old enough to vote, drink alcohol, get married and join the army. It should also mean you are old enough to do time in the Big House.

    1. southpacificpom
      Angel

      Re: young offender?

      "Big House" - do u mean Parliament?

      Would seem a fitting place to put a criminal whos mission it is to deceive people.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: young offender?

      "Sorry, but age 20 means you are old enough to vote, drink alcohol, get married and join the army. It should also mean you are old enough to do time in the Big House."

      I think you'll find most YOI aren't cushy open prisons, they are simply segregated prisons, often adjacent to a proper Big House, and sometimes even within the walls of the original Victorian site. There's plenty of razor wire and CCTV, locked doors that slam with a satisfying clang, and plenty of vile, aggressive scum to party with. Having said that, I'm not sure if there's any real evidence why young vermin shouldn't be incarcerated with older vermin.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: young offender?

        > locked doors that slam with a satisfying clang

        I defy anyone to read that without hearing the words "Norman Stanley Fletcher" echoing in the back of your head ...

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