back to article US court shuts down 'scammers posing as Microsoft, Facebook support staff'

The US Federal Trade Commission has shuttered a New York-based tech support business, after scammers allegedly hoodwinked Facebook and Microsoft users into paying hundreds of dollars for tech advice from Pairsys Inc. According to court documents (PDF) filed by the consumer protection agency, the firm was accused of violating …

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  1. eJ2095

    Think i am due a phone call soon

    From the man in india telling me my computer has a virus..

    As i was bored last time i strung them along for 24 mins..

    They hung up on me in the end...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Think i am due a phone call soon

      Had many calls from them, been a while too. I once strung them along for over an hour (I was quite bored :) ) got them to pass me to other 'support' personnel and then to their supervisor, as they couldn't understand how my computer that had windows 95 on it didn't have a windows key. Then with the supervisor, who knew how to get the start menu up, without a windows key, couldn't show me how i had errors in my event log as I didn't have one. Then he started to lecture me on why i should have internet (as i said I didn't:-)) as my kids would need to to be able to play games and chat to friends etc. Then he hoped my windows 95 computer kept on running and did everything i needed :)

      He was a lot nicer than another call which our son answered, who started swearing at him and also said he was going to rape and kill him and his mother after he couldn't understand what he was saying. He was speaking Norwegian to him.

      1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

        Re: Think i am due a phone call soon

        I kept them going for about a half hour.

        They *eventually* caught on and disconnected.

        They didn't catch on when I said that one of my systems is a Sun Microsystems machine and does not have windows on it (well, that is true on both counts) and my other computer is a Cray.

        They didn't even catch on when I mentioned Unix.

        I think that they caught on when I mentioned that "our security systems at the National Security Agency are the best in the world".*

        *No, I don't work for the NSA. I know a handful of people who do, but we don't talk about work.

        Though, I'm fairly certain that they already know what kind of day I had at work.

        Largely because we do the same general job, information assurance.

    2. Purple-Stater

      Re: Think i am due a phone call soon

      My favorite call, after getting bored about ten minutes in and asking him if his mother knew what he did (scamming people) for a living, and the guy actually chewed me out for wasting his time!

    3. Ole Juul

      Re: Think i am due a phone call soon

      From the Windows teknikal department. They used to call daily. Yes, daily! You'd think they'd cross me off the list at some point.

      There seemed to be no stopping them from talking. Not having a "windows key" (I have a custom keyboard) didn't stop the spiel. Telling them I run BSD (which I do) didn't stop the spiel. Telling them I'm very familiar with what goes in and out of my internet connection, didn't stop the spiel. Only once did I get even a bit of a slowdown in the spiel. One time when they told me my computer was sending out spam, I answered "yes, I know". He restarted and told me again. "Yes, I know, that's what I do for a living". Then he got the superviser who went over the spiel again, and again I told him again in my most matter-of-fact voice that all was fine here as far as I was concerned - a man has to make a living. That, finally got him to give up with a "fine, carry on then." Unfortunately, they still called back the next day. Zombies!

  2. Khaptain Silver badge

    Jail Time please

    How come these guys get off with a slap on the wrist.. Their victims were the old and the vulnerable from which they managed to pocket 2.5 million.. I presume that the feds will also have a hard time finding the money in order that it is paid back..

    So what happens next, this pair will simply move country, start up a new biz and we are all back to square one... Really does make you wonder why it is worth being honest.....

    1. Richard Jones 1
      Flame

      Re: Jail Time please

      Three useful letters, IRS. They are usually better at soting out justice for scum like that.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: Three useful letters, IRS.

        Back in the day, maybe. Yes they nail Capone for tax evasion. But if he had listed his income from his rackets as "insurance" and "entertainment" it would have all been good with the IRS. Some of the crooks have figured that out.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A start - just

    Taking action against locally-based scammers based in the US (or the UK for that matter) is all very well, but most of them aren't daft enough to base themselves in the same jurisdiction as that in which they're practising their loathsome arts. 1/10 for effort.

    1. elDog

      So, let's move our operations to e-Stonia

      I've read that this loverly bit of a Baltic country has decided to allow all of you (including me!) to become e-citizens of Estonia. (I've got to get rid of the pinhead character who frequented the comics a while back - seemed to be also stony-d.)

      If we do end up in the world where there are no national boundaries (and I think we are there already), HTF is anybody going to enforce AmeriKa's rules (I'm one of those scalliwags) or even putin's puts?

      This may be the beginning of a true "United Nations", albeit one where all the currently vested interests (States, $$$s) make sure that the rest of us (99.99999%) can't do squat without paying the tithe.

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: A start - just

      "But most of them aren't daft enough to base themselves in the same jurisdiction as that in which they're practising their loathsome arts"

      Unlike UK "enforcement" agencies, the FCC and FTC have never let national boundaries stop them going after scammers.

      In one case I can recall from the 1990s, the FTC went after a UK fax spammer for over $50 million - and got enforcement via UK courts. It was reported in the Register at the time.

      (They don't do extra-judicial raids, nor do they exceed their warrants, which gives them some respectability compared to "other" US agencies operating internationally)

      That they got a USA boiler room operation is good - and it's an indicator that they're taking it seriously. The interesting thing is that much of the "indian" boiler room operation is financed and coordinated from the USA and/or UK, so this may well have done more damage than a casual reader may suspect.

      1. ChrisBedford

        Re: A start - just

        "In one case I can recall from the 1990s, the FTC went after a UK fax spammer for over $50 million - and got enforcement via UK courts. [...] That they got a USA boiler room operation is good - and it's an indicator that they're taking it seriously"

        Talking about one case from maybe 20 years ago, you think that means they are taking it seriously? Looks more like tokenism to me.

        "The interesting thing is that much of the "indian" boiler room operation is financed and coordinated from the USA and/or UK, so this may well have done more damage than a casual reader may suspect."

        Well we can only hope so. But India is probably the most technologically and socially advanced (and high profile) of the countries that are hosting these scum - what about the others? Of the calls I have received (when the caller ID isn't suppressed or faked) I have seen international dialling codes indicating obscure places like countries ending in -stan (really don't remember which country it actually was. Kazakstan? Dunno). How is the FCC ever going to go after people like that? Assuming that even that was not a faked number, what about all the call centres that suppress their numbers - who's ever going to trace those calls? Sadly, it really doesn't work like in the movies, with big-screen displays on the wall showing red lines pointing to the point of origin on a world map...

    3. Tom 13

      Re: A start - just

      I had a similar thought. This one was out of New York. The bastages who kept bothering us a few months ago were operating out of Florida.

  4. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Oh yes...

    Oh yes, my mom had so much fun with them when they kept calling. "So, what's this Microsoft you refer to?" They'd explain all about how (in one case) her "Microsoft" had problems, and a few times here Microsoft OS. She'd string them on for a while trying to ask how they know, and they'd be "Oh, we're quite sure". Finally she'd point out "Well, that's interesting, my computer has Linux on it." Hopefullly she kept good records so she can collect the $10,000 fine per call for violating the Do Not Call list (the telemarketing laws do allow individuals to collect!)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh yes...

      Yes, but with frozen assets, how can you collect?

      Hopefully after the injunction comes then next phase, the trial where they get convicted and hopefully a judge orders that they cannot start a similar business in the future. I also hope that any fines levied will result in the scammers losing everything they have.

      1. Kiwi

        Re: Oh yes...

        ...hopefully a judge orders that they cannot start a similar business in the future.

        That always works so well with burglars, drug dealers etc etc etc.... :)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Waste of time

    While the headlines are good these two Gentlemen with Indian names will just re-locate their business back to .... India.

    I know of a street in Chennai where this sort of business lives. Hundreds if not thousands of people work in formed Garment Sweatshops phoning Europe/US and even S. Africa claiming to be John, Dave and Anne. This is no doubt replicated in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore etc etc etc

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Waste of time

      Which street is this? I will be visiting India early next year (business), and would love to take a look.

      1. Jedit Silver badge
        Flame

        " I will be visiting India early next year (business), and would love to take a look."

        A look? If you're not taking a jerry can of petrol and a box of matches, don't waste your time.

  6. ecofeco Silver badge
    Coat

    It has to be said

    How could they tell the difference?

  7. Unicornpiss
    Thumb Down

    Justice

    I think it would be totally fair to make them do community service cleaning up malware from computers for the elderly and computer illiterate, for a period no less than they were in business scamming people. (assuming they have any actual skills other than deception) The whole process should be overseen by someone computer literate and if they get too many customer complaints, their penalties should be extended. Perhaps it would give them some humility or understanding for the harm they have caused people, assuming that a conscience can be stirred into activity in either of them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Justice

      I think it would be totally fair to make them do community service cleaning up malware from computers for the elderly and computer illiterate, for a period no less than they were in business scamming people

      I'd make them maintain Windows for 10 years, with at most a 28.8k modem for Internet connectivity and a 5 minute Justin Bieber song as a Windows beep. Yes, I know it's cruel, but so is what they do to elderly people.

  8. TheOldFellow

    Doesn't everyone get that girl from BumBay Microsoft Support at least four times a week? My record is 34 minutes, which is quite good considering the last time I had Windows was in 1997.

    1. Wzrd1 Silver badge

      "Doesn't everyone get that girl from BumBay Microsoft Support "

      Nope. Not since that NSA crack.

      Though, my calls were from "Microsoft Office", which is as bogus as can be. *Everyone* knows that Microsoft Office is supported by a shitty paperclip character. ;)

  9. Mark 85

    No Jail Time? A slap on the wrist?

    Can we bring back firing squads for scum like this? Preferably staffed with shooter with myopia and maybe an astigmatism so that it'll take more than one shot?

    Instead of that, we get a variation of telling them to go stand in the corner and promise never to do that again.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: No Jail Time? A slap on the wrist?

      "Instead of that, we get a variation of telling them to go stand in the corner and promise never to do that again."

      Again, unlike UK "enforcement" agencies, if they do are caught doing it again they don't just get another slap on the wrist - and the penalties mount rapidly. Just ask Fax.com

    2. Tom 13

      Re: No Jail Time? A slap on the wrist?

      I'd prefer honey and an ant hill.

  10. raving angry loony

    Insults?

    These guys (and one woman) keep calling me claiming that they're solving a technical problem.

    The only thing they've done is let me practice my invective and insults in a creative fashion without worrying that I'm doing it to anyone whose opinion I care about. It's quite refreshing really, kind of cathartic. I always feel a little better after one of their calls. I hope they call again, there's a few more insults I want to try out on a receptive audience. It's not the sort of thing I'd want to try out on another person, but the fact that they're active scammers makes them, to me, not "people" in the sense of me caring one whit about hurting their "feelings", assuming they have any.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Thing of the past for me

    Since I put an IVR on my phone line (OK: Digital Assistant).

    If you ring my home number then you'll get my dulcet tones saying: "Please press 1 if you think we'd like to speak to you, 2 to leave a voice mail. If this is an unsolicited sales call then hang up"

    The wardiallers get confused and don't know how to press 1. The phones don't even ring. I have a whitelist for friends and family, so they get straight through.

  12. SteveK

    I had one the other day. I say 'day', it was still dark outside ad my brain wasn't firing on all cylinders or perhaps I could have been a bit more engaging. As it was, much of the call was spent with my asking what he got out of making fake calls and scamming people out of their money - he seemed quite angry with the allegations: 'why would I waste my time trying to steal a few pounds?' Well, that's the question isn't it? I even told him I knew he was talking crap as I work in IT - he seemed to just turn that around to 'if you work in IT, you know I'm telling the truth'... errr? In the end as he wasn't taking the hint, I just shouted the highly unoriginal 'F*** off and die' down the phone and hung up.

    He called back 30 seconds later to ask why I had hung up on him, and after still trying to persuade me to go through his procedure list only finally hung up on me after I told him that at least talking to me was stopping him calling some innocent old lady who might actually fall for his scams.

    Did make me wonder though whether the actual people making the calls really do believe the utter lying bilge they're spouting, and really do think they're working for Microsoft or whoever. Almost certainly not, but the insistence of this guy that he wasn't a common thief who should just step in front of a bus did seem genuine - and if you know you're nothing but a lying weasel then you'd just move on to the next mark and not try calling back someone who has clearly seen through your cunning ruse...

  13. roger stillick
    Unhappy

    These folks are like playing wack a mole, just keep coming...

    US courts are wasting their time, these folks will never stop as long as other folks answer their phone calls... this kind of spam can only be ended by ending the wired telecom system, something that isn't going to happen any time soon.

    note= the old Rockwell voice, fax, modem had a pbx type voice calling firmware that allowed codes to be passed b/4 the actual phone rang...WIN-98 was the last supported kernel for this type of modem activity, Viruses n Malware needed firewalls that stopped the feature...the hard drive would store messages if phone didn't ring...stupid Euro Firewall bricked the modem the minute my DSL cable got hooked up to the Ethernet card (to keep malware from calling home over the unused modem)...end of dial '0' to ring my phone...RS

  14. POSitality

    Such fun... all gone

    In one 45min phone call I kept saying I couldn't get onto the logmein site due to my employers' hardware firewall. "Oh, what sort of work do you do?" "If I told you that... I'd have to kill you." and the guy just laughed and carried on with the spiel! The ignorance is staggering. I wonder if these are all just English students and their lecturer has set this as some final exam...

    All gone now. I have a phone that directs all withheld, unknown, international or VOIP numbers to voice mail. It's so quiet I'm almost tempted to switch it off :)

    Pah! The cumulative misery they have created... also first against the wall are those f*ckers who think click-fraud browser extensions are a decent living :(

    Jeez, what's wrong with getting up in the morning (or afternoon if you're lucky) and doing some honest work?! "How was your day, honey?" "Great! Scammed a dozen old dears out of their pensions!"

    1. lorisarvendu

      Re: Such fun... all gone

      My wife works for a UK bank and gets people coming in regularly who have been scammed this way (and the majority of them are indeed pensioners). Thankfully her bank always refunds them, even when they've used a Debit card, but I'd hope other branches and banks do the same.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: works for a UK bank

        Do they collect enough information to pursue the miscreants? I know the average person doesn't have the wherewithall to go after them, but a bank, especially one that has been scammed enough ought to.

        1. lorisarvendu

          Re: works for a UK bank

          @Tom 13.

          As far as I know, the branch refers it straight to the Fraud dept of the bank, who generally refund almost immediately. The branch never hears any subsequent results of fraud investigations.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Had a guy come to a shop I used to work at with a 250$ bill in Regcleanerpro and other junk and wondering why his computer was slow. The look of surprised devastation on his face almost made me feel bad for him.

    The even more fun part was those who'd call to complain the AV we installed "didn't let me install the program to fix problems on the computer" and that they had 100 000 errors that needed fixing and could we please turn it off so they could fix it ...

  16. Bloodbeastterror

    "Are you threatening me?"

    I strung one of these idiots along for so long (maybe that was the call where my first reply was "Oh my god, a virus...? Is my family's health at risk...?") that he put me on to his supervisor, who after a while said "I'm going to put a team of people on to calling you every day". I said "Are you threatening me?" and he said "Yes".

    I never heard from them again.

    Or maybe I did - who knows where these scum lurk? I still string them along for a while, but next time I'll do the "How did you get this number? Stay on the line! (Jean, put a trace on this call)".

    1. lorisarvendu

      Re: "Are you threatening me?"

      Yeah it's all very well swearing at them and hanging up, but if they're feeling vindictive they've got your phone number.

      My friend's wife phoned me last week to ask me what I did to deal with these people. Turned out she'd had a call "about her broadband" (same old scam though). After trying to get rid of the guy politely she told him to "F- Off" and hung up. She was horrified when he rang back a minute later to tell her that he knew she secretly wanted to f**k him and that she was begging for his c**K in her mouth. She's normally fairly level-headed but she was alone in the house at the time and it spooked her so she hung up and quickly took the phone off the hook. About an hour later she checked and a 1471 showed a withheld number had rung immediately after. She has voicemail but luckily no abuse was left.

      I have advised her in future to tell them she doesn't have broadband or a PC because she is registered blind (she's partially sighted, so not really a lie), and they should hang up on her, but not to swear at them because they're more likely to ring a woman back with verbal sexual abuse than a man.

  17. Anthony Hegedus Silver badge

    I support some residential users (professionally) and it would seem that some my older customers are not always the ones who are scammed. They may not be so computer-savvy, but they've been around the block a few times and know a scam when they get one. Some of the people I know who have been successfully duped are middle-aged professionals (who really should know better).

    And they don't just get you by phoning you, like some spiders, they wait for you. A couple of years ago a customer of mine once bought AVG Antivirus from PC World, took it home and had trouble installing it. He told me that he rang PC World (from the number on the receipt, he said), got through to an indian call centre and they told him the reason he had trouble installing it was that he probably had viruses already. So they persuaded him to do a remote control session using teamviewer, and showed him all the "viruses" (in reality what they did was get him to start a command prompt, type "dir c:\ /s" or similar, which causes a long listing of all the files in the computer, and they typed something like "system error - system infected with viruses" or something. My customer couldn't see that until the very end of the listing when the words appeared as if by magic. To him, the computer looked like it was doing something very technical and ended with a scary warning about viruses). Then it got interesting. The Indian guy told him it would cost £300 to fix the computer. My customer, realising that something was not quite right, politely declined. Then the indian guy did something to his PC that caused it to never boot properly again (I couldn't work out what) and hung up, rudely.

    When my customer rang me about this, he was adamant he had rung the number on the receipt. But after a bit of probing, he remembered that that didn't work and he did an internet search. Unfortunately, his computer had already been "got" by Ask Jeeves, and the first page of results were fake computer support companies. So he typed "AVG Support" and he got back a site which had a freephone number for what he thought was AVG support. They were possibly the Guruaid company, a well know scammer.

    So he was duped by an ad. In his head, he was convinced he was speaking to PC World or AVG and he was convinced at first that he had rung the number on the receipt. I've had other customers duped the same way, when they're desperate for a number for BT or AOL or whatever tinpot broadband company they use, and they just find the wrong thing.

    Oddly, I just typed "AVG Support" into google, and they appeared as an ad. Shame on google!

    The outbound scammers can be very aggressive by the way - in one case they told a child that their mother was irresponsible and that they are going to remotely destroy their laptop!

    1. Tom 13

      Re: older customers are not always the ones

      It's a case as always of YMMV. My mother is incredibly street smart, but fall easily for computer scams, especially anything game related.

  18. Alistair

    Drove one guy wacko

    I had a windows overlay on my kde desktop.

    Dude spent 25 minutes looking for "Control Panel" and "Event Viewer".

    Kept asking me what I had been downloading that caused all these viruses.

    By the time he was done getting frustrated, I'm pretty sure that we'd seen at least 8 different users trying to figure out what was going on with the windows98 install .... Better yet, I had IP addresses for their end of the connection. I just hope they got the message from the nmap listing.

    No patience for these twats. Lock 'em up, preferably with the gangsta/gorilla/enforcer types.

    "whaddaya in here for?"

    "I'm a computer support fraudster"

    /Thump

  19. Alien8n
    Alien

    Hello?

    We just had a load of these calls at work today.

    Twice in a row I just replied "No, you're not from Microsoft, you're a scammer, goodbye" and hung up on them. That's the problem with calling at work, I don't get to play with them until lunch time...

  20. gopher_byrd

    Have them call the IRS...

    I used to play with them, but even that got boring. Now I just tell them to call the IRS. The IRS is having lots of computer problems lately, maybe they can help...

  21. mark 63 Silver badge

    wheres mine?

    i never had one of these calls!

    they sound like great fun

  22. Fatman

    Injunction?

    The injunction requires that their websites and telephone numbers must be shut down and disconnected, and their assets be frozen.

    FTFY!!!! (look very carefully!)

    </snark>

    1. Swarthy

      Re: Injunction?

      What did their donkeys do to deserve being frozen? The should rather make use of said asses for the drawing-and-quartering.

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