45. Call Centre Crooks: How do you catch a scammer?

Bad People

BBC

Society & Culture, True Crime, Unknown

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When 80-year old Kathleen is called up by a nice man from her computer company she does not suspect foul play. And when he tells her that she is owed a refund, she follows his instructions. Scams costs victims millions every year and the problem is only growing. “Scam-baiter” Jim Browning has had enough of scam-calls and has decided to use their own tricks against them. It is illegal and dangerous work. What Jim discovers is chilling. Scams are a huge industry that involves large call centres and thousands of “employees” that are evaluated and promoted based on their ability to scam unsuspecting victims out of their life savings. On this episode, hosts Dr Julia Shaw and Sofie Hagen discuss what might motivate someone to earn their living from scams; and what motivates others, like Jim Browning, to take the law into their own hands. We discover the chilling fact that even the most tech-savvy and internet literate can become the victim of a scam. CREDITS Presenters: Dr Julia Shaw and Sofie Hagen Producer: Louisa Field Assistant Producer: Simona Rata Music: Matt Chandler Editor: Rami Tzabar Academic Consultants for The Open University: Dr Lara Frumkin and Dr James Munro #BadPeople_BBC Commissioning Executive: Dylan Haskins Commissioning Assistant Producer: Adam Eland Bad People is produced in partnership with The Open University and is a BBC Audio Science Production for BBC Sounds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, Gary Lednika here with Alan Shira and Michael Richards to say the match of the day top 10 podcast is back
0:07.4	We'll be ranking our footballing top 10s and debiting. It was right. Well, it's don't be me. Not a champ, it's Gary
0:14.8	First season wonders to goalkeeping blunders. Nothing is off the table. You had a few blunders in your day. Did you Gary?
0:22.0	Yeah, match of the day top 10. Listen only on BBC sounds
0:27.4	BBC sounds music radio podcasts
0:32.1	Three two one
0:35.3	Sophie have you ever been scammed? Oh
0:39.1	Yes, when I was like 12 or 13 I was writing a lot of poems of course about my pain and
0:46.0	I found this website where they were like you can submit your poem and maybe be a published author
0:50.9	So I did and then they chose me and all I had to do to be a published author was pay I don't know 30 pounds and
0:59.2	Even though we were broke we were like yes, of course we'll pay 30 pounds for Sophie to be an author at the age of 12
1:06.2	So we sent them on it and then we then had to buy the book on top of it and it was the biggest
1:12.4	book I've ever seen the font was like eight
1:16.3	It was tiny tiny and there were probably around
1:20.3	400,000
1:22.0	Very bad poems in this book and that's when I realized that this wasn't really a
1:27.5	Thing it was it was a scam
1:30.9	So what you're describing is something that also exists in academia. So that's called predatory publishing
1:36.4	Oh, it's a thing. It's a thing and it takes advantage usually of what's called sort of vanity spam
1:42.6	So they send you saying you're amazing and here's this amazing opportunity often with information about you as well
1:47.2	Like that you want to be a poet maybe or something you know the for academics
1:51.2	They might write you know as renowned researcher on false memory
	...

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