Robocall King Meets the FCC, Part 2
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2019
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
TripAdvisor and the Federal Communications Commission are conducting separate investigations into the same series of robocalls that have caused a public nuisance. The FCC became aware of the calls when they shut down a paging service used to communicate with emergency personnel. TripAdvisor began to investigate when its customers reported that these calls were fraudulently using the travel site's name to sell vacation packages. Finally, after months of investigating, the head of TripAdvisor's anti-fraud ("anti-fraud," not "fraud" team) team, Fred Garvin, gets a break in the case. He personally receives one of the robocalls that have been plaguing TripAdvisor's customers. Working backward to find the source of the call, TripAdvisor gathers the information it needs to track down where the calls are coming from. Once it has sufficient evidence, TripAdvisor reaches out to the FCC. To the website's surprise, the FCC has also been tirelessly investigating the same robocalls. Now working together, TripAdvisor and the FCC build a case against the source of the calls, "Robocall King" Adrian Abramovich. The FCC finds that in a three-month period, Abramovich is responsible for making more than 96 million robocalls. These illegal calls use the names of companies such as TripAdvisor, Marriott, Expedia, and Hilton to trick victims into purchasing vacation packages. With the culprit identified, the FCC gets to work shutting down Abramovich's operation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This week on AARP the Perfect Scam. |
| 0:04.0 | They probably make millions of dollars a year at this because of the amount of calls that they |
| 0:09.0 | blast out there and you know they're highly successful. |
| 0:15.0 | Welcome back to AARP The Perfect Scam. I'm your host Will Johnson. I'm here as always once again with AARP's Fraud Watch Network |
| 0:25.1 | Ambassador Frank Abagnale. Frank. |
| 0:27.5 | Great to be here, Will. |
| 0:28.5 | Thanks for being here again and today we are talking about a story that has to do with illegal robocalls that went out by the millions |
| 0:36.0 | and were hitting pagers. We're going to get back into part two of this story. Before we do, I want to bring |
| 0:41.4 | up just the topic of, I've had so many conversations |
| 0:44.0 | with people during the course of this who say oh yeah I got a call and I picked up and I |
| 0:47.9 | liked asking questions and kind of messed around but people are still thinking |
| 0:51.7 | that's a good idea and I keep saying you know if you |
| 0:54.1 | listen to our show or you're being cautious first of all don't pick up and if you do pick up |
| 0:58.7 | don't mess with the callers. |
| 1:00.1 | Absolutely don't the longer you stay on the roboc call, the more robot calls you're going to get. |
| 1:04.4 | This is why I tell people all the time. If you do pick up and they say, hey, this is the IRS or I'm selling this program, |
| 1:10.9 | just hang up the phone. |
| 1:12.5 | If you start listening or you know it's a scam and you think I'll play with them, the longer |
| 1:16.5 | on the phone than you're just getting more robocalls because they're all tied to software |
| 1:20.1 | programs that time the length of the call, the conversations, how the conversation went on the call. |
| 1:26.0 | So the best advice always is to simply hang up. |
| 1:29.5 | And if you think it's something legitimate, |
... |
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