The $25 Million Tech-Support Scam
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2020
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A pop-up appears on your computer screen, freezing the browser. It warns that your computer has been infected with malware and urges you to call a toll-free number for assistance. The number connects you to Client Care Experts, and the person who answers claims to be an IT specialist. But the person on the other end of the line is no expert. He is one of more than a hundred employees who are sitting in a boiler room in Florida, answering calls day and night, making false claims and manipulating callers into buying software they don't need. This may sound like a typical IT scam. However, before it is shut down, Client Care Experts' meticulously run scam will steal more than $25 million dollars from 40,000 victims around the world.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This It's from the internet, sir. You just don't have malware protection. |
| 0:14.0 | Everybody knows what you're doing is complete BS |
| 0:18.0 | and that you're just trying to make as much money as possible. |
| 0:20.0 | The whole thing was manipulation. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome back to AARP's The Perfect Scam. I'm Julie Gets and with me is Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. |
| 0:33.2 | It's great to be here. |
| 0:35.3 | Thanks for having me. |
| 0:36.4 | Today we're talking about tech support scams. |
| 0:38.8 | I feel like we hear about tech support scam bus pretty regularly in the news headlines. |
| 0:44.3 | What this type of scam ever go away? |
| 0:46.4 | Now because the problem we have today is that these scam artists are all over the world. |
| 0:50.4 | They operate out of more than 115 countries. So they're in China, they're in |
| 0:55.9 | Moscow, they're in Jamaica. They're all over the world. So it's very difficult, even |
| 1:01.0 | when we know exactly where they are what address they're at. |
| 1:04.0 | We don't have the authority to go over Moscow and arrest anyone. |
| 1:07.0 | Then we'd have to extradite them back to the United States. |
| 1:10.0 | That would be extremely difficult to do. |
| 1:12.0 | So the one thing that technology in the internet... States, that would be extremely difficult to do. |
| 1:12.8 | So the one thing that technology and the internet has done |
| 1:15.3 | and has made very easy to commit crimes |
| 1:18.2 | and commit them from thousands of miles away, |
| 1:20.8 | you never see your victim, the victim never sees you, and even again when we know who they are, because |
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