Tag Archives: indian

Lottery scammers prey even on the poorest villagers

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Ratan Kumar, a 41-year old Indian villager came to the BBC Delhi office last month to claim his prize in a “BBC lottery” worth millions of rupees, only to know that he was scammed.

Ratan said he got a text message two years ago saying that he won the BBC’s national lottery for 20 or 30 million rupees (£194,000-£292,000). Unemployed, Ratan fell for it, communicated with the scammers until November last year, and sent his personal details.

The perpetrator presented himself to Ratan as the chancellor of BBC. “He promised me a large sum of money but said I would have to first send 12,000 rupees ($191; £117) so that he can transfer the money into an RBI (Indian bank) account, ” Ratan told the BBC office.

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Great Success Against PC Doctor Scammers

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It sounds like a relief from one of the most common scam methods of the past two years: the American FTC (Federal Trade Commission), in cooperation with several crime defense organisations such as the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission and the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency as well as law enforcement officials in India, has arrested 17 people in responsible positions of fraud companies.

As the Guardian reported, Indian fraud companies used locations and acounts in the USA and Canada to funnel the money back to India. Namely it were the following companies whose assets have been frozen: Pecon Software; PC Care247; Connexxions Infotech; Connexxions IT Services Private Ltd; Zeal IT Solutions; Lakshmi Infosoul Services Private Ltd; Virtual PC Solutions, First PC Solution; Direct PC Solution; Virtual IT Supports; Global Innovative Service; 24x7pchelp; 24x7pctech; Transfront Solutions; New World Services; Megabites Solutions; Mega Bits; Greybytes Cybertech; Bluesystemcare; Shine Solutions Private Ltd.

Tellows reported about the so-called PC doctor scam method on its blog earlier this year: http://blog.tellows.co.uk/tag/virus/

The scam was addressed to citizens of all English-speaking countries, with calls originating from India. Briefly said, the scam consisted in calliing the victims on the phone with the caller introducing himself as an employee of microsoft calling because of a virus that had been detected on the called person’s PC. The caller would ask the victim to open the Windows Event Viewer – a part of the Windows operating system that regularly gives error warnings, but these have no negative influence on a computer’s functioning.

Consequently, the caller would instruct the person on the other end to download a pseudo-anti-virus programme for a fee or even subscribe the person to a regular update for the application that should fix the computer problem. Even worse: in some cases the fraudsters were asking for personal information and bank account details to gain their victims’ money. According to the Guardian, the fraudsters were in average able to ripp more than $ 800 off each conned person.

Tellows has records of the following UK numbers connected to the fraud:

Source:

Yours,

Team Tellows

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The Silent Call Plague – Weekly Top 3 Spammers

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There’s not much news on the top UK spam ranks:

1. 01932504981 from Weybridge with a tellows score of 7
2. 07520905002 mobile phone number with a tellows score of 8
3. 02073286956 from London with a tellows score of 7

Insurance scam business is still flousishing, especially with the number 01932504981 that is still relentlessly trying to sell car insurance on behalf of Van compare.

User Odd call‘s comment speaks of the incompetence of the caller:

Answered and they said calling from car insurance company and that my insurance was up for renewal and was this right? I said “I have no idea” the guy on the other end said “oh my gosh!” and hung up. I have no idea what he thought I said, but it was different for a sales team to hang up on me rather than the other way round.

We got a silent call number on rank two for a change. Best comment of the week by scamhater says it all:

My advice is to always do what I do with these scam type calls;

1. use your phone to make a recording of 1 second of silence. (keep this 1 second silence in your ringtone or media folder)

2. save the recording and call it scamtone or something.

3. then enter the scammy number into your address book as ; scam1, scam2, scam 3 etc. Each one represents a different scammy number that you get over time.

4. finally, associate the 1 second of silence with each scammy number as a ringtone.

Simple – they can ring and ring and if you dont hear it you dont pick it up. If it is associated to a name ; Scam1 etc, you will never be tempted to ring it back from your call history.

Last week’s rank-3-number stayed where it is, still harassing people in the UK at all times of night. There are some hints that such silent calls at night could originate from an overseas call center, probably in India. Some companies are hiring telephone assistants in countries, where workforce is cheaper for them. They obviously did not keep the time zones in mind.

And as we already emphasized a million times, silent calls proved to be the precursors of real telemarketing or scam calls – so watch out!

Stay tuned and keep eyes and ears open for more spam numbers!

Kind regards,

Team Tellows

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Weekly Update – The Top 5 of the most annoying phone numbers

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Here are the top 5 of the most annoying phone numbers this week:
1. 01484818084 from Huddersfield with a tellows score of 8
2. 01234945454 from Bedford with a tellows score of 7
3. 07937947158 a mobil phone number with a tellows score of 7
4. 07787225074 a mobil phone number with a tellows score of 9
5. 07787241083 a mobil phone number with a tellows score of 9

This week’s most annoying phone number 01484818084 has been searched more than 4699 times now. We are dealing with some claims company here. Beware and remember never to tell any of your bank details to unknown callers.

This is what Trevor wrote about this number:

just another claims company… I’m not sure about the name, though. he caller’s indian accent has been hard to understand…

So beware of any phone calls applying to this information.

Thank you for your support and keep on commenting!

Your Tellows Team

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UKBA scammers try to sqeeze money from immigrants

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There is a new scam that especially affects foreigners (mostly students). There are two reported telephone numbers connected this case:

The caller pretends to be an employee of the UKBA (United Kingdom Border Agency). All calls show the same structure. The fraudster will tell you that there is a problem with your immigration status or your visa and that you’ll have to pay a fine. You’ll be advised to give him your credit card / debit card details or directly make a Western Union payment to settle the issue as easy as possible to prevent the UKBA from taking further steps against you. To convince you of his authenticity the dubious employee may tell you some personal information about yourself like your passport number or your telephone number. One victim even reported that he was called concerning one of his relatives. If you refuse to cooperate the caller will most probably try to put pressure on you with deportation threats and other tricks.

We provide some simple tips that you can rely on

  • do never ever tell someone your credit card details during a cold call
  • nor give any other personal information like your name or address
  • instead ask the fraudster for his name, job title and telephone number
  • note down the telephone number and report it on tellows.co.uk

Sources:
http://ljmu.ac.uk/NewsUpdate/index_124039.htm
http://www.ukcisa.org.uk/student/

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