-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
A scam phone calls and emails discussion.
- Thread starter S&CLER
- Start date
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
The local BBC TV has been featuring scams as part of its broadcasting this morning.
Gloster
Established Member
They are also available on the BBC website on the very first Home page you come to if you try .bbc.co.uk. They are down the page under Be Scam Safe.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Does anyone know what the maximum prison term is that can be imposed on someone convicted of any scam crime?
A fraud conviction has a maximum sentence of ten years on conviction in the High Court.
dangie
Established Member
I’m watching this on the BBC.
They are saying how to recognise potential phone scams. There is one way to flag up suspect calls which the BBC are probably not allowed to say. Most scam calls involve an Asian voice.
My comment is in no way meant to be a racial slur but it is a fact. Most phone scams appear to originate from Asia. In this instance I do feel the media should be able to identify this without fear of being called racist.
I'm not sure that is the case. The low-value scams tend to run out of India (largely Kolkata) but the really dangerous ones are run out of places with native English speakers precisely because people are wary of an Indian accent, but will believe that it's the "bank security department" on the phone when the person has a regional English accent.
Those from India are not just low value scams. It is big business there in places where the police tolerate it, with scam organisations operating like regular companies (often fronted by some genuine computer support or travel agency activity) on a similar pattern to any legitimate one - large modern offices, training sessions, corporate team events, in-house accountants. I suggest watching some of the videos posted by scambaiters with footage from scam centres' own hacked internal CCTV or made by former scam desk jockeys (poachers turned gamekeepers at great danger to themselves). Scambaiting is a YouTube genre in itself.
Certainly some scams originate in the UK (loft insulation is doing the rounds right now) but some of those scam "companies" in India recruit telephone jockeys in the west and native to it, just as they might recruit money mules. India has a lot of contacts at all levels in the UK these days.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Another ploy that I have heard of is useful when a scam call comes in pretending to be concerned with anything to do with computer usage when the caller requests that you press certain keys on your keyboard is to say that you are an Open Reach engineer that has been called out to carry out work on the connection problem at the property in question and that what the caller is requesting is absolute rubbish and suggests that they take a refresher course on technical communications knowledge.
I had a text from a mobile number saying that the address on my account with a medium-sized bank that I use had been changed and if I hadn't done it to call a landline number (Derby area code, operated by Gamma Telecom).
A scam, but I wonder if they know that my number is linked to that bank, or is it just coincidence? I get hardly any texts of this sort.
A scam, but I wonder if they know that my number is linked to that bank, or is it just coincidence? I get hardly any texts of this sort.
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
They will know that number is linked to your bank - but how the number displays to you will have been spoofed; had you called it the connection would have been to a totally different number belonging to the scammers, so you'd think you were talking to the bank but were not.
This is why the institutions always say to use a number through their official website rather than calling back.
Unlikely, I think. Just hopefully 'phishing'!
and from a different phone. Apparently they keep your line open and you think you have called your bank, when in reality you are just talking to another scammer in the group on the same phone.
That's less of an issue these days. In the past, only the calling party could end the call. But BT changed this a few years back and either party can now end the call. And i that's always been the case for mobiles.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
One can only hope that many elderly people watch the "Scam Interceptors" BBC1 mid-morning programme and learn who they are up against.
87electric
Member
- Joined
- 27 Jan 2010
- Messages
- 1,157
Or….put the phone down.
Mcr Warrior
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 8 Jan 2009
- Messages
- 14,559
Repeats of that show could do with being re-run midweek evenings, an airing on BBC4 would suffice if the schedulers reckon that BBC1 / BBC2 should be kept clear for wall-to-wall episodes of Eastenders, Mrs. Brown's Boys, or the latest reality show involving random Z-list "celebrities" that most folk have never heard of.
after telling them to "f off" of course.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
From what I have heard, the scam call operative on realising that they have been "sussed" are not averse to using swear words before they hang up.
Amos
Member
After telling one lady from “Microsoft” that I thought she was a scammer I was told to F off Sir.Can’t fault politeness like that.
Not having had a scam call on my land line for a few months, I have now had two in the last two days, both by women with Indian accents claiming to be from BT Internet and that my internet was slow and needed sorting. Almost certainly from the same scam centre. The usual "fix your PC" scam in fact.
I have done some scambaiting in the past (my record is 40 minutes) and have an old WinXP PC set up as a honeypot. I would let them loose on it (they would find nothing but Indian p0rn), but it is not close to my landline phone so I asked them to phone me back on my mobile, but in both cases they promptly put the phone down. I have also found this with scammers on Mrs Lucan's mobile (which she hands to me - the loft insulation scam mostly) - scammers have become very wary of the slightest sign of being baited or strung along; yet I do my best to sound genuine. How does one get them to stay connected? Perhaps I don't sound senile enough for them.
I added the numbers to the Who called me? website, not that does anything effective and they spoof different numbers all the time anyway, but it allows you to do something. With scams that originate from abroad the police there don't care and the UK police cannot do anything - in any case the latter say they have more important things to do despite many people being scammed out of their life savings. In India at least, you can only raise a legal case if you are based in India yourself, and if you watch the detailed scambaiting videos it is apparent that many scammers manoevre their victims into giving them money rather than taking it directly, so they can argue it was not theft - even if it did ever go to court.
I have done some scambaiting in the past (my record is 40 minutes) and have an old WinXP PC set up as a honeypot. I would let them loose on it (they would find nothing but Indian p0rn), but it is not close to my landline phone so I asked them to phone me back on my mobile, but in both cases they promptly put the phone down. I have also found this with scammers on Mrs Lucan's mobile (which she hands to me - the loft insulation scam mostly) - scammers have become very wary of the slightest sign of being baited or strung along; yet I do my best to sound genuine. How does one get them to stay connected? Perhaps I don't sound senile enough for them.
I added the numbers to the Who called me? website, not that does anything effective and they spoof different numbers all the time anyway, but it allows you to do something. With scams that originate from abroad the police there don't care and the UK police cannot do anything - in any case the latter say they have more important things to do despite many people being scammed out of their life savings. In India at least, you can only raise a legal case if you are based in India yourself, and if you watch the detailed scambaiting videos it is apparent that many scammers manoevre their victims into giving them money rather than taking it directly, so they can argue it was not theft - even if it did ever go to court.
Last edited:
75A
Established Member
My Wife's company was scammed out of £1100.36 on Thursday by people claiming to be High Court Sheriffs acting on behalf of HMRC and by lunchtime time today her bank Santander had refunded her loss, very impressive.
Unusual one today. A text message fron an unrecognised number just asking how I was. As I had a heart attack just 2 months ago and had added my mobile number to emails to friends when in hospital I did think it might be genuine. A polite enquiry revealed that the call was from "Lena" who I have never heard of. Now blocked.
dangie
Established Member
Watching the BBC it seems many of these scam call centres are based in India. They even use Google Maps to highlight the building where they are based. If these locations are correct why don’t the Indian authorities close them down and bring the individuals involved to justice? Or of course are the authorities somehow complicit in their activities?
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Perhaps a very senior member of the High Commission of India should be summoned to a meeting in London with a British Governmental high-level meeting to explain matters.
The local police are corrupt, and the Indian government itself does not care. As well as the BBC, I suggest you look at some YouTube scam-baiters who don't pull their punches as much as the BBC does. Jim Browning for example (he has been on Panorama) is a sort of godfather of scam-baiters, but Trilogy Media (US based) are far more active and have some reformed Indian scammers in their team and acting in India, and there is Karl Rock who lives in India and who tells how corrupt the Indian police can be. With enough publicity (eg the Panorama programe) the Indian police will raid a scam centre and make arrests for the news cameras, but (according to the ex-scammers themselves) the scammers are shortly released again after some money changes hands.
Boris Johnson himself, while PM, raised the matter when he visited India. It has made no difference.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
India, with its links to Russia, is too large in many respects to take any notice unfortunately of British public opinion and there are some Indian views that that what currently occurs is a form of "pay-back" for being under the perceived yoke that was the British Raj.
A view that might hold some weight if they solely targeted the UK, but there are just as many (if not more) groups targeting the USA and Canada.
Xenophon PCDGS
Veteran Member
Quite so, but this thread concerns itself mainly to what happens in Britain.