Phone Scammers

This one is more of a Public Service post.

This post is about phone scammers and what they will do to con people out of money. I usually stay into pop culture but I thought I would stray a little bit today. There are some good youtube channels on shutting them down or limiting their damage.

Recently, I received an email from “The Geek Squad” below saying that my subscription to the Geek Squad will be renewed. There is one problem with this statement…I’ve never used the services of Geek Squad…ever. I’m sure Geek Squad is a fine business but I’m in IT so I really don’t need them.

I knew this was a scam…the first clue…always look at the email address they send it to you from. This one is from “Budsch| Billing Dept. <budschuetz8235@gmail.com>.” Now…why would Geek Squad or Amazon be sending bill info from a Gmail account? They would never do that.

Scam

I called them and had some fun. I toyed with them for a while acting dumb and getting them aggravated just because…I truly hate scammers. They take advantage of people, especially older people who don’t know. They steal thousands of dollars a day from people who just don’t know computers or are just tricked.

These YouTubers will hack into the scammer’s computer and delete their files and sometimes warn people when they are getting scammed. They have been successful in shutting many of the scammers down.

I’ve seen some of these guys show a picture of the scammer, delete their files, get into their security cameras, and cause general mayhem and close down scam call centers. Many of them work together to take them down. The best one I’ve found is Scammer Payback but there are many to pick from…all of them have a sense of humor and are entertaining.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

62 thoughts on “Phone Scammers”

  2. Good public service message. I’ve been getting those Geek Squad emails too, and yeah, I know they are scams because I’ve never used Geek Squad. I’ve never seen those guys who hack scammers. What a great effort. Hearing the scammers talk to victims makes my blood boil.

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    1. It’s great and worth a watch on one of the short videos. They wait til the scammer connects to their computer and they get in the scammer’s computer that way with the open connection….it’s brilliant.
      I do like talking to them and frustrating them.

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      2. As long as you don’t let them on your computer…there is not a thing they can do. You have to accept them…I have used that program they use and I’m thankful they still use it…because if you know what you are doing you can connect to their computer behind the scenes and wipe their files.
        They get so pissed and yell about calling the cops! LOL…the hackers just laugh and say call!

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      3. Oh wow. That sounds like the best kind of vigilantism out there. I hope lots of people jump on that bandwagon. You know that guy who played all of those gags? He’s the same guy that did a video on a squirrel obstacle course that is just hilarious.

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      4. It does a lot of good Lisa….if a lot of people would start swamping them with calls…that would take time away from what they do.
        Yes…I’ve seen that! I wrote this back in August and I started to watch a bunch of videos by each one.

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  4. I have had two problems with my computer. The first time I got a Ransome virus, and they encrypted a lot of my files and asked me to send them bit coins, but I don’t pay terrorists. The next problem was when a guy in Nigeria stole my email address and changed the password so I could no longer get into it and he asked all of my contacts to send him money.

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    1. I remember the email address deal…have you tried lately to get in?
      The phone scammers are awful as well…wiping out peoples bank accounts if they don’t know any better.

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  5. I know. It’s scary. I’ve been getting these ones in messaging that say someone is trying to change my account at some Bank that I never even heard of or some other account, and then I think that I should check it out to see what it’s all about but then I think that if I click on it I’ll be falling for the scam. And I’m like real ignorant about this kind of stuff so I don’t really know how these scams work and they’re making me real paranoid

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    1. If you have any down time…watching one of the short videos tells you what to look out for. I work in IT and some of these were new to me. I can’t stand these people who do this.

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  6. Some of these messages you get are pretty convincing. Always good to be reminded. My wife’s workplace has been hit twice on gift card scams. I worked in Loss Prevention for many years. Before the proliferation of email scams it was snail mail which at least gave you more time to think about it. Clearly there’s lots of money in the fraud business.

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  7. Scammer Payback is definitely my favorite using a voice disguiser to sound like an old lady. Even the fact that I ignore all calls I don’t recognize and delete all emails, it’s still annoying to get them.

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    1. Thanks for reading…yea they are horrible people who do this. They reach out to most countries also. Scammer Payback is my favorite as well….sometimes he has all of them on his show.

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  8. a timely post. The e-mail address check is very important and a lot of people don’t know it. My sweetie gets a lot of those type things and is aware of checking that. She got one a few days back ‘from’ Microsoft saying they needed to renew her subscription or something, and she doesn’t have subscriptions to MS services anyway, but she saw it came from a scrambled set of letters at gmail. Funny actually, if people didn’t fall for it – do you think Microsoft would be using their direct competitor’s product to contact people? My phone service ‘upgraded’ my phone this year, the phone itself wasn’t much of an improvement, but it does detect ‘scam likely’ calls. About 2/3 of all my incoming ones are that.

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    1. I have a program on my cell that picks them up as well. They target uninformed elderly people who honestly don’t know. They do it in ways I didn’t know and I work in the field.

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      1. I get one phone call each working day from the same voice. It often sounds like they’re having a party somewhere in India! They made the mistake 2 years ago in the first call of asking me to verify if I was the right person by giving my full name, date of birth, and bank account number!! Naturally I told them to do something unrecordable.

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      2. I do like calling them sometimes like I said in the post…and just messing with them. I try to keep them on the phone for 30 minutes or so to an hour….just to mess with them.
        That took some gall asking for your bank account number lol.

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    1. Thanks for reading…I truly hate these people that target the elderly and I’m glad someone is trying to do something. It’s hard to prosecute them in their own country.

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    1. Yes it is…if you have a few minutes one day to watch one of those videos…it explains how they do it….it’s so terrible what they do to people….especially elderly people.

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      2. Yea I know…I love when these guys get into their computer and I’ve heard them on the verge of crying pleading for them to give their files back. Yep…cockroaches is a good word

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  13. 1. I don’t know the number, I raise one middle finger and ‘End Call.’ Screw ’em. 2. ‘Oh, random caller out of the blue-I owe YOU money? Please, come to the door, edge past the slathering dobermans and we can discuss the invoice face to face.’ They/I/we welcome your call.

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    1. By all means Lisa…I was shocked on how many people related to this! I wish we could blast everyone with this. I don’t like seeing people being taken advantage of.

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  16. My parents got hit by one a few years back. My mum’s normally pretty onto it, but they called at a time when they had just requested technical support for something, so they were more ready to believe than they’d usually be. The scammers had got into their bank account and moved some money around ready to transfer, but my parents realised before they actually took anything.

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    1. I’m glad that they realized before anything bad happened. It’s such a complicated scheme they do. They have to have a guy in whatever country to receive the cash and then that person mails it along to them because they don’t want anyone to have their address. I do wish India would prosecute them more.

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