Originally published at: A Texas man made $75,000 (so far) suing telemarketers and hopes others do the same | Boing Boing
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It’s a nice idea but it doesn’t seem like there’s much detail there. “Report it to the FTC and find out the company behind it” seems like it’s missing a few steps, considering most of these numbers are likely to be spoofed.
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Yeah, definitely most of the calls I get are from spoofed numbers and I’m not about to start picking up the calls and engaging with (by definition criminal) telemarketers in an attempt to find out who they’re working for. But good that someone out there is fighting the good fight, I guess.
Also, I just watched the movie Sorry to Bother You which indicates that there are powerful, evil telemarketer companies who will stop at nothing to crush anyone who gets in their way, and I’d rather not get in their crosshairs…
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This seems like it calls for an end-to-end honeypot solution. You sell the numbers to the spammers, then clean em out. Rinse and repeat!
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Yeah, the article says he talks to the telemarketers to find out what company they’re actually calling from, which seems like it’d take a lot of time (and doesn’t help with outright scams, especially ones run from outside the US). Also, even if you figure it out, even if you take it to court (and find a way to serve them notice), good luck getting them to pay up. I think the “do not call list” has largely just stopped legitimate businesses from telemarketing, so all we’re left with is the scammers and criminals. Right now all the calls I get are from the car insurance “renewal” scams - only some of these are even semi-legitimate businesses (at best they’re selling worthless product based on a lie), and I’m pretty sure even those companies would just ignore the court case outcomes.
I’m also wondering if he actually collected $75,000 or that’s what the court awarded him (but he can’t necessarily collect). But the impression I get from the article is that he does seem to get a high volume of calls from legitimate businesses (somehow), so maybe…
*And I literally just got a call from a car insurance renewal scam as I was writing this.
I suspect there’s the equivalent of a full-time job in the work required to get this much, and it sounds like other people are involved in the effort. He has to actually talk to 10+ telemarketers a day, coax out their company details, file lawsuits, track them down and serve them notice, go to court… in the end, only about 50 out of those thousands of calls ends up in a court case, and each case only gets him about $1500. I suspect it’s more a labor of love (or hate) rather than really being financially remunerative in any real way.
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Yeah, the collection part is the rub; they didn’t say he was $75k richer (or how long it took to even settle that much). I love justice and fairness, but not enough to smash my head against a wall daily for it (although you may not believe that if you see me at my job).
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Maybe he gets a different profile of spam calls but most are blatantly illegal. If they are impersonating Revenue Canada I really doubt they are going to take a small claims judgment seriously.
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I recall someone doing this with “burner” credit card numbers. The card would get charged and they would have the name of the business to go after.
Maybe the trail hits a dead-end in some country known for banking privacy.
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That’s one of the big problems with telemarketing scams. Many of them either are routed through (via VOIP) or originate in countries that don’t care about the US Do Not Call list. Wanna sue a scammer in India doing the classic your computer is virused scam? Good luck!
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You can Google “fake credit card number generator” and use the results to play the telemarketers, waste their time and possibly get a company name and real callback number. This works for US based travel agencies posing as being from Marriott and Hilton. This also works for the car warranty robocallers. If I am not busy, I take the calls and see how much time can be wasted. Even if I am busy, I answer the phone and let them talk to the background noise until they hang up. I don’t have time to sue but I really loathe telemarketing scum and will waste their time and money whenever possible.
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That’s the main type of calls we get in the U.K., although there are the double-glazing, replacement guttering, etc., calls.
The computer virus ones inevitably say they’re from Microsoft, at which point I stop them and tell them they’re lying. They then start to get indignant so I tell them again they’re lying, and I can prove it. When they ask how, I tell them that I’ve never owned a computer that uses Microsoft, I have a Mac, and hang up.
I once had a very persistent caller from BT, British Telecom, who called and said my phone, somehow, was sending out viruses; I was busy and said I can’t be bothered to talk and hung up. Next day I had a recorded message which was almost impossible to understand, but I recognised the voice.
The day after that, he called again, I wasn’t doing anything in particular so I thought I’d string him along, and agreed to follow his instructions. First up he asked me to press the Windows key, so I played dumb and said which one’s that, I can’t see it, which threw him, so then I said my computer is an Apple Mac! I could practically hear gears stripping in his mental drivetrain as he struggled to change the script he was following! So then he told me to open a browser window and type in an IRL, which I did and then I said, ‘oh, that’s odd, I’ve just had a little yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it pop up, and when I clicked on it, it told me not to proceed as it was a possibly dangerous address,” at which point the line went dead.
Winding up scammers can be amusing sometimes, if time is available, but normally I just tell them to fuck off and die. 
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I would have thought the BBB would have kicked the bucket years ago.
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No, they have a pretty good money-generation scam going, themselves.
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i guess he could always sell the debt to a collections company to fuel their endless calls… maybe the first working perpetual motion machine?
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I got chatting with a scam caller from India about music and dance. We discussed Bollywood and he thought my taste was a bit dated and recommended some more recent films I might enjoy. The best part was when he said his boss was coming and be had better get off the phone.
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I mix this in with “Sorry, just give me a moment there’s someone at the door/the dog needs to go out/my hamster exploded/etc” just to keep them hanging longer.
I only get about one spam call a month though.
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I was getting 4-8 calls a day but then I forwarded my calls to Google Voice and now, most days, no calls at all.
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Same. There was a spike in activity on my phone, starting in December. I reported 20 numbers at the beginning of February, but figured that’s a moving target. So, I downloaded fax machine sound effects and started playing them for spam callers. Now I only get one or two calls a day. 
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My standard phone answering routine for numbers that I don’t recognize is to never use the word, “Hello.” When I pick up I say only, “This is bashful”**. Then I shut up for about 3-5 seconds. If they don’t start after that I offer one last chance, by saying, “Speak!”.
A significant number of people who I actually do want to speak with will then laugh and tell me that they thought I was a voicemail message. It must be the tone of voice.
** but I use my actual first name
One of DH’s people has perfected a polite yet quick way to get out of a scam call, which works for dropped lines too. They just repeat “hello? hello? I’m sorry I can’t hear you.” click
