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Posts about Scams
'Get rich slow’ broker is facing discipline
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: December 18, 2012 - 10:16 AM
A Minnetonka real estate broker whose “get rich slow” investment scheme persuaded lenders to issue more than $6 million in loans based on fraudulent applications should be disciplined by the Department of Commerce, an administrative law judge decided this month.
The department had suspended Steven R. Carver ’s real estate licenses in July until a judge could rule on the allegations.
Carver and his company Carver & Associates Real Estate led seminars in the mid-2000s that recruited “no money down” investors to act as buyers in rental property purchases. He inflated purchase prices and buyers received kickbacks at closing that they used to make down payments on those or additional properties, the judge’s decision said. Many of those properties went into foreclosure.
Carver gave false information to the state on three separate license applications and owes $155,000 in real-estate-related judgments, the judge found.
FTC goes after FTC impersonator
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: December 3, 2012 - 5:34 PMOn Friday, a New York district judge ordered a robocalling operation that was impersonating the Federal Trade Commission to cease its illegal and deceptive practices.
The Cuban Exchange, Inc., and its owner Suhaylee Rivera made prerecorded phone calls that promised help with expediting FTC refunds that “you may not even know were owed to you,” the FTC alleged. Consumers were directed to a website, ftcrefund.com, where they were told to enter bank information.
“To anyone hell-bent on breaking the law by making illegal robocalls, transmitting phony Caller ID information, or impersonating a federal agency, we have two words for you: Stop now. The real Federal Trade Commission will come after you,” the FTC warned.
www.credisure.net is still available online and is allegedly another website operated by Suhaylee Rivera. The judge ordered the website taken down.
FTC takes on robocalling Rachel
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: October 15, 2012 - 9:59 AMOn Sunday, Whistleblower wrote about the pervasive issue of unwanted telemarketing robocalls and the upcoming government summit to brainstorm on solutions.
On occasion, Whistleblower writes about the successful shutdown of a robocalling operation that placed billions of automated sales calls for bogus credit card rate-reductions, car warranties or home security systems. The perpetrators are fined millions of dollars, told to relinquish their Lamborghinis and stop being naughty.
Readers break out the champagne only to pour it down the drain hours or days later when Rachel from Cardholder Services or Stacy from Account-holder Services interrupts their celebration to offer them another money-saving deal.
Readers then call or e-mail to lament that the sales pitches continue.
The federal government wants to break this terrible cycle. So it's sponsoring a "robocall summit" on Thursday in Washington, DC.
"We want to bring together people that have a stake in stopping [the calls], be it consumers, enforcement agencies, government agencies, the telecom companies and other companies that also work on technological solutions," Will Maxson, Federal Trade Commission program manager for Do-Not-Call enforcement, said Friday.
The agency is responding to rising numbers of complaints from people like Minneapolis resident Allan Hillesheim, who says, "I have gotten, I am not exaggerating one bit, at least 500 calls from them. 99.9% of the time it's Rachel."
Milt Branch of Denver said he used to get eight or nine robocalls per day. The do-not-call list and the 2009 ban on telemarketing robocalls dramatically reduced the number of calls, but they've "gradually crept back in."
"Rachel is like the undead, nothing you can do can kill her," Branch wrote to Whistleblower last year.
The robo-world summit
Though the Federal Trade Commission says it "has brought 88 enforcement actions against 250 corporate and 194 individual defendants involving robocalls and Do Not Call violations," the fictitious, yet very real, Rachel and her ilk are hard to vanquish.
As long as you have a computer, you don't have to hustle out to D.C. to attend the FTC summit. It will be webcast live. Questions can be tweeted or submitted via Facebook.
Thursday morning's discussion will be on the current state of robocalling technology, enforcement limitations, and the impact on consumers. The afternoon session will focus on how they can be stopped.
The summit has the potential to bring together the nation's best and brightest. It should be required viewing for all schoolchildren preparing for their next science fair. There's no reason why we shouldn't tap into the most techno-savvy demographic to come up with a way to ensure an American family can eat supper in peace.
(If we get one more call from Rachel there'll be no pudding for you, young lady.)
It should be said that only telemarketers are prohibited from making robocalls. The technology can be used legally for political or informational purposes, such as by pharmacies and schools.
And in the spirit of a free society, a consumer does have the right to OPT IN to receiving telemarketing robocalls. But, you can stuff that group of Americans into one trim phone booth, and scammers could just as easily dial the phone themselves in that case.
Both Hillesheim and Branch have developed strategies to cope with the daily intrusions.
"I blow a whistle into the phone," Hillesheim said.
"One [caller] stayed on [the line and] said, 'Well I'm glad you got that out of your system.' But most of the time it's a hang up right away," Hillesheim said.
Branch says he sometimes plays along with the sales pitch "until they finally realize that I'm jacking them around. Most of the time they end up cussing me out and I end up cussing them out."
Who are these robocallers?
Because telemarketing robocalls are illegal, we know they're criminals.
And they don't have to be all that tech-savvy, either.
Robocallers use voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), a web technology that enables calls to be made via the Internet. All a scammer needs is a good Internet connection and an agreement with an auto-dialing business, which allows them to make millions of calls from anywhere in the world, according to Maxson. To make calls look like they're coming from somewhere they're not, a practice called spoofing, it's a simple matter of changing one line of computer code, he said.
We also know robocallers are not very creative. Hillesheim said that every call from Rachel has the "same actual [recorded] voice."
In a parallel universe, there's probably a convention for robocallers where participants wear hats fashioned from pages of the federal Do-No-Call List. Rachel will be the keynote speaker. But there won't be much need to compare notes - they're identical.
So does Maxson really believe he can stop Rachel?
"There are lots of people that have really interesting ideas about how to break the caller-ID spoofing problem, how to stop these mass-calling events ... how to block the calls, and how we can work to track calls around the country and around the world," he said.
Loan agent loses license for fraud
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: October 8, 2012 - 5:07 PMA Minneapolis woman lost her mortgage loan originator license after engaging in a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders, according to a consent order by the Minnesota Department of Commerce last month.
Last year, Hannah N. Perlich pleaded guilty to one count of federal wire fraud.
According to her plea agreement, Perlich submitted loan documents in property transactions in which “at least $350,000 in fraudulent, concealed payments” were diverted to buyers, herself and others. Perlich also received “substantial fees” for the transactions, which took place in 2005 and 2006.
In February, Perlich was sentenced to three years probation and 80 hours community service. She, jointly with three others, was ordered to pay $352,000 in restitution.
“Scareware” sellers must pay $163M
Posted by: Jane Friedmann Updated: October 3, 2012 - 5:00 PM“Scareware” sellers must pay $163M
A Maryland businesswoman who “tricked customers into thinking their computers were infected with malicious software” was ordered by a federal judge to join three others in paying $163 million in restitution, the Federal Trade Commission announced this week.
An FTC suit charged Kristy Ross , an officer of Ukraine-based Innovative Marketing Inc., with placing ads on popular websites that offered a “system scan” to detect security problems. The scan “invariably detected a host of malicious files” and then sold bogus software for $30 to $100 to more than 1 million customers.
Ross was permanently prohibited from engaging in deceptive marketing and from marketing security software and software that interferes with customers’ computer use.
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