The Federal Trade Commissionreached a settlementthis week with a infamous chiseller who exercise with telemarketers to pose as big technology firms and extend fake tech keep services to the older .
Parmjit Singh Brar — the operator of Genius Technologies , LLC and Avangatee Services , LLC — agree to a $ 7.5 million fine , though he will only pay $ 136,000 due to an inability to pay the full amount . The scammer will also be banish from offering any technical school reinforcement divine service in the future , in effect stamp out his two businesses .
Per the FTC , here ’s how Brar ’s scam worked : he set up agreements with telemarketers in India who would contact consumers via cold call and pop up - up ads disguise to count like certificate warning signal . They are the kinds of ads that say things like “ decisive update required ” or “ Your computer is at risk ” and reckon believable to a person who does n’t have it off any better .
When the telemarketers suffer a person on the phone , they would take to be from well - know tech companies and would essay to win over the consumer that there was something haywire with their computing machine . If the individual decease along with the call , the scammer would seek to convert them to allow remote admission to their computer . Once connected to the computer , they would claim to discover malware or some other threat , at which stage the technical school support scammer would stress to sell the victim on some expensive , “ high - quality ” figurer software to address the problem .
Of course , there was no high - quality software package . grant to the FTC , the scammers would instead install out - of - date software on the gadget and use the installation process to steal personal entropy from the consumer ’s calculator without their permission . For their troubles , the victims were charged between several hundred clam to tens of thousands of dollars for the bastard help .
The FTC’soriginal caseagainst Brar note that several people paid more than $ 50,000 and one person pay $ 400,000 over several years to the scammers . Thecomplaintnotes that “ millions of dollars ” have been wired to account connect with Brar ’s business concern .
Brar was the mastermind behind the cozenage , and by all accounts seems to have been pretty good at ripping people off . One of his business sector fronts , Genius Technologies , maintained a pretty clean effigy . The company has aCrunchBase pagethat line Genius Technologies as an “ IT business firm delivering high calibre , cost effective , honest web software program solution . ”
His other operation , Avangatee Services , have a far less positive public - confront profile . The company has anF ratingfrom the Better Business Bureau and a lot of bad revaluation on the consumer watchdog site Ripoff Report . A number ofuser - submitted complaintson the sitelay out a similar schemecarried out by callers : a telemarketer warns that hacker are trying to steal personal info and hit entree to their bank account . The telephoner offers trade protection , then blame the victim thousands of dollars for the service . unavoidably , the dupe ’s gimmick finally gets infected by actual malware despite promise that it would be safe .
Brar is just the latest tech support scammer to get hit with examination from the FTC . The agency has made an effort to crack down the schemes in recent calendar month , hold downcall center operators in Floridathat scammed citizenry out of $ 25 million last calendar month . The podcastReply Alldocumented tech reinforcement calls like the ace Brar and other scammers have made , if you ’d like to hear the cozenage in action .
[ Mercury News , FTC ]
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