Greg's Corner

Multi-million dollar tech support scam busted

The tech support scam usually takes one of two forms. The first is you’ll receive a call from someone claiming to be from a company like Apple or Microsoft telling you that your computer has been compromised. The other form is when you see a pop-up or some other warning on your computer telling you that your computer has been infected and you should call a number the pop-up provides to correct the issue. In both cases, the scammers are trying to get you to pay for services that you don’t actually need. This can cost victims anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

This past week the Department of Justice announced that they had indicted two of these scammers. Romana Leyva, 35, and Ariful Haque, 33, were arrested for their roles in a tech support scam ring that raked in $10 million from 7,500 victims fro across the country. The pair are accused of allegedly setting up fraudulent corporate entities to receive money from the victims who thought they were receiving legitimate tech support services. In this instance, the fraud consisted of pop-ups telling computer users that their computers had been infected with a virus and if they closed the pop-up it could result in catastrophic data loss. The ring would also attempt to make victims of the initial scam pay for phony services again by claiming that the first fictitious company went out of business and for continued ‘service’ they would need to pay again.

If you receive one of these calls you should immediately hang up as no real company is going to call you to tell you that you have a virus. Also, if you encounter one of these pop-ups it’s more than likely part of a scam and you should never call the number listed. After seeing one of these pop-ups you should also run an anti-malware program like Malwarebytes instead. These scams also tend to target the elderly so if you have an older relative who may not be that computer savvy, please share this story with them.