- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
When his phone rang and he began to listen to the crook on the other end, Jakob Dulisse wasn't fooled for an instant by the "Microsoft tech support" scam.
The con artist claimed to be calling from California.
But when Dulisse stayed on the phone, calling the person a thief and a scammer, it turned a lot more vicious than most of those calls do, with the crook threatening that he had Dulisse's address and would send assassins to kill him.
The call grew homicidal after Dulisse accused the scammer of trying to install malware on his computer that would steal banking information, passwords, and PayPal credentials.
You can listen to excerpts of the call, which Dulisse recorded, at CBC News.
Beyond what's in that excerpt, Dulisse - of Nelson, British Columbia - told the news outlet that the caller threatened him about "Anglo people" getting treated like stew ingredients when in India:
He started getting kind of nasty and angry.
He admitted that he was in India ... and then he said, 'If you come to India, you know what we do to Anglo people?' I said, 'No.'
He said, 'We cut them up in little pieces and throw them in the river.
The scammer claimed to know Dulisse's full name and address, telling him he would send someone to his home to kill him.
Dulisse said the threats, albeit chilling, sounded more like a ploy to get him to cooperate, rather than something to take seriously:
He was still trying to get me to do what he was trying to do with my computer. He was actually threatening me as a tactic.
Fake tech support scams like this one net criminals lots of cash from victims who believe they're talking to legitimate tech support representatives.
The scams follow a fairly standard pattern: victims get a call out of the blue from a scammer posing as a technician, either from Microsoft, another company or an affiliated support firm.
The crooks then persuade their victim to check out alerts on their machine, usually via a standard, built-in tool such as the Event Viewer in Windows.
There, the target views alerts that are actually perfectly normal, trivial error messages, but which the lying huckster claims are serious signs of horrific malware infection.
The caller may also try to get their target to grant remote access to their machine, so the scammer can demonstrate the made-up "danger".
From there, the victims are pressured into allowing installation of software, usually free security tools but occasionally malware, and then have to pay for the tools and assistance - a pricey prospect that can bleed them of anywhere from £35 to £150 (roughly $60-$250).
Read more: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/03/10/busted-scammer-resorts-to-death-threats/
The con artist claimed to be calling from California.
But when Dulisse stayed on the phone, calling the person a thief and a scammer, it turned a lot more vicious than most of those calls do, with the crook threatening that he had Dulisse's address and would send assassins to kill him.
The call grew homicidal after Dulisse accused the scammer of trying to install malware on his computer that would steal banking information, passwords, and PayPal credentials.
You can listen to excerpts of the call, which Dulisse recorded, at CBC News.
Beyond what's in that excerpt, Dulisse - of Nelson, British Columbia - told the news outlet that the caller threatened him about "Anglo people" getting treated like stew ingredients when in India:
He started getting kind of nasty and angry.
He admitted that he was in India ... and then he said, 'If you come to India, you know what we do to Anglo people?' I said, 'No.'
He said, 'We cut them up in little pieces and throw them in the river.
The scammer claimed to know Dulisse's full name and address, telling him he would send someone to his home to kill him.
Dulisse said the threats, albeit chilling, sounded more like a ploy to get him to cooperate, rather than something to take seriously:
He was still trying to get me to do what he was trying to do with my computer. He was actually threatening me as a tactic.
Fake tech support scams like this one net criminals lots of cash from victims who believe they're talking to legitimate tech support representatives.
The scams follow a fairly standard pattern: victims get a call out of the blue from a scammer posing as a technician, either from Microsoft, another company or an affiliated support firm.
The crooks then persuade their victim to check out alerts on their machine, usually via a standard, built-in tool such as the Event Viewer in Windows.
There, the target views alerts that are actually perfectly normal, trivial error messages, but which the lying huckster claims are serious signs of horrific malware infection.
The caller may also try to get their target to grant remote access to their machine, so the scammer can demonstrate the made-up "danger".
From there, the victims are pressured into allowing installation of software, usually free security tools but occasionally malware, and then have to pay for the tools and assistance - a pricey prospect that can bleed them of anywhere from £35 to £150 (roughly $60-$250).
Read more: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/03/10/busted-scammer-resorts-to-death-threats/
