I Made an Entire Call Center Angry over Losing $94k [video] | Hacker News Reader

I Made an Entire Call Center Angry over Losing $94k [video]

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119 pointsjdasdf40 comments

Kitboga is already a living legend for his continuous work on keeping scammers busy so they don't target other people while also providing quality and non-repetitive amusement for all of his Twitch and YouTube viewers. Leave him a subscribe on either if you'd like to see more of this.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm22FAXZMw1BaWeFszZxUKw

https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga

Scammer Payback is another such channel - they also share their findings with the police from time to time. It appears they do their best to head off the scammers victims by attempting to retrieve the scammers victim lists (through what appears to be mild social engineering). [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/ScammerPayback

> they also share their findings with the police from time to time

So does Kitboga - he's been keeping in touch with fraud departments to close bank accounts whose numbers he gets from the scammers, and occasionally has people help him with OpSec so he can figure out the details of these.

Not mentioned here is that the sites Kitboga uses are actually fakes that he coded himself to look real to the scammer. This includes banking, retail, and even the Google Play sites, which he uses to pretend he redeemed a gift card which makes scammers really angry.

Another similar channel is Jim Browning: (a pseudonym I presume)

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBNG0osIBAprVcZZ3ic84vw

Happy to see from thread that this is a bit of a genre. These people deserve consequences for their scams and in particular, for preying on the elderly.

Whenever I get these calls and have time I try to play along for a bit best I can to keep them occupied, never allowing access to my computer of course. When they start getting wise to me doing it I let them know that because they called I will now send a donation to Kitaboga, Pierogi, or Jim Browning. Usually results in a hang up, but occasionally have gotten the screaming cursing of which I laugh, which pisses them off even more.

At least the scammers reproduced perfectly the automated "please say what you are calling us about" that never works. I now suspect these pseudo-voice recognition systems have no other purpose than to charge more minutes on incoming customer calls and discourage the least motivated customers from calling again.

> charge more minutes on incoming customer calls

Customer service lines are generally toll free numbers, and most callers (in the US) do not have phone plans that charge by the minute for toll free calls (paygo cell plans are really the only ones), meaning only the company is paying more. Neutrally, it's a case of Goodhart's law with no relevant metrics. There's no way to measure the frustration or satisfaction of customers - those surveys at the end of the call reflect on the person you talked to, not the overall system.

But yes most likely frustration leading to hangup is seen as good. The most telling example is the ones with repeating "you can access our website", when the only reason anyone calls up these days is because they cannot accomplish their task through the website.

In the US maybe. Here (Switzerland),, when you have to call a company’s customer service (usually because they messed up), you also have to pay 0.08 CHF (or rarely 1.50) per minute for the privilege.

I knew Europe had more call tolls, I guess I was just hopeful your customer service lines weren't as bad. (I edited my original comment to specify the US)

I think hold music, and especially the type that is constantly interrupted with a voice to fake you out, is also designed to be as grating as possible and make you hang up. I'm happy google added that "Hold for me" functionality to Android phones.

Why are spam and phishing phone calls still an unsolved problem ? You can't get a phone line or SIM in India without ID. shouldn't this be possible to verify and block at the telecom level ?

Is there something to do with common carrier laws that prevent blocking ?

Because it’s not a profitable problem for telcos to solve, and telcos have lots of lobbying power to ensure Washington doesn’t make them stop. They value the pennies they get from routing these calls more than all of our financial futures combined. Good thing we have a choice and so much competition here!

How does someone in the USA makes an Indian telco disable their customer SIM or phone line? Should they just assume that the caller from America is telling the truth and drop a customer? Should Indian police detain people based on a complaint from someone from a foreign county?

India is a sovereign nation, I guess the victim of the scam can seek justice at the Indian courts bu that's probably not easy or cheap too.

Thee things are usually matter of international cooperation, likely wouldn't work if a scammer from France is scamming someone in Germany or scammer from Canada is scamming someone from the USA.

Through the police, yes. Upon receiving credible police reports Telco in US refuses to route certain sources coming from Telco in India. Repeated infractions gets the entire Telco banned from making calls to US Telco.

However I don't know the feasibility of this.

I find it very unlikely that a Telco will voluntarily do the police work. These things are probably part of some international treaties and doing it legally will be hard, even if they do it and block a telco from one of the worlds most populous country the scammers can simply change SIM cards and use a new operator.

The scam calls are probably very, very small percentage of the call volume. Why would a telco start international dispute, deny calls for their legitimate customers?

What's more likely is that the US and India sign some kind of cooperation for fighting crimes and scammers being dealt with by the Indian authorities upon request by the US ones.

I think your mostly likely outcome makes sense.

I assume they're all using VOIP services, not landlines.

They’re not using mobiles or land lines. They sign up with a VOIP provider in the US and then use a software phone to connect to the provider. The connection to India goes over the regular Internet, and then gets connected to the phone system at the US facility.

Real support call centers will send you to numerous automated menus and make you jump through hoops to talk to a real person. There's going to be a heuristic adopted in a few years where real person = scammer.

B2B stuff is typically far more streamlined. "press 1 to reach sales, or 2 for support, if you know your party's extension dial it now"

Wouldn't it be nice if something could be done about these lowlifes besides relying on youtubers like Kitboga?

Is there any downside or risk running a call center and draining the accounts of pensioners?

Here in Turkey there was this "Bulgarian missed call scam" thingy.

Essentially, some Turkish speaking Bulgarians(mostly roma, Bulgarians don't normally speak Turkish) would call random Turkish numbers, hoping for a middle aged or older Turkish man call them back. The scam goes like "I live in a poor Bulgarian village and my father/brother/husband treats me badly, how lucky I misdialled the phone to such a gentleman like you" and then they proceed to earn the mans trust and ask for money(first they ask for a bus ticket, then they will call back "on the way for Turkey" about something unexpected happening and ask for a large sum to be wired through Western Union).

I'm Bulgaria born and I happen to have relatives where some of the scams are run at. I've seen with my own eyes people camping in front of a Western Union branch theatrically pretending that they are at the Turkish/Bulgarian border and the woman needs to pay some large fine otherwise they wouldn't let her go to Turkey. She will hand the phone to her husband who will pretend that he is a racist/fascist/gestapo Bulgarian officer asking for money or else she ain't coming to you.

My relatives there told me that they even started scam courses with a week full curriculum where you pay the experienced scammers to teach you how to run the scams. They built some very nice houses in the region.

Anyway, it all faded away when Bulgaria made it compulsory providing ID when you buy a new SIM(10 SIM registrations per person per year limit is introduced). Probably as a result of Turkey asking Bulgaria to locate the scammers. I heard about some still doing it by using SIMs from other countries however the heydays are gone.

This story doesn’t add up. You need an ID to pick up cash from western union, why would showing an ID to get sim cards be an issue at all?

Odds are that this SIM card legislation actually had nothing to do with the scam fading anyway.

The village I’m from is internationally famous for internet scams, they’ve changed over the years because both the potential victims and scammers have become more savvy. Not due to legislation.

It's not about the identity of the person but the limit of SIM cards per person per year. Not just showing an ID, a copy of the ID is stored in the records and you are not allowed to buy more than 10 SIM cards a year.

Just because someone says that they are scammed, the authorities would not simply prevent the alleged scammer from making calls or receiving money.

Since Bulgaria and Turkey are two separate jurisdictions, the scammed person from Turkey will need to prove in Bulgaria that someone scammed them.How are you supposed to prove what she said to you on the phone? Once the mone is transferred, it's gone. To receive a Western Union transfer all you need is a name and a code.

But why does the amount sim cards matter for this scam? How many hundreds of sim cards do you need? Surely it’s easy to find other people to buy sim cards for you?

Because they need to change SIM's all the time. There are websites listing suspicious numbers, simply Googling the number reveals if the number is is used for scamming. Unsuccessful or successful attempts often result someone writing about it in one of those phone number websites.

I don't know if the SIM card limit is by national ID number or operator but there are not that many GSM operators in Bulgaria anyway, it's a small country. There were more before but they merged and now there are 3 in total.

But surely the victims are not sophisticated enough to google numbers?

And even if they are, how hard can it be to find some poor people to go get 10 sim cards for 10 euros? I know that wouldn’t be hard at all in my village.

Or to just corrupt one guy working for the telco and get unlimited SIMs registered using fake IDs?

Or not corrupt anyone and just go get SIM cards with trivial to fake Romanian ID cards?

There is no downside. The biggest risk to the people running these scams is to get banned from the US; which they are probably fine with if they made enough money.

Holy Church of The Order of The Red Breast.

https://419eater.com/html/joe_eboh.htm

This is a classic from way back in the day…

419eater is amazing. In the best threads they’re creating a global conspiracy to build a completely alternate reality around some of these scammers - false companies, websites, entire personalities. Absolutely gripping reads.

Being India where the yearly income is about $2,000 USD that amount would seem closer to a million dollars in their minds.

The accent looks like either it’s from Punjab region in India or Pakistan one of the two. Good work! :-)

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