[Gllug] Phone scam?

[Alistair Mann]

Christopher Hunter wrote:
>  On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 13:16 +0100, david at gbenet.com wrote:
>
> > You can report to New Scotland Yard Fraud Office
>
>  You can, but it'll be a waste of time.  They have no interest
>  whatsoever in trying to clamp down on these obvious frauds.  They
>  claim that they don't have sufficient manpower, but the truth is that
>  they simply don't understand the crime.

The problem may be that some of them may be *inobvious* frauds. While 
I've come across them many times, I have also come across occasions 
where people believe the call has worked.

If true, this makes (some of) them more akin to someone knocking on your 
door, alerting you to roof damage and offering to fix it: the work may 
be shoddy, it's certainly overpriced, but they weren't necessarily 
defrauded in a strictly legal sense (IANAL!)

Someone else also noted that they go away when asking their number. I've 
seen them happily give name, address and number out, and the details 
appear to check out when calling them back. I don't remember where I saw 
this (might have been the economist?) but with telephone fraud it can 
take upto three months to get the law to disconnect them. From a 
business point of view, it can make sense to start up a shell company 
that looks kosher, and wring it for everything.

Cheers,
-- 
Alistair Mann



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