Thank you for allowing me to introduce myself to your forum.
I am a bit of an amateur private investigator, of necessity, after being conned and swindled a few years back.
Apparently, I have managed to get myself on every boiler room phone list in the world, which is aggravating for me, but in the end, Ive done some good with it, and if the con artists knew who I was, I suspect that they would quit calling me.
Typically, I receive unsolicited cold calls from fake advisors, fake investment houses, and unregulated brokerages and so forth
I have become pretty good at Google searches, and using the WhoIs lookup, and I can spot a fake business in a minute, even the good ones.
Ive learned how to write the complaint letters to the hosting companies, and get their websites taken down.
What I havent figured out how to do is to turn off their phones, and that would really hurt the big boiler rooms.
I live near Bangkok, Thailand, and we frequently get legitimate calls from nearby respected financial centres, such as Singapore and Hong Kong. The con artists know that Singapore, for example, is a highly respected and well-regulated jurisdiction. The phone company, SingTel, does not give phone service to just everyone.
So, it amazes me when fraudsters, equipped with all of the following, call me, allegedly from Singapore. They have either a dot.com or a dot.com.sg website. They have functional inbound +65 phone and Fax numbers. They have street addresses, which always turn out to be a virtual office and remailer service, such as Regus, etc.
I never knew that there was so much to be learned about phones. VoIP, SIP, proxies, IVR, virtual-PBX, various service providers, and DID-resellers, and selectable CID.
I did not know that the technical wizardry was common place. I did not know that a phone con artist in Jakarta, and a boiler room boss in Pattaya, could all share one DID number with appropriate extension numbers, and virtual switchboards, forwarding, and messaging. I find it all amazing.
What I really dont understand, is how is this phone monkey business legal? Singapore supposedly controls who can have a +65 number. I am a party to one fraud case, currently being investigated, which alleges that the boiler room bought DID numbers, which show a proper CID on dial-out, from a re-seller, who brought them from another reseller who bought from one of the worlds biggest DID groups of associated providers, Supertec and DIDX.
Where is the paper trail? Where are the identity documents, and why is all of this not illegal?
More to the point, I have shut down boiler room fraud websites, but I cant seem to shut down their phone and Fax services. Why?
I know how to look up anyones website on WhoIs, and I can at least figure out who is the hosting company for a website, but phone numbers seem to be a mystery.
What I want to know is this - - After I determine that fraud exists, and I after I turn off the boiler rooms websites, who do I complain to about their VoIP service and their DID phones?
Is there, if you will, an equivalent of WhoIs, like we use for websites, for looking-up DID numbers and EFAX numbers? ..and if there is not an equivalent look-up service, then why not?
I eagerly await suggestions.
Thanks,
Guy
I am a bit of an amateur private investigator, of necessity, after being conned and swindled a few years back.
Apparently, I have managed to get myself on every boiler room phone list in the world, which is aggravating for me, but in the end, Ive done some good with it, and if the con artists knew who I was, I suspect that they would quit calling me.
Typically, I receive unsolicited cold calls from fake advisors, fake investment houses, and unregulated brokerages and so forth
I have become pretty good at Google searches, and using the WhoIs lookup, and I can spot a fake business in a minute, even the good ones.
Ive learned how to write the complaint letters to the hosting companies, and get their websites taken down.
What I havent figured out how to do is to turn off their phones, and that would really hurt the big boiler rooms.
I live near Bangkok, Thailand, and we frequently get legitimate calls from nearby respected financial centres, such as Singapore and Hong Kong. The con artists know that Singapore, for example, is a highly respected and well-regulated jurisdiction. The phone company, SingTel, does not give phone service to just everyone.
So, it amazes me when fraudsters, equipped with all of the following, call me, allegedly from Singapore. They have either a dot.com or a dot.com.sg website. They have functional inbound +65 phone and Fax numbers. They have street addresses, which always turn out to be a virtual office and remailer service, such as Regus, etc.
I never knew that there was so much to be learned about phones. VoIP, SIP, proxies, IVR, virtual-PBX, various service providers, and DID-resellers, and selectable CID.
I did not know that the technical wizardry was common place. I did not know that a phone con artist in Jakarta, and a boiler room boss in Pattaya, could all share one DID number with appropriate extension numbers, and virtual switchboards, forwarding, and messaging. I find it all amazing.
What I really dont understand, is how is this phone monkey business legal? Singapore supposedly controls who can have a +65 number. I am a party to one fraud case, currently being investigated, which alleges that the boiler room bought DID numbers, which show a proper CID on dial-out, from a re-seller, who brought them from another reseller who bought from one of the worlds biggest DID groups of associated providers, Supertec and DIDX.
Where is the paper trail? Where are the identity documents, and why is all of this not illegal?
More to the point, I have shut down boiler room fraud websites, but I cant seem to shut down their phone and Fax services. Why?
I know how to look up anyones website on WhoIs, and I can at least figure out who is the hosting company for a website, but phone numbers seem to be a mystery.
What I want to know is this - - After I determine that fraud exists, and I after I turn off the boiler rooms websites, who do I complain to about their VoIP service and their DID phones?
Is there, if you will, an equivalent of WhoIs, like we use for websites, for looking-up DID numbers and EFAX numbers? ..and if there is not an equivalent look-up service, then why not?
I eagerly await suggestions.
Thanks,
Guy