FTC to refund $1.7M lost in scam
The Federal Trade Commission will begin sending refunds to more than 57,000 people who were victims of a tech support scam led, in part, by Pennsylvania-based businesses.
The scam, which will result in more than $1.7 million in refunds to consumers, followed what has now become a similar pattern for these types of virtual schemes.
The corporate defendants — two Pennsylvania limited liability companies, one Connecticut LLC and one Connecticut corporation operating under the name Click4Support — used online ads and pop-ups that claimed to be from major companies like Microsoft, Google or Dell to convince consumers they needed to call a tech support number.
Once on the line, the defendants would ask for remote control of the victim’s computer to determine the cause of the technical issue.
The defendants would then pressure the consumer to sign up for technical support plans and repair services that could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
The defendants had been luring consumers into their “telemarketing boiler rooms” since at least 2013, according to court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The FTC, Pennsylvania and Connecticut first sued the scammers in November 2015, alleging the defendants took $17 million from consumers. The FTC announced Tuesday it will begin sending refunds to 57,960 consumers averaging about $30 to each victim.
Tech support scams using similar tactics have become so common that the FTC and law enforcement from around the country and the world announced “Operation Tech Trap” in 2017 to crack down on these cyber threats. State officials from Ohio, Alabama and Florida have worked with the FTC to stop schemes similar to the one operated by Click4Support in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Tech support scams cost people nearly $55 million in 2018, according to FTC data. Of the 143,000 reports the FTC received that year, people 60 and over were five times more likely than younger people to report costly losses as a result of tech support scams.
In Pennsylvania, the Bureau of Consumer Protection received 729 tech support scam complaints in 2019, resulting in mediation savings of $26,743, according to the attorney general’s office. In 2018, the bureau received 478 complaints.
The Pennsylvania businesses involved in the most recent FTC announcement were iSourceUSA LLC in Newtown and Defendant Spanning Source LLC in Richboro.