Duct-cleaning scam traced to Pakistan,

Innocent Ottawa firm swamped with phone-call complaints

A spoofing scam that disguised the phone number of a telemarketing operation in Pakistan as a legitimate duct cleaning business in Ottawa duped customers into ordering fake services. John Holton, the owner of Top Hat Home Comfort Services, said the telemarketing operation used computer software to call customers from what appeared to be his business line, posing as representatives from his company.

Holton said he took an average of 550 to 650 calls a day for more than five weeks from customers who were irate that his business had employed aggressive telemarketing tactics.

On one day, Holton said, his business kept track of 720 calls from customers who were offered duct cleaning for $150 from a telemarketer. Holton’s company usually charges about $450.

“We couldn’t do any of our regular business,” Holton said. “We were sitting there answering phones from basically eight in the morning to six at night.”

Holton began to notice his business number had been borrowed by telemarketers in November when his phone began to ring off the hook.

Customers complained they answered their phone to find no one on the other end, he said.

Since Holton’s business number showed up on the call display, customers called back furious because they are on Canada’s Do Not Call list.

That would happen five or six times in one week before the customer finally answered the phone to find a live operator on the other end, Holton said.

Holton said that if a customer agreed to buy the duct cleaning services, men showed up in a truck with the appropriate equipment.

But the workers only pretended to clean the ducts by blowing air through them. They took about an hour to do a job that normally takes almost three, Holton said.

When the job was done, the customers usually paid the workers in cash — $50 going to the man in Pakistan, while the remaining $100 was taken by the workers, Holton said.

The most irate customers Holton dealt with were the ones who told the telemarketer they weren’t interested.

“If you declined, he would get right rude with you and some of the language you can’t put it in your paper,” Holton said. “We had some irate people calling us saying, ‘You guys just told my wife she’s an idiot.’ It’s not us, believe me.”

The discovery that someone was using his phone number, and the increasing number of customer complaints, led Holton to post a warning about the scam on his website.

Under a headline in red, Holton said his company doesn’t use telemarketing to gain new customers.

Halton also reported what was happening to the police. That allowed him to give irate customers a report number and refer them to the police.

“That was to clear us, to make it legitimate that it’s not us,” Holton said.

Eventually, the police were able to set up a sting to catch the workers.

Two men were arrested, but they pointed to a man in Pakistan as the head of the operation.

As a result, Ottawa police issued a warning on Thursday to the public about telemarketers selling duct cleaning services.