The Department of Justice has arrested two people, Romana Leyva and Ariful Haque, for a tech support scam that has taken millions from older adults. They convinced people, mostly seniors, that they needed tech and virus protections that weren’t real.
Tech Support Scam Takes $10 Million From Seniors
Between March 2015 and December 2018, Leyva and Haque were scamming people in the US and Canada. They would target people with pop-up windows that said their computer had been infected with a virus. They then told the victims to call a number for tech support.
Sometimes the pop-up message would say that if they closed the window or turned their computer off, it would ruin their device or lose all their data.
So concerned people called the number and were connected with a fake technician. To get the victim to pay, the phony technician would load an anti-virus tool that you can get for free online and tell the victim they have a virus.
The scammers convinced people to pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to fix the fake virus. Some people were even contacted again by these scammers and paid them even more money.
There was a total of 7,500 victims and $10 million stolen altogether.
Read more here.