
RCMP arrest 'money mules' tied to scam calls from India - the_unknown
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/rcmp-cra-telephone-scam-fraud-investigation-1.5463838
======
Jemm
Thanks you CBC Marketplace for getting the RCMP to finally do something.

Marketplace has been exposing these scam companies for years. They even traced
their location in India multiple times.

Canada needs to secure our telephone systems. It is way too easy for a scammer
to get a Canadian VOIP number or to spoof phone numbers. Scam calls lately are
have been spoofing my number to call me.

~~~
loceng
CBC is Canada's publicly funded TV and radio news -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporation)

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mysterypie
How about putting a small tariff on every phone call originating from
countries that do not shut down these fraudulent call centers? The tariff
perhaps could be as small as 2 or 10 cents per call to make these operations
unprofitable. I'm sure that the telecom operators in the foreign country could
easily track down (or already know precisely where to find) the call centers.
Once the fraud falls below a threshold the tariff can be removed.

Punitive tariffs, quotas, bans get applied to every kind of product --
counterfeits, contaminated foods, polluting vehicles. I never heard any
government agency suggest applying it to countries that are the overwhelming
source of scam calls.

~~~
kerkeslager
It may be a surprise to the HN "incentives are the only way to do anything"
crowd, but there simply is not an incentive structure that will fix this
problem, because nobody knows where the calls are coming from. Not the US, not
the telcos, not the countries the calls are coming from, _nobody_. You can
place the tariff on countries, and then the countries just have to accept the
tariff because there's not a damn thing they can do about it as long as
scammers can spoof phone numbers.

The converse of this is that it's pretty ridiculous to assume that countries
have scammers in them because they're just tolerating them.

Sure, we could rush out a technical solution, but then it would run the risk
of being broken rather quickly, and further it's important to not compromise
the reliability of the phone system. Too many critical services rely on it.
It's worth taking the time to do it right.

Last I heard, the FCC was in talks with telcos to finalize a solution, but I
would expect it to take at least another year to implement and deploy it.

Until then, I guess we'll all have to deal with annoying scammers and comments
by people who don't understand why spoofing makes their pet incentive idea
irrelevant.

~~~
fellellor
It’s not right, that a sensible comment like yours is being downvoted.
Spoofing is real, and not easy to track down depending on the resources you
have at your disposal. And Indian law enforcement is certainly behind the
western world in that regard.

Besides, it’s not like these scammers are paying taxes to the Indian
government, so they don’t have any national incentive to facilitate scammers.
Tax compliance in countries like India, outside the first world, is very poor.
Though the article mentions that Indian authorities are cooperating with
Canadian officials, it needs to be understood that this cooperation isn’t
based on any incentive structure, other than civilised societies need to crack
down on crime. Crime in Canada is a low priority for Indian officials, just
like I’m sure it’s the other way around.

Finally, Canada doesn’t even feature in the top 15-20 trading partners for
India, last time I checked, so I don’t know what punitive incentive can be
hoped for here. If you need a solution, it would be more productive to
approach from a more pragmatic, cooperative point of view, rather than being
all high and mighty and taking a carpet bombing style approach that affects
legitimate business as well. Or, you could do that but it wouldn’t even
matter.

Edit: I’d like to add that every day there is news about people, here in India
also losing their life savings to these scammers. So it would be wrong to have
an impression that authorities and citizens of this country take pleasure in
people from richer countries being scammed. I’ve old, not so tech savvy
parents myself, who I realise are pretty vulnerable to this evil.

~~~
peteretep
> Spoofing is real, and not easy to track down depending on the resources you
> have at your disposal

Mmm, but some Canadian or American legal entity is bridging these onto the
phone network, and needs to be doing its due diligence better.

~~~
tempestn
The problem is that the way the phone system is currently set up, it is _not
possible_ to do this due diligence. That is what's being worked on.

~~~
dmurray
This is mostly true, but it would be worked on a lot harder if the companies
involved had a financial incentive to work on it. Currently the scammers pay
their bills and the incentives work the other way - it's best for them to say
they are working on it but drag their feet.

~~~
kerkeslager
You think "people are switching away from using the traditional phone system
entirely" isn't enough incentive? And how, exactly, does an Indian scammer
paying a bill to an Indian telco incentivize US telcos to drag their feet? You
can blame the Indian telcos, but they also don't have incentives to tolerate
scammers--their business would benefit a lot more if calls from Indian numbers
weren't automatically assumed to be scams.

While you don't understand the problem, you can't possibly have anything of
value to say about the solution.

There may well be perverse incentives causing certain entities to tolerate
scammers, but we shouldn't pretend we know what those perverse incentives are
when we can't even trace the calls. On the other hand, it is much more likely
that once the spoofing problem is solved, the incentives are all already in
place and the vast majority of scam calls will be solved.

If a rational person only knows how to use a hammer, they pause when they come
across a problem that isn't a nail. But when the HN crowd comes across a
problem that isn't immediately solved by incentives, they argue that the
people who actually are qualified to solve the problem with other tools,
should be using incentives!

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Huhty
I get 2-3 calls like these every week. It's getting really bad.

~~~
pkaye
Its doubly frustrating for me because I'm on a kidney transplant list and
there is a small change I might get a call out of the blue even thought there
is still some wait time. So I end up answering the phone most of the time...

~~~
hakunin
Pick up the phone and stay silent until they speak. It should also help reduce
incidence of scam calls.

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catalogia
> _" "We have disrupted the necessary flow of money from Canada to India,
> which will have a big impact on the operation and bottom line of scammers,"
> Ogden said Friday, in announcing the charges."_

Perhaps so, but to what extent and for how long? How many other mules are
there, and how long will it take them to find replacement mules to replace
those arrested?

I hope they throw the book at the mules, but I don't expect this to be a real
solution to the problem.

~~~
unishark
It seems like a small story about a small bust, but if you keep reading the
story keeps going. They are directly going after the scammers too.

> "Police have since worked with Indian authorities to carry out a flurry of
> raids against suspected illegal call centres in the country. Canadian
> officials said Friday they know of 39 call centres, in the New Delhi and
> Noida area, that have been shut down.

"Ogden said still others will face police scrutiny and that he anticipates
more arrests and charges "in the next few weeks."

~~~
catalogia
Yeah, but is 39 call centers a lot, or just the tip of the iceberg? It
wouldn't really surprise me if there were hundreds of these companies, but I
don't know.

~~~
unishark
Probably hundreds of them at least. But there may be only a smaller fraction
of them targeting Canada.

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cmer
Now hoping they put an end to duct cleaning services calls. Another scam. I
get 10 of those a week.

~~~
cbanek
Marketplace actually did a video about the air duct cleaning service scam a
while back:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13Vv4n__J8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13Vv4n__J8)

It's really good, and they traced it all the way back to the call center (with
an insider)! But of course, no one was arrested. Sadly, I don't think the
punishment will fit how much annoyance and time wasted.

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RickJWagner
Good for the Canadian cops! Tax money well spent.

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Scoundreller
So the dude had a regular job so it doesn't seem like a kingpin of any kind.
They've been tracking him for months, but they decided to take him down once
he arrives for work, because ???

His wife is wanted too, but instead of going to where she is, they just call
her and ask her to turn herself in?

By publicizing the arrest, the police likely killed their change to get the
mule to lead to higher-up takedowns, no? Or have the police completely given
up on shutting down the overseas operations?

~~~
zyang
That made me laugh, "unmarked vehicles tailed him, switching positions to
avoid detection". Knowing Toronto drivers, I wouldn't be suspicious at all if
someone tailgated me all the way to work.

~~~
rblatz
The best part is after the police got done playing James Bond the couple was
released under their own recognizance.

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0_gravitas
i stopped answering my phone a long time ago, if someone really needs to
contact me they can text, email (no guarantee on that though), or hit me up on
discord, no spam there

