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Strategies & Market Trends : Banned.......Replies to the A@P thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Smiling Bob who wrote (1586)	1/4/2005 10:46:05 AM
From: StockDung	Respond to of 5425

RE:WEBTEL-> In that scheme, according to the FTC, numerous individuals and companies using a long list of aliases--Kenneth H. Taves, Kenneth Till, Netfill, NBill, Webtel, and Online Billing, among others--charged thousands of consumers $20 apiece for subscriptions to pornographic sites they had never requested. 64.233.161.104 The danger: Initial charges may be insignificant and go unnoticed; victims may have a hard time getting previous charges removed. Perhaps the most insidious type of Internet fraud is a scam known as cramming, which involves charging Internet products or services to other people's credit cards. Cramming is a tremendously popular criminal activity built on stolen credit card information, some of it collected by hackers who prowl the Net for nonsecure and unencrypted sites where consumers have used their credit cards to buy things. The crammers then use these credit card numbers to order goods for themselves. Though the FTC has not had much success stopping crammers, it did finally hook a huge operation in May 1999 that had allegedly defrauded consumers out of as much as $45 million. In that scheme, according to the FTC, numerous individuals and companies using a long list of aliases--Kenneth H. Taves, Kenneth Till, Netfill, NBill, Webtel, and Online Billing, among others--charged thousands of consumers $20 apiece for subscriptions to pornographic sites they had never requested. Upon discovering those charges on their credit card bills, many victims attempted to contact the scam artists, according to the FTC. But the crammers were inaccessible, hidden behind a long string of mail-drop boxes, postal boxes, and voice mail. "I called the credit card company and had the charge removed," says one victim who asked not to be named. "But it kept reappearing. I finally canceled the credit card." At press time, federal agents had arrested Taves for the alleged credit card swindle. A trial date has been set for October 26. Regulators believe this scam has probably claimed some 900,000 victims who remain unaware that they've been cheated because they don't look at their bills closely before paying them. The FTC advises consumers to check all charges and to report any they don't recognize to the FTC and their credit card company.