The Pace of Justice

The use of phone scams in the United States, especially among the elderly, has come along nicely as a business.  We know this from the number of calls coming to our homes, and parents homes where they usually go unanswered.  My mother stopped answering the phone which gives merchants and her plumber no end of grief.  There isn't a state government that isn't up in arms over the calling which has been going on for years to get to this point.  Nobody seems to want to stop it.

So, we finally see yesterday (The Justice Department announced it and articles appeared in several newspapers) the cracking of a "major" ring located in India, with participation of 20 suspects arrested in the U.S and a total of 56 indictments all in all.  This is what people do when they can't stop the calls being made.  They arrest a few of the many - the usual suspects - and declare victory.  It should not take three years to do that.

There are several groups doing this, and we can tell that from the differences in phone calls rejected or accepted by answering machines.  I have heard computer generated voices, recorded hunan voices and real human beings (or very good imitations).  They all say call this number or you will be arrested.  So, if for any reason, you think they will stop or even slow down a little, guess again.  This one little raid will do about as much as arresting a couple of hackers stealing from banks will stop that kind of activity.

We could stop it, but it would take a different approach than criminal prosecution - find out who is doing it (how hard can it be when they leave their number?) make the cost of doing business higher than the revenue stream. The phone companies are partially at fault for not blocking the callers at the networks.  Yes, it is whack-a-mole, but nobody is doing it.  They want to put the burden on the user to block them individually because they don't want to spend the money to take this on.  It is abuse of the telephone system which they own.  They treat it as a user problem.  To those in computer security, that sounds familiar.

We are supposed to have great people doing public service in consumer protection. What are they doing about this?   Why can't we get the numbers of people who call the scam number and warn them?  Personally call victims before they actually pay. The thieves will change the number, but start it again.  They will move to another state or country.  Start again.  It is called crime prevention.

Second, where is the real IRS in this?  They should be out investigating people pretending to be IRS.  Then, last but not least, do criminal investigations of the one that still operate.

Last, this is not resource intensive.  A couple of people in government can be spared to get something going instead of studying the problem.  One state could start.  Take the first step.  Do something.