The following information has become my own personal crusade. This information affects my life every single day. And it breaks my heart every single day. I wanted to bring this story to the attention of all you sleuthers out there. I haven't done it before now because it'll be a bit of a time investment on my part to tell the whole story, and on your part for reading it all. It's an important story to tell though, and I hope everyone will take the time to read it because we, the Relay Operators and the Deaf Community, need your help. If I know one thing about websleuths, it's that we take up for those who are abused and taken advantage of. The story that follows is one big huge ABUSE of the entire deaf community and the operators who help them make their phone calls, and to contless American businesses who have been victims of this subject. Please help me help THEM.... Get the word out.
All comments in purple are mine, so as not to confuse anyone.
For those who aren't aware, IP Relay is an internet based relay telephone for people who are deaf, hard of hearing (HOH), or speech disabled (SD). This service makes telephone communications possible for this group of people who may otherwise not be abe to use a phone. An alternative is to use the old fashioned TTY machines which have really fallen by the wayside due to the newer technologies.
The way it works is like this.. The deaf, HOH or SD person connects to a relay company such as www.ip-relay.com through the internet. They reach a relay operator (like me
) through the website. They tell the operator the number they want to dial, and in turn, the operator dials out and tries to reach the person the deaf person wants to call. When the person on the phone end of the conversation answers, the operator relays a conversation between the deaf user and the phone user. The deaf person types what they want to say, and the operator says it to the person on the phone. Then when the person on the phone replies, the operator types the message back to the deaf person and it goes back and forth like that. The operator is just like a "human phone line". We are to have no emotions about the call, no attachment to the callers or their stories. Sometimes that can be difficult, but it's a must if you want to be a good operator. But there are some things I just can't look past.
First and foremost, it's a large group of Nigerians perpetrating fraud on American businesses using IP Relay. The nigerian connects to the operator, and calls a business pretending to be deaf. They then proceed to order thousands of dollars worth of merchandise bought by stolen credit card numbers, and quickly have the merchandise shipped to a middle-man (helper) inside the US. The middleman takes his cut and forwards the merchandise to Nigeria where it's sold on the black market. It all has to be done very quickly, because the card has not yet been reported as stolen or cancelled. All this is being done on the service intended for the deaf. It's an outrage. Deaf people who legitimitely need to use the phone to call someone, will sometimes wait in queue for up to an hour because all the operators are tied up with fraud calls. Imagine if you were deaf, and needed to call 911 as you're hiding in your house because you think someone's breaking in. You're trying to connect to an operator to call 911 for you. But you have to wait "your turn" because someone had hijacked your phone service to buy goods with stolen credit card numbers.
Here's an article I found not long ago that directly pertains to this topic. Please take the time to read it. It explains everything much better than I can. I also have to be careful of what I can actually say, because I must abide by a strict confidentiatlity agreement, even if it does involve people who have hijacked relay to commit international credit card fraud which regularly puts small businessmen in America into bankruptcy. My goal is not to do a tell-all here about the calls, it's to inform the public of the alarming scam going on right under our noses.
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=7811
FBI Agent Heads Sting that Brings Down 16 People Involved in Nigerian IP Relay Fraud Operations
Working with a team of Nigerian national law-enforcement agents he trained last September, an FBI agent recently arrested 16 people on fraud and theft charges in Lagos, Nigeria. The team also seized or prevented delivery of more than $400,000 worth of merchandise stolen from U.S. businesses through credit card fraud, according to Dale Miskell, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center.
Miskell is the FBI's man in charge of the "419 scam," a series of frauds perpetrated mostly over the Internet but also on the phone, using the Internet Protocol relay system meant for the deaf, speech-impaired, and hard of hearing.
Here is an operator's story.
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=6249
Robert Grodevant liked the idea of helping the deaf. As a communications assistant--or CA--for MCI, he earned $10.50 per hour to translate incoming text messages typed by deaf, hard-of-hearing, and speech-impaired people into spoken words he then relayed to hearing people over the phone. He says he enjoyed his job.
But he didn't like being an accessory to international organized crime. For at least a year, crooks based mostly in West Africa have been taking advantage of an Internet-based telephone system known as Internet Protocol Relay, or IP Relay, meant for the deaf to use in order to speak to the nondeaf over the phone. Because IP Relay allows users to make free long-distance phone calls, the crooks cold-call businesses all day, every day.
*SNIP*
"On one given day I calculated that I purchased over $40,000 worth of laptops, inkjet cartridges, and T-shirts, all shipped to Africa," Grodevant says. "Lately they have it shipped to a relative in the U.S. and they forward it to Africa."
*SNIP*
Grodevant's experience is not unique. Several months ago he joined another CA who started an Internet bulletin board dedicated to the problem. Today more than 50 present and former CAs post on the board, all telling much the same story about their call centers around the country. Sources independent of the bulletin board say the same thing has been happening to the 200 CAs at the Maryland Relay call center in Baltimore, which is administered by AT&T.
"You wouldn't believe what AT&T relay operators are asked to do," says one source who has worked as an operator at the Baltimore call center. (Like many CAs contacted for this story, the operator demanded anonymity, saying "they warned us that if we speak to you we will immediately be fired.") The source estimates that until recently 90 percent of the IP Relay calls coming through the Maryland Relay call center were fraudulent.
*SNIP*
I can vouch for this. I know for a fact, that before MCI started doing what they call "Fraud Suppression" procedures about 9 or 10 months ago, that at least 90 percent of my calls on any given day were scam calls from nigerians. I'll explain the "fraud suppression" procedures later, but in short, MCI implemented a set of criteria which would flag certain calls as fraudulent, and the supervisor would inform the person on the phone of the suspected scam, and disconnect the call. But, like any good scammer, they now know how to get around the criteria, and they make their little calls, one after another... after another...
One facet of the crimes being committed here, is that now many, many businesses associate IP Relay with fraud. So a deaf person calling stores trying to do every-day business, like Old Navy, or Best Buy, or even a pharmacy, will get hung up on more often than not. Even calling 911 is affected. 911 Operators sometimes don't think that the call is a real emergency because people make so many prank calls to 911, knowing that they can't be traced.
More from the article:
For about a year, IP Relay communications assistants have been surreptitiously teaching one another how to foil the scams while holding on to their jobs. They've not only disconnected scammers and warned the potential marks, they've contacted the FBI, the Secret Service (which has jurisdiction over Nigerian scams), the FCC, and this newspaper, where an emotional anonymous voice-mail message from a Baltimore Relay CA triggered the reporting for this story. Several months ago, one CA started an Internet bulletin board under the title "Nigerian Scams Using IP Relay" to allow CAs to anonymously gripe, trade tips, and alert law enforcement, regulators, and the media to the problem. Authorities are finally taking notice. The board's administrator, who goes by the alias Buster Scambles, says he's got an FBI agent and the NBC television show Dateline interested. Calls to the FBI from City Paper were not returned, although a Secret Service agent takes down the details with interest. "I have to admit to you, this is the first I have heard of this," says Jeff Gappert, the assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Baltimore field office.
*SNIP*
I would encourage each of you to go take a look at that message board that is discussed in the previous paragraph. The people named in this article are friends of mine from that message board. I post there actively, and it's kept me sane through some really insane days. the link to the Nigerian Scams Using IP Relay board is:
http://ip_relay_scams.aimoo.com/
Okay. I told you it would be a lot of reading. But I'm asking for your help. Our deaf, HOH or SD friends are being abused here. This is THEIR service, and it's been hijacked. American businesses are losing money to these scams hand over fist. I've talked to so many small business owners who told me that I had just saved them from a bankruptcy by warning them off a scam call. The problem is, I could lose my job for doing that. I want to keep helping the deaf people. I like my job. But now it's more like a CAUSE for me. I think this is something that's happened in my life where I can make a difference. But the more people that know, the better off we are.
All comments in purple are mine, so as not to confuse anyone.
For those who aren't aware, IP Relay is an internet based relay telephone for people who are deaf, hard of hearing (HOH), or speech disabled (SD). This service makes telephone communications possible for this group of people who may otherwise not be abe to use a phone. An alternative is to use the old fashioned TTY machines which have really fallen by the wayside due to the newer technologies.
The way it works is like this.. The deaf, HOH or SD person connects to a relay company such as www.ip-relay.com through the internet. They reach a relay operator (like me
) through the website. They tell the operator the number they want to dial, and in turn, the operator dials out and tries to reach the person the deaf person wants to call. When the person on the phone end of the conversation answers, the operator relays a conversation between the deaf user and the phone user. The deaf person types what they want to say, and the operator says it to the person on the phone. Then when the person on the phone replies, the operator types the message back to the deaf person and it goes back and forth like that. The operator is just like a "human phone line". We are to have no emotions about the call, no attachment to the callers or their stories. Sometimes that can be difficult, but it's a must if you want to be a good operator. But there are some things I just can't look past. First and foremost, it's a large group of Nigerians perpetrating fraud on American businesses using IP Relay. The nigerian connects to the operator, and calls a business pretending to be deaf. They then proceed to order thousands of dollars worth of merchandise bought by stolen credit card numbers, and quickly have the merchandise shipped to a middle-man (helper) inside the US. The middleman takes his cut and forwards the merchandise to Nigeria where it's sold on the black market. It all has to be done very quickly, because the card has not yet been reported as stolen or cancelled. All this is being done on the service intended for the deaf. It's an outrage. Deaf people who legitimitely need to use the phone to call someone, will sometimes wait in queue for up to an hour because all the operators are tied up with fraud calls. Imagine if you were deaf, and needed to call 911 as you're hiding in your house because you think someone's breaking in. You're trying to connect to an operator to call 911 for you. But you have to wait "your turn" because someone had hijacked your phone service to buy goods with stolen credit card numbers.
Here's an article I found not long ago that directly pertains to this topic. Please take the time to read it. It explains everything much better than I can. I also have to be careful of what I can actually say, because I must abide by a strict confidentiatlity agreement, even if it does involve people who have hijacked relay to commit international credit card fraud which regularly puts small businessmen in America into bankruptcy. My goal is not to do a tell-all here about the calls, it's to inform the public of the alarming scam going on right under our noses.
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=7811
FBI Agent Heads Sting that Brings Down 16 People Involved in Nigerian IP Relay Fraud Operations
Working with a team of Nigerian national law-enforcement agents he trained last September, an FBI agent recently arrested 16 people on fraud and theft charges in Lagos, Nigeria. The team also seized or prevented delivery of more than $400,000 worth of merchandise stolen from U.S. businesses through credit card fraud, according to Dale Miskell, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center.
Miskell is the FBI's man in charge of the "419 scam," a series of frauds perpetrated mostly over the Internet but also on the phone, using the Internet Protocol relay system meant for the deaf, speech-impaired, and hard of hearing.
Here is an operator's story.
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=6249
Robert Grodevant liked the idea of helping the deaf. As a communications assistant--or CA--for MCI, he earned $10.50 per hour to translate incoming text messages typed by deaf, hard-of-hearing, and speech-impaired people into spoken words he then relayed to hearing people over the phone. He says he enjoyed his job.
But he didn't like being an accessory to international organized crime. For at least a year, crooks based mostly in West Africa have been taking advantage of an Internet-based telephone system known as Internet Protocol Relay, or IP Relay, meant for the deaf to use in order to speak to the nondeaf over the phone. Because IP Relay allows users to make free long-distance phone calls, the crooks cold-call businesses all day, every day.
*SNIP*
"On one given day I calculated that I purchased over $40,000 worth of laptops, inkjet cartridges, and T-shirts, all shipped to Africa," Grodevant says. "Lately they have it shipped to a relative in the U.S. and they forward it to Africa."
*SNIP*
Grodevant's experience is not unique. Several months ago he joined another CA who started an Internet bulletin board dedicated to the problem. Today more than 50 present and former CAs post on the board, all telling much the same story about their call centers around the country. Sources independent of the bulletin board say the same thing has been happening to the 200 CAs at the Maryland Relay call center in Baltimore, which is administered by AT&T.
"You wouldn't believe what AT&T relay operators are asked to do," says one source who has worked as an operator at the Baltimore call center. (Like many CAs contacted for this story, the operator demanded anonymity, saying "they warned us that if we speak to you we will immediately be fired.") The source estimates that until recently 90 percent of the IP Relay calls coming through the Maryland Relay call center were fraudulent.
*SNIP*
I can vouch for this. I know for a fact, that before MCI started doing what they call "Fraud Suppression" procedures about 9 or 10 months ago, that at least 90 percent of my calls on any given day were scam calls from nigerians. I'll explain the "fraud suppression" procedures later, but in short, MCI implemented a set of criteria which would flag certain calls as fraudulent, and the supervisor would inform the person on the phone of the suspected scam, and disconnect the call. But, like any good scammer, they now know how to get around the criteria, and they make their little calls, one after another... after another...
One facet of the crimes being committed here, is that now many, many businesses associate IP Relay with fraud. So a deaf person calling stores trying to do every-day business, like Old Navy, or Best Buy, or even a pharmacy, will get hung up on more often than not. Even calling 911 is affected. 911 Operators sometimes don't think that the call is a real emergency because people make so many prank calls to 911, knowing that they can't be traced.
More from the article:
For about a year, IP Relay communications assistants have been surreptitiously teaching one another how to foil the scams while holding on to their jobs. They've not only disconnected scammers and warned the potential marks, they've contacted the FBI, the Secret Service (which has jurisdiction over Nigerian scams), the FCC, and this newspaper, where an emotional anonymous voice-mail message from a Baltimore Relay CA triggered the reporting for this story. Several months ago, one CA started an Internet bulletin board under the title "Nigerian Scams Using IP Relay" to allow CAs to anonymously gripe, trade tips, and alert law enforcement, regulators, and the media to the problem. Authorities are finally taking notice. The board's administrator, who goes by the alias Buster Scambles, says he's got an FBI agent and the NBC television show Dateline interested. Calls to the FBI from City Paper were not returned, although a Secret Service agent takes down the details with interest. "I have to admit to you, this is the first I have heard of this," says Jeff Gappert, the assistant special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Baltimore field office.
*SNIP*
I would encourage each of you to go take a look at that message board that is discussed in the previous paragraph. The people named in this article are friends of mine from that message board. I post there actively, and it's kept me sane through some really insane days. the link to the Nigerian Scams Using IP Relay board is:
http://ip_relay_scams.aimoo.com/
Okay. I told you it would be a lot of reading. But I'm asking for your help. Our deaf, HOH or SD friends are being abused here. This is THEIR service, and it's been hijacked. American businesses are losing money to these scams hand over fist. I've talked to so many small business owners who told me that I had just saved them from a bankruptcy by warning them off a scam call. The problem is, I could lose my job for doing that. I want to keep helping the deaf people. I like my job. But now it's more like a CAUSE for me. I think this is something that's happened in my life where I can make a difference. But the more people that know, the better off we are.
