Reply All - #102 Long Distance

Episode Date: July 27, 2017

This week, a telephone scammer makes a terrible mistake. He calls Alex Goldman.   Further Reading If you suspect you are a victim of a tech support scammer, you see a suspicious pop-up, or get an unsolicited tech support email, you can make a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission by following this link, or by contacting the company that the call center was impersonating directly. Microsoft fraud report page Apple fraud report page Microsoft did a global survey of tech support scams in 2016, and the results are pretty interesting. You can find it here. Oh, and don't be like Alex. Never let some stranger remotely connect to your computer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. Your hand, PJ, vote. PJ? Yes. So, about seven months ago, the end of January, I had just spent a long afternoon recording with producer Damiano Marquetti. And just during a break, I got a phone call from a 1-800 number.

And I don't know what it is about 1-800 numbers. My natural impulse is to just be curious as to who's calling me, so I always pick them up. Really? Always. Do you have a natural... Impulse to open junk mail? If the subject's funny enough. Okay.

So I get this call. It is a robot saying, Your iCloud may be compromised. We seriously recommend you to call us on 1-8-4-885-001. We request you not to use your computer or other Mac devices before speaking to our certified technicians. Okay. And so I'm thinking to myself,

hmm, I don't think my eye cloud is compromised. Yeah. So I called them back. Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line, and you'll be transferred to the next available agent. Thank you for calling online sporty talking to Alex. How can I help you? What a coincidence.

My name is Alex. I got a call that said that there was some... No, your name is Michael Goldman. My middle name is Alex. I go by Alex. Oh, you go by Alex. Okay, Alex. How can I help you?

Yeah, I got a call that there was some suspicious activity going on in my eye cloud. Okay. What kind of... activity. How do you know about that? I got a call from you guys. You got a call? Yeah. All right. Alex, we have seen that your IP address have been compromised from other countries in the last two days. Have we been to some of the countries within your devices over there? No. And do you have any computer like a laptop or next up with you? Yes, I do. Alex, the thing is that we need the help of a computer so we can rectify this kind of issues. Is that possible you can access a computer, please? Yeah, I'm standing right in from sitting right in front of it. Just to be clear, you guys,

from Apple? Yes, sir. I'm a certified technician to support Apple. That's right. Okay. Do you have some kind of ID number that I can call Apple to cross-reference? Because I've never experienced anything like this before. Sir, you're already calling us,

so you will call us back to my ID number? Yeah, well, I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. And I just, I don't, you know, I'm curious what's going on. So you want to call one of my technician here to verify my IP address, my ID, right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to call Apple to verify.

You are already calling us, sir. So you want to hang up the call and call us again? No, how do I know that you guys are Apple, though? What proof do I have? I'm looking up this phone number. I don't see it associated with Apple at all. You can look that again, sir. I'm looking up this phone number online.

It does not say that it is any, it's related. to Apple in any way, so I'm trying to figure out who you are. Who are you? Are you calling from Apple? We are anonymous. Our legend. Expect us. You're anonymous, your Legion, expect you?

Yeah. Are you coming for me? We'll be demolishing all your social identities. All of my, me personally? We have broken from laws on the internet. We have been on some porn sites displaying some sort of child porn. We haven't detected some issues, and we haven't detected that where we are, where three devices are, we will be demolishing for your social identity and leaking them on the porn site itself. You're going, just, I want to be perfectly clear here.

You're saying that you are going to, first of all, destroy all of my social media stuff. Then you're going to leak it onto a porn site? Cool, I'm recording this. I hope that you like being on YouTube, because this is definitely going to go on. there. Tell me the channel. What game you will upload it? Okay. So what, so in all honesty, like what is your, what is the deal? You tell me, you tell me what's the channel name, what's your channeling? I'll subscribe you, I'll like you, all the fear you, I'll do everything. Cool. What's the

scam you guys are running? What do you, what do you do? When you call people, what are you trying to get from them? What do you sell them antivirus software? Is that the deal? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we do. And how much are you selling it for? $400. Really? 400? Yeah. Yeah. And how many sales would you say you make in a day? Here we are around 50 to 55 people, and we make around, I personally make around six or seven sales a day.

So six or seven sales a day, so that's what, so it's like seven, four. I'm really bad at math, I'm sorry, that's like $2,800 a day? Somewhat. Wow, how much of that do you get to keep? So three persons. 50%? Yeah. Don't you feel bad at all about scamming people who don't know anything about computers?

No, I don't. Why not? Why would I? Because... You guys have a lot of money that's recently spent. Who is you guys? Who are you talking about? Like, the people we scam.

But how do you know how much money I have? We judge them. Like, we make a judgment. Like, somebody with the name Richard or is having a very good name, you say? Like, they must be having a good amount of money. Wait. People, the amount of money someone has isn't based on what their name is. Oh, yes.

Let me, how did you choose me? So this guy who says his name's Alex Martin, we talked for a couple more minutes. I ask him stuff like, how did you get my number? And he won't answer me, and then he hangs up. So the second time I called back, I did not get Alex Martin, sadly. I got a different guy. Uh-huh. So this site, Charlie, and I'm a certified technician who support Apple customers.

Nice to meet you, Charlie. Charlie. So I checked your number, sir, and it says that your Apple ID has been compromised. Uh-oh. What does that mean? And rather than say right away, I know this is a scam, I let him diagnose my computer. I let him connect to my computer. Really?

Yes. On the top of the browser, in the address bar, type a technical website that is www. That is bad judgment. Like you gave him remote access? Yes. So we are successfully connected now, sir. Can you see my cursor moving on your screen? Yes, I can.

So what did he do when he started to get in there? Oh my God, it is the best. I could not believe how amazing it was. What? Okay. So weird. So what this guy did is he got on my computer. He opened up the terminal,

which is just this little window that allows you to enter text commands into your computer. I've been in there like twice. When you open terminal, it looks like you're hacking a mainframe in a bad movie. Right. That's exactly what it looks like. And he ran a command called NetStat. And what NetStat does is throw up a bunch of information about your computer, like, connections to the internet.

It has the old school hacker look that you're talking about. Yeah. So then he suddenly makes the terminal window incredibly small. Like he just made it like postage stamp size. Yes. So that he could still. use it, but I couldn't see what he was doing. Why did it get so small?

Just give me once again. Trying to read it. Even I don't know, sir. Just give me once again, sir. That is so like, not slack. And then he made it big again and written in it

was something like iCloud compromised, S-S-ED hacked, and then it said what it meant to say was Zeus Trojan detected. But what he had typed was Zeus Trojan detected with no J. What's Zeus Trojan?

Okay, the warning is... Zeus Trojan, sir. But it doesn't say Trojan. Can you see if you're found in your device? It says Trojan. It doesn't say Trojan. It doesn't say Trojan? No, it says Trojan.

There's no J. Yes. Wow. And then, without missing a beat, He continues to, like, go through his script and he says, Okay. It says that your Apple ID is compromised and as used for one is found. Okay.

He's a good improv comedian. So at that point, I revealed again that I knew what was going on. Charlie, I know that you're scamming me. I know that you're at least trying to scam me. Yes, I know. I know what NetSda does. Exactly, sir. You're genius, sir. You're intelligent.

I'm not that intelligent. Yes, sir. You're technically savvy. I'm not that technically savvy. I just know that you misspelled Trojan. But you are a little bit. So I'm curious. Are you really...

I tried to get this guy to tell me more about what was going on at this call center, but he pretty quickly hung up on me. They're going to have like a picture of you in the call center soon. That's like, do not surf this man? Yeah. So I keep calling them back. And eventually, I realize that the mistake that I'm making is that I'm making is that I am so excited to let these guys know that I'm onto them

that I don't let them play out their entire script. So I don't know what the full scam actually is. So I call back again. How can I help you? And I get Alex, the guy from the first call, but I don't want him to know that it's me. So he's a different name. I tell him my name is Rusty Savage.

And we go through the entire thing again. All right, sir. So now we are connected, sir. He opens up the terminal. He runs net stats, says I have a virus. and then I say like, oh, that sounds terrible. What do I do to fix it? So to fix this kind of problem, we will require some other network technicians of level line.

Okay. And they must be certified from Apple to handle this case. So he forwards me to the technician, level nine. And that technician tells me to go to a website called QuickPC Resolve. Quick PC Resolve. Do you want to take a look at QuickPC Resolve.com? Hold on. See, like, I feel trepidation about visiting this website.

You shouldn't. Well, that's what you say. Okay. So I'm at quick PC resolve. Okay. So, uh, so, uh, so it's a lot of stock photos. Uh, there's a really happy businesswoman with her, with her arms in a victory pose. Next generation tech support.

We assure you best experience with us. There are a lot of copywriting and graphic design choices that suggest, like, this certainly is an Apple. Like, it looks, it doesn't look great. Right. So we got to this website, and the level nine technician was like, okay, so I'm going to need your credit card. This is going to cost a couple hundred dollars. And I was like, okay, listen, I am not going to give you my credit card information because I know this is a scam. Like, how stupid do you think that I am?

Do you just have a really low opinion of Americans in general? Yes. And why do you have a low opinion of them? You guys are conservative mind of people. Until you are fighting for who is black and who is white. Everyone is human being. But you guys are doing terrible thing to your brother, your people that are living in your country, and you are killing them and you are robbing them.

And you are saying that you are very honest. I'm going to be honest with you. I agree with you. But listen, I am a human being. You were also human being when you bombed in 1947-45 atom bomb on Japan. Have you heard about that? I have heard about that. And millions of millions of millions people died.

And still in Japan, babies are born, paralyzed and disabled. That was 45 years before I was born, so I only had so much decision-making power when that happened. So listen to me, you are all... Where was the humanity of those American people that point of time? You're talking about human being. You don't have answer to my question. And you are giving me thought. You are giving me long speech about the human beings.

I've... Don't talk about it. I'm not a... Look. You can hang up the phone? No, you do nothing to me. It was a long and very frustrating conversation. And eventually, he got tired of me and hung up, just like they always do.

And I would say under-finding. minutes later, I was getting ready to leave the studio. And the studio phone rang. Hello. Hi, is that Alex? Yeah, hey, what's up? It was Alex Martin again. Yeah, hi, Alex.

How are you? Good. You're a liar. What do you mean? Why is that, your name is Ruffy Savage? My name is Alex. I know that. So, how's it going, Alex?

How's going great, buddy? great. You fool me, you got me, you know? And it's embarrassing, buddy. I appreciate you calling me back, man. Yeah, I did. I don't want to talk to a person who fooled me. My goodness. I don't know how I fell for you. So the guy who I was talking to was really indignant and super mad. Is he actually a third-party company, or is he just part of the same company you're up? He wasn't a third-party company. He's just a third-person sitting next to me. Ha ha ha ha! Of course!

Oh, man. You're a famous personality on Google, you know? You just Google your name, and you got a silly-looking guy, having a half-bald, hairs, like fat, and reading his spectacles, having a weird smile. Oh, yeah, I do have a weird smile. I don't know. I mean... Oh, yeah, you have a very weird smile.

It's kind of mean. Come and kiss me right away. I don't want to kiss you. But I... Of course, thank God. Thank God. Thank God. want to.

What do you do for fun? I'm a hacker. Whatever stuff, like, piss me off, I hack it. So are you going to hack me? Well, when I'll be doing that, you never pissed me. Oh, well, that's good. I was worried that I might have made you mad. I mean, you did call me fat two minutes ago.

I had nobody. I was just for, I was just kidding. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. That means a lot to me. Yeah. What do you do? What do you do? What do you do for fun?

I play guitar. uh, play video games. What games you play? Uh, well, you know, here's the problem. I have an old computer. You, you, you know, you've, you guys have been on it plenty of times. Um, and it is, I play a lot on Steam, but I mostly play like older games, like Team Fortress 2 I like a lot, um, stuff like that.

What do you play? What do I play? Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Are you good at CounterStrike? Pretty good. I'm hell good.

I suck at that game. I suck at that game. You suck at that game? You suck it? Why? Come on. I don't know. I like... What do you really mind if I call you back?

No. Right away. I give you a quick call back. What do you mind? Uh, why? He didn't call back. How old do you think this person was? That is like the homophobia of a junior high schooler or a high schooler.

He told me. He was 22. Huh. He was a kid. Huh. And I kept calling the call center back asking for Alex, but I couldn't get him again. It was like he totally vanished. By this point, everyone at the call center was just stonewalling me.

Like, they were totally done with me. But I was not done with them. I was determined to figure these guys out. And I had a piece of evidence to go on. That website, quick PC resolve. Welcome back to the show. So PJ, this story has like ballooned in terms of its complexity and density. And so I have since the beginning, basically, been working with producer Damiano Marquetti on research.

He is in the studio right now. Hi, PJ. Hey, Domiano. So you'll remember that before the break, we have one piece of evidence to go on, which is this website Quick PC resolve. Uh-huh. We looked up the Who Is record for Quick PC resolve. And we found a couple of names associated with it. And when we checked to see if those people had any other websites, we found this whole great

constellation of scammy tech support websites that looked exactly like Quick PC resolve. Got it. But there was one website that was associated with these guys that was different. Which was? It was this website called accostings.com. Acostings? Like to accost someone? It's a weird name for a website.

Even weirder name for a company. The company is called Acostings Infotech Private Limited. Okay. And when we go and look at the website, it's so, different than the other ones we've seen. It says very clearly that it's a call center and has what looks like a real address on Club Road in New Delhi. It has a real Indian phone number. Not a 1-800 number like all the other ones have. And so we're like, is this like the parent company? Like, is this the place where all of these scams are coming from? So in order to figure that out,

I just called the number on the Acostings website. Hi, I'm trying to reach technical support. Yep. How can I help you, sir? Just to be clear, this is quick PC resolve? Yes, yes. It's a quick PC result, so absolutely correct. Thank you very much. And so then I went to all the other websites. I called all the other 1-800 numbers

and asked them if they were quick PC resolve. And they all said yes. It doesn't matter which one of these websites would go to. It doesn't matter which number we call. They're all going to the same call center. It's the same company. It's this company Acostings. And so we started researching a call-to-euxing.

Costings, and there was this one name that kept popping up over and over again. This name, Kamal Verma. And I was like, who is this guy? So I just started calling the call center and asking for him. Thank you for calling for the medical support. How may I help you? Yeah, I'm trying to reach Kamal Verma. My name's Alex Goldman. I call you guys pretty regularly. Is he there? Hello? Yeah, trying to reach Kamal Verma. Please stop calling us.

I'm not going to until I sort of get the answers that I'm interested in. Okay, then keep calling us, keep calling us. You know what? You are an asshole. Why would- You are an asshole? Why would you say that? Because you are an asshole. You don't know about it?

You're bothering. Who is? Who is come on world master? I don't know. Can you put me in touch with him? Uh, do one thing. Just play with me. Be with me for one minute.

Hello? Yeah, this is the wrong number, sir? No, it isn't. I know it's not a wrong number. Yeah, I'm going for a dinner. So I didn't really get anywhere. But on that last call, you can hear a couple people speaking in Hindi faintly in the background. So I got Shruti Revenrin, who is a producer on another Gimlet show, Science Versus, and also speaks Hindi, to come into the studio and listen to see if she could translate for me.

D.EVS. I think, so the person said he keeps calling and he's taking the same. is a Hindiism, taking Kamal Sir's name. I mean, he professed to not know this guy, but he used like a respectful term to call him. So he does recognize him. And then I think he was proposing by the end, the other person that he spoke to was proposing by the end to say it was a wrong number. So Shruti told us that these guys are using a term of respect for Kamal, like a term that you would use for superior. And so we're pretty sure that Kamal is the. boss of a costings. And Damiano starts to dig really deep on this guy. Yeah, I start doing tons of

research on him. I find his Facebook page, which of course has all these pictures on it. And I want to show you one of them. So Kamal and like all the big wigs, I think, they like to go to this bar called chug it. Chug it? Down the street from the office. Kamal is the second from the left. Oh, he looks like the boss. Yeah, he looks like a tough guy, right? I mean, he's just like, he's got like everybody everybody who's not him is like a little bit like slumpier like I don't know he's got like a very salani haircut um and like his clothes are a little bit more fashionable yeah he just looks like the boss totally so for weeks Alex was calling the call center and asking for Kamal in the meantime like I was dying to know more about this call center costing

hello yeah hi Damiano hi how are you I started to find former employees who listed Acostings on their LinkedIn or their Facebook. Yeah, so is this? Almost everyone we interviewed said, I'll talk, but please don't use my name. When was it that you worked there? I've worked there for two years, working as a salesperson, between 2009 to 2011. So this guy explained to me that when Alex and I are calling Acostings, most of the people that were talking to are super young. Like, this is probably their first job.

Most of them are students who belongs to eastern, northeastern part of India, like Manipuri and all. They have a bit sound knowledge of English, like, if compared with any other part of India. Like, their accent is quite understandable, I guess. Is it like a poorer part of India too? And that's so it's easier to recruit people? Yes. Yes, yes, it is. So what happens is, like, these kids,

They come from these small rural towns a lot of the time. They get to the big city, and they get what they think is just like a normal, honest job. When I was hired with them, they told me they have a legitimate process with them. So when you started, they said, we have a legitimate process with Apple. That's right. But sooner and later, I got to know that this was something, you know, fishy going on. Did anybody that you worked with, was anybody that you worked with open about the fact that they were committing fraud? or was everybody, did everybody just pretend like that wasn't happening?

You know, there were people who know that this is not good happening, but it's just that there was no other option to survive. They have to do it. Right. Because if they will not do it, then they have to go back to their hometown and there, and there is no job there. I'll tell you the main reason. I mean, the reason why I left that company,

because there was a fight for, they were, like, delaying myself again and again. Really? they weren't paying you? Yeah, it's just how, I mean, it's not with me. It's like they were doing with everybody. The same thing happened with me as well. I did not receive my money. When I asked them that they owe my money and they need to pay me,

but they completely said no, that they cannot pay. Man, I can give you all this information, but make sure you don't disclose my name because, you know, they would be after me if they get to know that, you know, I gave you all this information. Okay, I can keep you anonymous. What I realized later on, you know, when I was there in the company for two months, you know,

I realize because these guys are earning good amount of money, okay? So, you know, they can do anything to you in terms of if you go against them or if you tell them, this is what is going on, you know, they can really do something harmful against you. What do you mean? What kind of threats did they give you? If they get to know, you know, you know, that I have given you my information, they have my resume, my home address with them, and everything.

They have my phone number and everything. So, you know, they might, you know, send cops to my place and tell them that I have, you know, stolen their data or their company information and all that stuff. I see. So, accosting seems like a pretty precarious place to work. People told us that turnover, they're super high. People are quitting or getting fired all the time. Which explained something that I'd been wondering about for a while,

which was Alex Martin, the first guy that we talked to, he had just completely vanished. And it seemed likely to me that he probably quit or got fired. And we learned something else really interesting, which is that Acostings, it didn't start out this way. Like, it wasn't always so sketchy. They actually started the company as like a real tech support company. And they were helping people with their problems. And then like a couple years in, it seems like what happened is that they were like, you know what would be a better way of getting business

instead of calling people, like cold calling people and saying, hey, maybe you'll get a virus sometime in the future. Say, you have a virus right now. Exactly. And pay us $300. Once you pay us to get rid of the virus that you supposedly have on your computer, will also support you in the future

and be your tech support company. So they're lying, but they're still selling a real product. They're lying, exactly. Just a way of drumming up business. You go from being like the local security guard company to being the guy who's like, it'd be a shame if anything happened here. Exactly.

And, you know, the whole time we thought about this company as being very remote from us, like a bunch of people in a room trying to scam us thousands of miles away. But we talked to someone who used to work there who made us realize that their reach extends across the globe. So what they told me that they were taking payments through check in U.S. Huh. I know the name of the company on which they were taking these checks as well. The name of the company is MSS Marketing LLC. And it's in Pennsylvania.

I called the woman who runs it, and she said, yes, I used to take payments for accostings, but she claims that she shut MSS marketing down months ago. Interesting. So every time someone gets scammed on the phone by someone in another country, or not maybe not every time, but basically if somebody tricks you on the phone and takes your credit card or whatever,

they need to have a Confederate who's actually based in the country. country that you're in. Exactly. And this isn't just happening in the U.S. We found these guys who live in Bradford, England, who are setting up websites and companies so that they can process money for our costings in the U.K. And it seems like our costings is making a ton of money. We don't know exactly how much, but based on what a former employee told me, probably in the realm of about $2 million a year. And the people who are taking my calls, they're being like, intimidated by this company. They're not making a lot of money. They're being treated like crap. But someone like Kamal is probably cleaning up. So it's like basically like every piece

of information you learn just makes Kamal like more and more of a cartoon villain character basically, right? Like he is the big bad guy at this point. Exactly. Which is why it was so frustrating that we couldn't get him on the phone no matter how hard we tried. And then executive producer Tim Howard came up with a crazy idea. Can I tell you what my crazy idea would be? What? To call and just say, this is Kamal. Hi, this is Kamal.

Do I have any messages from Alex Goldman? Yeah. Was that Tim's idea? No. What was Tim's crazy idea? Tim was like, you need to throw these guys off balance a little bit. Like you're just being too straightforward. They know what to expect from you.

They can just hang up on you. Yeah. Why don't you take one of the photos you found of them on Facebook? Make it your desktop background and then have them connect to your computer. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. That's so creepy. That's great. It's nuts.

Wait, so do you remember that? Yeah, so when they call, they, like, remote in, and they do, like, the fake, like, you have Berg's thing or whatever. You've got a Trojan horse. And so your plan is, like, when they remote into your computer, they're just going to see, like, a smiling picture of themselves hanging out. Yeah, but not just a smiling picture of themselves. It's a smiling picture of, like, their bosses.

So this is a very, very funny plan. So what happened? So I call up and some guy I don't recognize answers and we just start going through the routine where he gets on my computer, you know. Your Mac computer is going to connect to our secure server and after that we are going to run a diagnosis on that. Okay. A little box showed up in the lower right hand corner. It says... Yeah.

Please join session. Click on. Okay. Connect. Here I go. Yeah. Yes, sir. And then I minimize.

everything on my screen, leaving only the picture on the desktop. Now we are well connected. Okay. Wait a second. Is he still on your computer? I think he hung up. Hello? Hello?

Be online, sir. Be online. Be online, be online. Thank you so much for being online, sir. This is Alexander Martin. How are you doing today? Hey, Alex Martin. How's it going?

I'm doing great, sir. I'm good. What's up? I'm doing great. Thanks a lot for asking. How's your day going, sir? Pretty good, thanks. Hmm, that's good. That's wonderful. Is this the Alex Martin that I talked to a while back? This is Alex Goldman. Yeah, that's at the same Alex Martin, sir. You remember me? How's it going, man? I've been trying to get in touch with you for weeks.

My goodness, I was out for a week, and I was in Thailand on my vacations. What have you been up to? What do you think of my desktop background? Oh, who are they? I don't recognize them. Who are they? Give me a break. Come on, man. I know better than that. Seriously? Are you one of them? Who are you? So, Alex, dude, I've been trying to get in touch with you, man. I've been learning a lot about Quick PC resolve and Acostings, Infotech and sort of like people who work there, people who used to work there. But I was worried that you might have gotten canned or something. I'm glad to hear your voice.

So what exactly you want now? Well, I just wanted to know how you were doing, first of all. Second of all... Yeah, I'm very good. Second of all... Tell about yourself. Well, the reason I was trying to re-chew is because I wanted to see if you... You said you played Counterstrike, and I was wondering if you were on Steam.

Because if you're on Steam, I could give you my Steam ID. We could play some games together. No need. You don't have any work to do, or what? Up until this point, Alex Martin has always been, like, interested in me. He wants to talk about video games and stuff And all of a sudden in this moment He becomes really hostile And honestly

It kind of threw me off balance a little bit Like I didn't know how to proceed This is my work But I mean, you know, when you're not at work You said you like to play video games I was wondering if you want to play some games together What game you like? Well, let's see

Let me just bring up my steam And see what I've got going on there You seem angry with me Are you mad at me? Me Yeah. No, I'm not angry at all. I'm very calm, very calm, very cool.

All right, what have I got here? The only thing is that I want to find out what exactly you want. That's what I want to know. So I've got Team Fortress 2, Counterstrike. You're not coming to the point, you know what I'm asking you. I'm asking you what exactly you want. Well, so I got a call from this number a while back. Yeah, that was ages before, yeah.

That was ages before. And the purpose of that call was to try and scam me out of money. But you were not scammed fortunately, yeah? Yeah, but I know that a lot of other people probably are being scammed. So what? You are a social worker or what? Well, no, I'm a journalist. So, I mean, you don't have any other companies to find out that are they doing scam or not?

Well, no other companies called me, man. I'll give you some names, okay? Write it down. of other companies? Yeah. I mean, I'll be... They'll be bigger fishes for you, okay? Instead of coming to me, go for them.

You'll get more money from there. Because if you come to me, you won't get anything. So you're wasting your time. So he's saying, like, if you come to me, you won't get anything. I'm not giving you any money. And it suddenly felt like I was talking to a boss. And then it hit me that I might actually be talking to... to the boss? Like, what if Alex Martin is Kamal?

Oh, that is nuts. Yeah. So is this Kamal that I'm talking to? Yeah, this is Kamal. Is it really? So, you don't recognize me or what? Well, how am I supposed to... Every time I call, I get a different name. How am I supposed to know that this is Kamal? Because, you know, when they came to know that you are the same guy,

with whom I have already spoken with, so they transfer the call to me, you know? And you know, as the conversation went on, he started to refer to things that only Kamal would know. Like, a few weeks before we made this call, we had our co-worker Shruthi try to friend him on Facebook, and he brought that up. And I was like, oh, this guy that I'm talking to really is Kamal. That is nuts. I can't even process that. So the... Wow.

Yeah. I must have gotten the floor manager the first time. Oh, my God. Yeah. No wonder he sounds like so at ease with what he's doing. You know what I mean? And Kamal basically said to me, Kamalix, Kamal said to me like, look, you need to stop calling during business hours and disrupting my tax. And I was like, what do you want me to do?

And he gave me his number. What? He gave me his email address. What? And was like, call me back when you, like, call back my number instead of calling my technicians on the floor. That's. So funny. So at this point, it's the end of March.

It's been about two months since the first call. And I started just calling Kamal pretty regularly over the next couple weeks. And would he pick up? He would. Hello. Hey, Kamal? Comeal. Hello?

Yes, yes. Your voice is breaking. And which Kamal would you get? Would you get the Kamal that's like jeering at you for being a slovenly American? Would you get the nice Kamal that talks to you about how you like to play Counter-Strike? We got sort of like a laid-backer. kind of quiet Kamal. It was a very different Kamal than I was used to.

He would just sort of answer my questions. Did you grow up in Delhi? No, not at all. I belong to Punjab. I'm not from Delhi. What made you move to Delhi in the first place? I just want to see the Delhi life, that's it. I just came here with one of the friends,

and then I thought, like, let me work here for a few years. And I work, and then I enjoyed it. I'm honestly not learning that much from Kamal in these conversations. We're just sort of having idle chit-chat. But at the same time, me and Damiano are researching Acostings. And it's during this time that we realize that Kamal is not actually the boss. Kamal is the boss's right-hand man. So here, let me show you this photo.

It's of them in their new office. Oh, there are so many employees at this company now. That's the whole team, yeah. And the guy at the center, that's the top boss. It's a guy named Deepak Verma. So the guy who's wearing, like, traditional garb? And then I think like, literally Kamal is his right hand man. He's actually saying it at his right hand.

Yeah. And so we start to think maybe Kamal gave us his personal phone number because he doesn't want his boss to know that he's talking to us. And I would say a couple weeks after he gave me a cell phone number, he started saying, I think, you know, I think my time at this company is about to near, is about to come to an end. How you doing? Yeah, not so good these days. I mean, everyone is not switching, you know.

So even I'm thinking of planning of doing my own, thinking that I'll do something for myself, you know, a small setup or something. Wait, wait, you're planning on leaving accostings? Yeah, yeah. And starting your own business. Yeah. When he would say that,

did it feel like he wanted to leave the company to go start another scam company, or was it like I want to leave, maybe I don't want to scam people anymore? It never seemed like he had like a particular moral qualm about scamming. Yeah. But he did seem like he was kind of burnt out. Why do you want to leave? It's just like that I don't want to work anymore.

I just want to go village and stay in village, you know. My father, they used to call me every other day that come back, come back. And at first I wasn't super convinced that he actually. that he actually wanted to leave. I think he kind of wanted to throw me off the trail. But then, you know, I kept calling the call center, and one day, a couple months later... Your call is very important to us.

Please stay on the line, and you'll be transferred to the next available agent. Thank you for calling premium technical support. My name is Eric. How can I help you today? Yeah, my name's Alex Goldman. I'm trying to reach Kamal Verma. Is he there?

Sir, he left the job today. What do you mean? I'm so sorry, sir. He's not available. Actually, he left the job today, sir. So I hung up and I immediately called Kamal and he said, yeah, I quit. I moved back in with my parents on their farm. And he was like, look, I moved to the city to see what it was like to try living a metropolitan life.

And I decided that it's not for me. And what could be better than just hanging out, waking up whenever I want, going to bed whenever I want, and not really having to work. Kamal said that he'd left accostings on bad terms, which made me think a little differently about something he'd said to me a couple times on the phone. Anytime whenever you come to India, let's do call me, okay? I might. If you visit New Delhi. Yeah, just come. Just come for two, three days, and I'll make you visit places like Taj Nail, you know, Agra.

Nice place to see. Six months ago, I got a phone call from someone pretending to be Apple computers. And just through sheer force of will and I guess a lot of free time, me and Damiano managed to figure out a lot about these people. And now an ex-manager who parted on bad terms is inviting me to India. And I asked him, hey, now that you don't work there anymore, will you tell me everything I want to know? And he said yes. Please keep your seats in an upright position.

I mean, how could I not go? Next time on Reply All, Alex and Damiano take a trip. Reply All is hosted by me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. The show is produced this week by Shruthy Pinnameney, Fia Benin. I'm Anna Marquetti and Austin Mitchell. Our editors, Tim Howard. More editorial, helped this week from Jorge Just. Production assistance from Shrina Ong.

We were mixed by Rick Kwan. Special thanks this week to Alan Baranov, Courtney Gregoer of the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit, Adrian Fisher, Will Maxon of the FTC, Aparna Alori, and Paul Frost. Two things. If you suspect you may have been a victim of a technical support scam,

you can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. We've included a link in the description of this episode. Also, if you have time, there is a brief survey that we would really benefit from you filling out. It's at replyall.com. It is a mix of questions. Some of them are to help advertisers. Some of them are to help us figure out who's listening and what you like about the show. Again, that is replyall.

That is the best part of the summer. Reply All is now available on Spotify. Go check us out there. You can also listen to the show on Google Play and Apple Podcasts wherever you listen. Thanks for listening. We will be back with part two of this story next week. The air on this planet is weird. It doesn't allow for more than sound to travel at any time. So there's never any...

So there's never any... There are all these instruments lying around. Do you have some of those bees from last time? No, thank you. I was just establishing continuity. Never mind.