After receiving a call from an IRS phone scamming company, a computer programmer (monikered Project Mayhem) decided he would get his revenge on them. The scammers were part of a criminal group that extorts money from unsuspecting people by threatening that they owe money to the tax authorities.
“A couple of days ago I received a voicemail informing me that I performed Tax Fraud and that the IRS was sending Law Enforcement to arrest me, and to call them back,” writes Project Mayhem in his YouTube video.
He called them back and and recorded the conversation. Angered and fed up with what he heard, he came up with an idea. “Because they leave voicemails and demand people to call back or be arrested, what if they couldn’t receive calls? Better yet, what if they got so many calls, we flooded the scammers preventing any more scams?”
So he wrote a a script that would call the phone scammers 28 times a second. And he recorded everything.
Note: some language in the video is NSFW.
You can listen to an excerpt of the man’s initial exchange with the phone scammers followed by the scammers getting the auto callbacks announcing “Hello it has been detected that you are a scammer, because of this we’re now flooding your phone lines.”
As the auto-calls continue the scammers get more and more frustrated, as each time they pick up the phone they are greeted by the same message.
If you have trouble viewing the video above, try the one below.
The flooder ran for 3 days completely preventing the criminals from receiving calls or voicemails.
Of course such revenge plans won’t last long as the scammers simply change their phone numbers to other ones and commence scamming again.
Unfortunately it’s the elderly that are most likely to fall victim to these type of scams. Last month Indian police arrested the alleged ringleader of the IRS scam – a 24-year-old. Seventy other people have been arrested and more than 390 people charged.
Authorities are still investigating the total amount of money collected, but initial investigation uncovered around $300 million have been stolen from unsuspecting victims in the U.S. by this alleged gang.
At the end of his video, Project Mayhem cautions people to please not fall for these tricks. “They come in many flavors: IRS, Tech Support for your computer, sweepstake calls and more. If it seems suspicious at all, HANG UP. If they claim to be a reputable company like a Bank, Government Branch, or any public company, HANG UP, search for the company’s number and YOU call THEM.”
It’s good advice and information you should pass along to everyone you know, especially the seniors in your family.
Disclosure: This post may include affiliate links.