A millionaire fraud that already has several suspects sentenced to prison in the United States had one of its main links in Costa Rica.
The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed on October 11th that a company called ABC Repair Tech (ABC), domiciled in San José, served to scam thousands of people through a fraudulent scheme forged in North American lands.
The crimes occurred between 2013 and 2016 for an economic damage close to $25 million, with a total of more than 40 thousand victims.
ABC was established in Costa Rica as a company that provided technical support to customers in the US through a call center. But in reality it was a screen to commit crimes. Parallel to this company, the criminal organization created the American company Care Experts LLC, which was used for the same criminal purpose.
This Friday, October 11th, an Illinois court sentenced Grant Clark Wasik, former vice president of ABC and Care Experts LLC, to more than 10 years in a federal prison. He must also pay $10.5 million as restitution to victims.
According to court documents, the defendants bought pop-up ads (known as pop-ups) that would suddenly appear on the person’s computer screen. The pop-ups resembled real warnings and falsely informed victims of the detection of serious problems such as viruses or malware on their computers. Often, pop-ups caused the person’s Internet browser to freeze and stop responding . Pop-ups also used to warn victims not to shut down their computers or otherwise lose all their data. Instead, the ads told them to call a toll-free number, where they connected with fake sales representatives who continued with the fraud,”
said the US Department of Justice. in an official statement.
These false sales representatives convinced victims to grant them remote access to computers, where normal functions and routine processes stood out as evidence of serious computer problems. The victims were never told that the pop-ups that had hijacked their computers were just ads bought by the technical support company or that in most cases they could make pop-ups disappear simply by restarting their computers.
Instead, remote “ fixes ” were sold for $250 and antivirus protection software for another $400. If the victims resisted the high prices, the sales representatives offered them a discount for being senior citizens, military veterans or something else,”
the official report said.