A federal court has temporarily banned operations for a group of alleged computer-technical support scammers, including a pair of Essex firms. They are accused of using misleading and high-pressure tactics to scam Microsoft, Apple and other PC users out of more than $17 million, state and federal investigators say.
Connecticut Attorney General George P. Jepsen said Friday a Pennsylvania federal judge also banned operators in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania from engaging in any deceptive and unfair practices and froze their assets while investigators continue to probe their operations.
The two Essex firms are Click4Support LLC and Innovazion Inc., doing business as Click4Support and UBERTECHSUPPORT, Jepsen said.
Investigators allege, Jepsen said in a statement, that when consumers who responded to their ads were routed to a call center, telemarketers would frequently misrepresent that they were “a Microsoft agent,” “Google support” or that they “work for AT&T,” among other affiliation claims.
The telemarketers would then convince consumers to give them remote access to their computers, navigate to harmless portions of the computer and mislead consumers into thinking that their computer was infected with viruses or malware, Jepsen said.
Jepsen said he has joined with he Federal Trade Commission and Pennsylvania’s attorney general in filing a joint complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania alleging that the defendants used Internet advertisements and popups that appeared to be from well-known technology companies to lure consumers into calling them. When consumers called the defendants’ phone numbers, they were allegedly further misled into thinking that their computers were full of viruses, malware or other security breaches and were given a high-pressure sales pitch for unnecessary tech support services.
Other co-defendants in the complaint: Pennsylvania-based iSourceUSA LLC, which also did business at Click4Support Tech Services; and Pennsylvania-based Spanning Source LLC, which also did business as Click4Support; Bruce Bartolotta of Deep River, Conn.; George Saab of Stow, Mass.; Chetan Bhikhubhai Patel of Newtown, Penn.; and Niraj Patel of New Hope, Pa.
