Telemarketing Fraud
As the telemarketing age continues to grow, more and more companies
and businesses sell or advertise their products and services
through telephone marketing. Many of these companies are legitimate
and they use this technique either by calling the prospective
consumers or advertising their products and services to a number
of consumers to call them. Charities even use telemarketing.
The bad news is, telemarketing is not only used today by legitimate
companies and charities. A lot of telemarketers who solicit
consumers by phone are fraudulent telemarketers. They rob people
through their expertise in the so-called “sales talk” everyday
with telephone as their weapon.
Statistics show that there has been a growing number in cases
of telemarketing fraud. Last year, 2005, it was revealed by
the National Fraud Information Center that the top ten telemarketing
frauds include prizes or sweepstakes, scholarships and grants,
magazine sales, credit card offers, face check scams, advance
fee loans, lotteries, work at home plans, phishing, and travel
or vacation scams. Of these mentioned telemarketing frauds,
the scholarships or grants scams top the list.
Now let’s take a look at the common definition of telemarketing
fraud. According to some experts, the term telemarketing fraud
refers generally to any scheme to defraud. In a telemarketing
fraud scheme, the people carrying out the scheme use the telephone
as their primary means of communicating to their prospective
targets. They tend to work with their telemarketing fraudulent
scheme to persuade people to send money for their scheme. Usually,
when these telemarketing fraudulent companies solicit people
to buy their products and services, to donate funds to charitable
causes, or to invest money, the telemarketing fraud operation
typically employs a number of false and misleading statements.
In addition to this, most telemarketing fraudulent operations
even use representations and promises just to trap their unfortunate
victims.
There is one particular telemarketing fraudulent tactic commonly
used by most telemarketing fraud companies – the so-called “reloading”.
Reloading is actually a term that refers to fraudulent telemarketer’s
practice of re-contacting victims after their initial transactions
with the telemarketer. This term also refers to the telemarketing
fraudulent operation in which the fraudulent telemarketers solicit
their re-contacted victims for additional payments. Perhaps
one concrete example of this telemarketing fraudulent operation
is the prize-promotion scheme, in which victims are often told
that they are now eligible for even higher levels and values
of prizes for which they must pay additional fees or taxes.
Today, although many consumers apparently find it difficult
to believe that there are telemarketing fraudulent people who
will contact them on the phone and lie and misrepresent facts
just to obtain their money, the sad reality is that at any given
time, there are at least several hundred telemarketing fraudulent
operations. Some of these telemarketing fraudulent operations
employ as many as several dozen people. Much worse is that not
only the individual consumers are victims of telemarketing fraud.
Businesses, from large corporations to small “Mom and Pop” stores
are targets for a variety of telemarketing fraudulent schemes
as well.
With the rapid growth of telemarketing fraud, perhaps the best
way that people can do to avoid telemarketing frauds is to do
business with companies they only know and trust. People should
also understand the offer, check all the bills and invoices
carefully, guard their financial or other account information,
and educate their employees about avoiding telemarketing fraud.
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