Category: text scam

NBI Arrested Alleged PH’s “Text Scam King”

Ronnie Bulaong Leave a comment

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has arrested a suspect named Roan Sia aka Mark Tan yesterday in his house in Metro Manila. He is believed to be one of the country’s biggest text scam operator who, according to the agency, has amassed a total of Php100 million worth of credits from numerous victims.

According to the NBI, Tan’s modus operandi was to send out multiple SMS to random numbers, both here and abroad, pretending to be a friend or a relative who is in dire need of prepaid credits.

The prepaid credits that Tan allegedly took from unsuspecting victim are wired to one of the 50 cellular phones that he uses in his operation. He then transfers the credit to his own number which in turn can be turned into cold hard cash using the local telco’s money transfer services like Smart Money and Globe G-Cash.

Mark Tan is facing various charges including (but not limited to) violation of the Access Devices Regulation Act of 1998 (RA 8484) and large-scale estafa.

[GMA News]

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Smart taps GSMA to improve security against spam

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Lazada Philippines

Smart Communications has announced that the company is currently in talks with GSM Association regarding a service that would heighten the telco’s effort against SMS spams and scams.

In a statement, the MVP-owned telco said that GSMA’s service will complement its existing security measures to protect its subscribers from abusive users who use SMS as a mode to offer services and, worse, ask for prepaid load from an unsuspecting user. The telco added that te anti-spam service is the same as the one currently being used by top service providers like Verizon and AT&T.

Prior to the announcement, Smart has setup an additional security feature when transferring load to a user to avoid unwanted or accidental load transfers. Now users who are about to transfer a load to a user will receive a computer-generated confirmation message from the telco notifying them about the transaction.

To complete the process of the load transfer, users will have to reply “YES” and send it to 808 within 15 minutes from the time they receive the notification message. The transaction will be revoked if the subscriber failed to comply with the aforementioned step.

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Telcos warn subscribers about new Text Scam

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Globe Telecoms and Smart Communications have issued a warning to the public about a new scam that involves receiving SMS and voice calls from an anonymous person asking for ransom and claiming that one of the subscriber’s loved ones were kidnapped.

According to reports, the modus operandi includes a person guised as a customer service rep from one of the telcos asking a user (the one who is alleged to be abducted) to turn off their handset for 2 hours for a “network-related upgrade” either through phone call or SMS.

After that, the fake rep or an accomplice will contact the subscriber’s family and/or relative claiming that their love one was kidnapped and is asking for a ransom for his/her release. It’s also been said that the group will even ask somebody to cry for help on the background to make their ploy even more believable.

“We reiterate and warn the public of these criminal elements capitalizing on our network modernization initiatives. Customers who receive suspicious calls from persons claiming to be Globe agents should clarify with our customer service personnel,”

– Vicente Froilan M. Castelo, General Counsel of Globe Telecoms

In a statement, Mr. Castelo states that Globe Telecoms “will never ask its customers to turn off their cell phones for any network-related purpose and those who receive such calls should immediately report the numbers used for the call.”

Both Smart Communications and Globe Telecoms have already put up their respective initiatives to lessen, if not totally eliminate any kind of scams involving SMS and voice calls. Subscribers can report any suspicious numbers by following the procedures listed on our previous post.

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