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Cellphones Crime Spam

Text Message Scammer Gets Five Years in Prison (reuters.com) 69

Posted by EditorDavid from the not-passing-Go dept.
36-year-old Fraser Thompson is going to prison, according to Reuters, after receiving a five-year sentence for "defrauding" cellphone customers out of millions of dollars. An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Prosecutors said Thompson engaged in a scheme to sign up hundreds of thousands of cellphone customers for paid text messaging services without their consent. The customers were subsequently forced to pay more than $100 million for unsolicited text messages that included trivia, horoscopes and celebrity gossip, according to the prosecutors. They said the scheme was headed by Darcy Wedd, Mobile Messenger's former chief executive, who was found guilty by a jury in December but has not yet been sentenced. "They ripped off everyday cellphone users, $10 a month, netting over $100 million in illegal profits, of which Thompson personally received over $1.5 million," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a statement.
Thompson was ordered to forfeit $1.5 million in "fraud proceeds," according to the article, and was convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering.

Seven other people also pleaded guilty to participating in the scam -- and one has already been sentenced to 33 months in prison.
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Text Message Scammer Gets Five Years in Prison More

Text Message Scammer Gets Five Years in Prison

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  • Very interesting. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday January 14, 2018 @02:55PM (#55927877)

    What I find so very interesting is that the judicial system doesn't seem to equate the overall amount of economic damage as being the same as if done to a single individual. Basically, you give everyone on the planet a paper cut and get a slap on the wrist but if you give one person 7 million paper cuts then it's somehow worse despite being far less damaging by three orders of magnitude.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      They have to do that so they can have an excuse to fine their corporate overlords less than they make in excess profits when they scam the world for billions.

    • It’s less damaging only if you’re not the person receiving those 7 million paper cuts. Otherwise: ouch. No, punching 50 people is not the same a beating 1 guy to death.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        So let me get that straight, a crazy tall Asian women (equal opportunity imagination) walks down a street and punches 50 passes by (http://scienceblogs.com/whitecoatunderground/2009/03/18/a-simple-bump-on-the-head-can/ and http://www.smh.com.au/national... [smh.com.au]), failing at intent should not be rewarded.

        As in this case, they stole as much as they possibly felt they could get away with from as many people as possible, also cheating their shareholders and investors and honest staff, all who have to pay a much gre

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by imidan ( 559239 )
      He had to forfeit his ill-gotten gains and is sentenced to 5 years prison. I don't know if that's really a slap on the wrist. What are we supposed to do, throw him in a cell forever? What's the maximum prison time for his conviction? We've already lost enough resources to this guy, I don't really want us to pay for his care and feeding for the rest of his life. Let the loser do his time and go back to his miserable life.

    • Yeah, because nearly everyone recovers to 100% from a paper cut, somewhat fewer recover from being stabbed (physical and psychologically) and history has only one very dubious record of a man recovering after being stabbed to death.

      Maybe I should rephrase. The amount of economic damage done by murdering or crippling an individual is not just the act itself, it's the loss of that person's entire life after that point, and the loss of their children and their children's children. That's not the same as "the d

    • Same thing for spam (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday January 14, 2018 @06:44PM (#55928793)
      If it takes you 5 seconds to determine a single email is spam and delete it, then a spammer who sends out 500 million emails has basically cost a cumulative 1 lifetime (79 years) in wasted time.

      We also do the same thing for financial (white collar) crime. The lifetime earnings for an average American is about $1.5 million. So by that metric, any white collar criminal who causes more than $1.5 million in damage should automatically get a life sentence. But we have this tendency to spread that cost over everyone, so $1.5 million becomes half a cent per American, and we sweep it under the rug. (To be fair, the same standard is used for non-white collar financial crimes like bank robbery. The harsher sentence is for threatening people working at or customers of the bank, not for stealing the money.)

      • But we have this tendency to spread that cost over everyone ... and we sweep it under the rug.

        That is the part that is so interesting.

      • any white collar criminal who causes more than $1.5 million in damage should automatically get a life sentence

        To what end? Studies show that harsher punishments don't significantly discourage perpetrators. You certainly don't need a lifetime to rehabilitate someone who committed a non-violent white collar crime. The only motivation I can think of behind a life sentence is vengeance, and I don't want revenge to be the motivating force behind the justice system.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chihowa ( 366380 )

          Besides vengeance, there's also the defensive action of removing a dangerous person from society. The motivation behind life and death sentences is to protect society from irredeemable people who cannot be rehabilitated.

          As much as I hate scams, I wouldn't necessarily put a scammer into that bucket, though.

          • Fair point. Even the Catholic church accepts the use of the death penalty in cases where it's the only viable means of protecting society. I think they (and I) would also say that there are always other viable options within the modern criminal justice systems (life in supermax prison, for example).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by chihowa ( 366380 )

              Philosophically, I'm not entirely convinced that life imprisonment is less cruel than execution, assuming that a person is accurately determined to be a permanent and irreparable menace to others.

              Practically, even the best judicial systems aren't infallible and will certainly execute or permanently imprison innocent people. At least those with life in prison have the opportunity to fix a mistaken conviction.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by deesine ( 722173 )
          "Studies show that harsher punishments don't significantly discourage perpetrators." For capital offenses, true. Go to Singapore and spit your gum on the sidewalk, I dare you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      What I find so very interesting is that the judicial system doesn't seem to equate the overall amount of economic damage as being the same as if done to a single individual. Basically, you give everyone on the planet a paper cut and get a slap on the wrist but if you give one person 7 million paper cuts then it's somehow worse despite being far less damaging by three orders of magnitude.

      That's because the criminal system only seeks to separate the criminal from the rest of society.

      Economic recompense is don

      • That's because the criminal system only seeks to separate the criminal from the rest of society.

        Even crimes are classified differently based on the amount of money taken. IANAL but as far as I know, everything over $10K is viewed as the same level of crime. I find that to be an oddity. Wouldn't it make more sense to view the severity of the crime as being proportional to the amount of money taken?

        There are definitely disparities in the law.

  • So, um, how did he get paid? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday January 14, 2018 @02:58PM (#55927905)
    Did these people had over CC number? Or of it more likely he had help from the carriers? The last time I heard about these scams they were only possible because companies like AT&T allowed them to tack on charges to your cell phone bill. I don't suppose that practice has ended. I know I still get warnings if I respond to a companies text messages.

  • They cost me almost $20 in overage text fees last month. I disabled text messages a couple of months ago as described here:

    https://www.facebook.com/help/170960386370271?helpref=faq_content [facebook.com]

    But, I'm still getting them.

  • I have always wondered why, when sentencing white collar criminals, they don't make the jail sentence equal to the amount of money they stole divided by the average American wage. So for example, this guy facilitated stealing $100 million, and the average US wage is $51,000/year. So this asshat would get 1,960 years in jail, because that is the effective amount of time he stole from his victims. Give him the option of lethal injection, but either way his life should be over and he should die in prison.

    Th

  • ...go after the idiots that have sent me two text messages from random cell phone numbers lately saying someone is fraudlently accessing my Verizon account, and providing a [RandomIPAddress]:8080 address hidden behind a URL shortener to try and get me to "verify" my information to prevent my account from being suspended.

  • All the autorenewal BS that doesn't have a nice easy way to opt out of autorenewal should be treated with the same jailtime.

  • What happened to the rest of the $100 million?

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