Listen to me, it’s a scam.
They’re trying to steal your money.
Oh my God, are you serious?
The call centers are there for one reason and one reason only,
and that is to scam.
Were you just on the phone with the Canada Revenue Agency?
Yes. I don’t know what to do.
They don’t care about what the customer is going through.
You are paid to get the money, that is it.
Empty out the bank account and leave it zero.
How much were they trying to get out of you?
Like, 96,000 [dollars] and saying that I was going to go to jail.
When somebody cries on the phone,
they will mute the microphone, and they will have a little laugh
between the person that’s sitting next to them.
No one feels sorry for nobody
because they’re interested in the money
and the money only.
There are scammers who I think are terrible people
and who are greedy.
But there are other people who really do have a conscience.
Some scammers are even willing to share secrets
and expose their co-workers.
That’s the number. Save her, save her.
This woman is saying that she’s got $60,000 in the bank,
and they’re going to take every single last dollar of it.
[Call Center Scams]
My name is Ben Taylor,
and I have a YouTube channel called Pleasant Green
where I look into scams.
Scam baiting is where you go looking for scams.
You try to find the scammers, and you try to lead them along.
Typically, you’re trying to waste the scammers’ time
so they don’t have the opportunity to go scam somebody else.
There's a big kind of a movement on YouTube of scam baiters
and people who try to get back at scammers,
and I guess I am considered one of them.
My name is Casey. I used to be a scammer,
but now I work in the same call centers undercover
to save people from being scammed.
Casey was one of the scammers
who watched my YouTube channel pretty regularly.
And he reached out to me, and he said,
“Guess what? I am actually a scammer in India,
and I’d be willing to talk to you,
and I’d be willing to share what I know.”
It’s the right thing to do.
You can’t do this. This is wrong, you know?
You can’t take somebody else’s money and go buy a BMW.
I asked him for proof. I said, “Show me what you do.
Show me what your call center looks like.”
He began to send me pictures of his call center.
He began to share with me
the scripts that him and his coworkers would read.
I got to listen in on conversations.
There is a case being filed against you
because you chose to ignore the letters that were sent out to you.
I got to actually call up the call center
and talk to these scammers myself,
kind of just understand how they operated.
And then he began to actually send me the contact information
of people who are in the process of being scammed.
He would be sitting at his desk on his computer taking calls,
and he would probably listen in to a co-worker
who was sitting next to him.
And if this was somebody who was very vulnerable,
perhaps it was a young mother or maybe it was an elderly woman,
if it was someone who was about to get scammed
for a significant amount of money,
that’s when he would step in.
Whether it would be him listening in to get the phone number
or looking over at the computer to get that number,
he would then take it, and he would take a bathroom break,
and he would send me a text message or a voice message
telling me that someone was about to get scammed
and they needed help immediately.
So then me or one of my partners could jump in and make the call
and warn them before it was too late.
Get ready. I’m sending you a number now.
This woman’s got too much money.
They’re going to take every single penny off her, so get ready.
Hello.
Hey, I’m hoping you just hung up
on those Revenue Canada scammers, did you?
Oh my God, are you serious?
Please tell me you didn’t give them any money.
-No, I didn’t. -I’m an investigator.
Oh my God, you’re my hero.
No, I did not give them money.
I bitched and whined the entire time.
They were saying I was going to go to jail.
And I have a baby. I was, like, freaking out.
Honey, listen, it’s not going to happen.
You’re not going to jail, none of that.
It’s all a scam.
Oh my God.
It’s OK.
No, it’s not OK.
You’re not going to jail. It’s a scam, and we stopped it.
One of the repercussions of what I do
is that I’ve been run over,
and I've been kidnapped twice.
I’ve been left on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere.
They knew it was me because of my unique accent
because the recording was available online.
Everybody knows it’s me.
Oh my God. I don’t know what the f**k has happened.
This guy got me f***ing kidnapped.
This shows that it could be life or death, you know?
It just takes one person.
Minimum is normally 20 to 30 people in one call center, in one building.
The kind of people that work in these call centers,
they come from well-educated backgrounds.
Some of these people are qualified engineers
because remember, in India, not everybody speaks English.
So by the time that you are speaking English, you are very well-educated.
Some days you can go empty-handed.
There are some days where you don’t make anything.
But then there are some days where you can make $180,000
or 180,000 pound.
Criminals pretending to be IRS agents asking you to send them money.
This call is regarding to your Social Security number.
We found some fraudulent activities under your name.
There are a lot of scams out there,
and they really vary.
Quite frequently, there are telephone scams
who claim to be Amazon employees
or IRS employees who say that you're behind on your taxes
or that you qualify for some refund from Amazon.
If you press one,
an agent will ask for the credit card number attached to the account.
Don’t do it. It’s all a scam.
It’s the same scripts that are going from every call center.
The only thing that changes is the department.
If it was a UK one, it’d be like the National Crime Agency
or the police are after you.
If it was an American one,
it will be Social Security Administration
or it will be the sheriff’s department is after you.
These kind of small, little things change.
They will log into your computer, they will take control of it,
they will have you access your bank account,
and they can wire thousands of dollars
from your account to their account.
If you’re vulnerable and if you’re not educated,
then you can certainly fall for one of these scams,
and it can be pretty devastating.
Once money leaves its country,
there is no jurisdiction that our law enforcement can have
to go track down that money.
It’s gone.
Anyone can be scammed.
It just depends on the circumstances
of what you are going through on that day.
Anyone can be vulnerable.
Anyone can be scammed.
I’m not going to stop exposing scams
because I know that I help more people.
I’m not going to shut down my YouTube channel
because this guy wants to continue to rip people off.
That's never going to happen.
I will do my best to stop someone from being scammed.
Obviously, I can't stop everybody because I'm one person,
but I will try my best.