Scams prey on deaf relay system

http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051113/NEWS/511130332/1001

The voice on the line is legitimate, but the offer is a fraud.

"The person who has called you is deaf or hard of hearing," the operator says, and proceeds to repeat whatever appears on her screen - an order, perhaps, for 150 fuel filters or 200 Bibles.

The operator works at a relay center, such as Communication Service for the Deaf in Sioux Falls. But, in this case, the person she's communicating for is not deaf. He's sitting at a computer in Nigeria, buying whatever he thinks he can sell and paying with a bogus credit card number.

Bound by federal regulations that established the system for deaf telecommunication in the United States, the operator, who might know it's a fraud, is powerless to stop it.

And the calls - potentially millions of dollars worth - are on your dime.

It's a scam that plays on the sympathies people hold for the deaf, and on the vulnerabilities built into a system designed to help them communicate. Even if it works only a few times a month, it's lucrative enough to keep the scammers calling back again and again.

It's all virtually untraceable. The identities of the perpetrators disappear in the haze of the Internet even before the things they've stolen make their way across international waters.

In another abuse of the system, the anonymity also allows callers to force relay operators to repeat pornographic conversations for their own pleasure.

The funding for the free service the scammers rely upon comes from fees that most Americans pay on their interstate long-distance bills.

"This is a serious disservice to deaf individuals," said Jason Stogner, whose Detroit-based company, Elite Design, was victimized. "We're all paying for this and the more fraud, the more money comes out of everybody else's pocket."

Mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act, Telecommunications Relay Service, or TRS, provides millions of deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans with a way to use the country's telephone system to the same extent as anyone else. Deaf people can access the service in a variety of ways, including TTY machines - essentially a keyboard connected to a telephone - and video relay services.

In 2002, the Federal Communications Commission added a requirement for an Internet-based system.

About a half-dozen telecommunication companies offer that service, including well-known names such as AT&T, Sprint and MCI. Firms such as CSD in Sioux Falls, which is nonprofit, contract with those companies to provide the relay service, in which operators are the intermediary in conversations between deaf people and the hearing world.

Through various Internet sites operated by the providers, deaf or hard-of-hearing people can call any domestic phone number.

The Internet-based service cannot tell whether a particular user is deaf because communications are typed on a computer. To maintain complete transparency, FCC regulations dictate that operators may say only what is conveyed to them.

Anyone can gain access to the service, free of charge, making it easy for scam artists to exploit.

"Most all of this fraud is coming from Internet-based calls," said Rick Norris, a spokesman for CSD. "Very rarely would a person use a text teletype machine to make these calls."

The majority of the fraudulent calls originate in the African nations of Nigeria or Ghana, he said.

"The important thing that we want to convey is that we should not be blaming the deaf community," Norris said, "or the people who provide the service."

Half of all calls might be illegitimate
Because FCC rules also do not allow service providers to monitor the content of the calls, there is no official estimate of the percentage that are illegitimate - either fraudulent or pornographic in nature.

Rozanne DuBois of the Communications Workers of America - a labor union trying to organize the operators at CSD in Sioux Falls - suggests more than half the calls are not legitimate. That figure is confirmed anecdotally by CSD relay operators, though none would go on the record for fear of losing their jobs.

Norris said that estimate is high, though he acknowledged that CSD cannot legally keep track of the calls.

Union members - none of whom were CSD employees - picketed last week outside the agency's office on East 10th Street.

DuBois said that through unionizing, the workers hope they can put enough pressure on the FCC to force a rule change to allow operators to warn potential fraud victims and terminate sex calls that rely on the operator's voice for stimulation.

DuBois claimed Sprint's relay service, with which CSD contracts, does not stop fraud calls as effectively as other service providers, such as AT&T and MCI. A spokesman from Sprint Relay did not return calls seeking comment.

While it's difficult to quantify, the problem is significant enough that the FCC is interested.

"That's an issue that we're aware of and studying very hard," said Thomas Chandler, head of the FCC Disability Rights Office in the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau.

Norris said CSD has been working with the FCC to minimize the calls. But the scammers "have found loopholes to find their way around that."

More calls, more money for interstate operators
Funding for Internet relay service - a total of more than $8 million last month alone - is collected by the National Exchange Carrier Association, or NECA, from any company that provides communications service across state lines. Funding for other interstate relay services, such as video relay and interstate TTY, are collected the same way.

In-state relay service is funded and operated differently, and has a low incidence of fraud.

The amount of money each company contributes to the fund is based on a percentage of their revenue as reported to the FCC, said Maripat Brennan, fund administrator for NECA, a nonprofit organization.

That money then is distributed to relay service providers at a rate of about $1.28 per completed minute of relay time for Internet calls. Payments and rates for calls that are not initiated over the Internet vary.

The money providers pay into the fund usually is passed on to consumers, said Chandler, of the FCC. It often shows up on telephone bills as a regulatory or compliance fee.

And because relay providers such as CSD in Sioux Falls receive their funding on a per-minute basis, the more calls they relay - fraudulent or otherwise - the more money they receive from the NECA fund.

For most consumers, the cost of the scams is modest, a dollar or so each month at the most. But when the scams themselves succeed, the costs are much higher for the businesses involved.

No way to report suspicions of fraud
The methods are similar to traditional phone scams, Norris said. The relay service is designed to operate for deaf people in exactly the same way the telephone system works for hearing users. But because the relay service is both untraceable and billed to consumers, it has become a magnet for scams.

Vince DiSanto, general manager of Elite Design in Detroit, received a call from the relay service one day.

"Somebody called looking for T-shirts ... and they wanted something like 10,000, which seemed a little odd to me. And then when they wanted it shipped to Ghana, I got a little suspicious," DiSanto said. "Then it was printers."

Stogner, an account manager at Elite, took an order for $10,000 worth of identification card printers.

The printers, which Stogner said could be used to print fake identification to gain access to just about anything, were shipped to a domestic address.

Later that day, Stogner received a call from a woman who wouldn't identify herself.

She told him his company was being scammed, and that she was the operator who had been relaying the call to DiSanto. She told him that because of FCC regulations she could speak only the words as they had appeared on her screen, typed by a con artist with an Internet connection thousands of miles away.

Elite was able to stop shipment on the printers.

"These people are being robbed of this service," Stogner said.

"It's such a blatant scam, but (the operators) cannot tell the other person on the line. She'll get calls for people that want to order 15 wedding dresses. Who needs 15 wedding dresses?"

By calling Elite and warning them, that operator violated confidentiality rules handed down by the FCC. Had she been caught, she probably would have been fired, and the relayer she worked for would have been subject to fines, Stogner said.

Elite continued to receive bogus calls through the relay service on a regular basis. DiSanto pleaded with the operator to let him speak with a manager, that he knew the call was a scam. But there was nothing she could do.

Finally, he had the companies' number put on the relay service's do-not-call list. Now, legitimate deaf users have no way to call Elite.

Bound by FCC rules to do as callers command
Brennan of the National Exchange Carrier Association said everybody involved is looking for ways to prevent the scams.

"The FCC is very aware of all this," she said. "They've been focusing on this for some time. There have been several meetings between FCC, the providers and NECA. What they try to do is make sure the fraud calls don't come into the center."

She said Internet relay providers are working on ways to stop fraudulent calls before they even reach the relay operator.

But once the call has been connected, the FCC rules take effect and the relay operator cannot disconnect the call for any reason.

Ending the calls probably would mean either a technological advance that somehow allowed providers to end the calls before they are connected, or a change in FCC rules.

"It's a growing problem, and more and more people are becoming aware," Norris said. "It casts a bad shadow on the entire deaf community."

Because CSD is a nonprofit organization, any proceeds from relay and other services go to programs, services and events for deaf Americans, he said. But other companies perform the services for profit.

But because relay providers and their contractors receive payments for the fraud calls - CSD's relay operation reported more than $45 million in revenue for relay services for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004 - they seem to have no incentive to stop the calls.

Further complicating the issue is that many of the relay providers - Sprint, MCI and AT&T, for example - are the same companies that pay into the NECA fund.

Because ending the fraud calls creates "happier workers and a smoother operation," Chandler, of the FCC, said most providers would like to find a way to crack down on the calls.

But is there reluctance on the part of some providers and contractors to take action because it would mean a significant cut in their funding?

"That might be true to some extent," Chandler said.

For now, the only defenses against the scammers are public awareness and the operators who risk their jobs by placing illicit after-hours calls to businesses they suspect they had been forced to help rip off earlier in the day.

Carol Grace owns 141 Auto Sales in Fenton, Mo.

She received a call through the relay system from someone who wanted to buy a van.

The first credit card number he gave her was invalid.

"At the same time, I was getting an anonymous call," she said, telling her that the caller trying to buy her van was trying to defraud her.

Had the operator not called her on a private line, Grace said, she would have been out the money and the van.

"I assumed he was deaf," she said. "I would have done it."

Glad to see this posted here. I'm a little pissed that this article didn't go further into depth like it could have.

We're all alone in this fight.

If the FCC allows this to happen by not adapting their regulations to such things, they could be lumped in with the scammers as accessories. If you know that someone is kililng someone and don't do anything about it, you can get in trouble. I feel the same about the FCC if they aren't doing anything.

scammers and any of their accompilices and accessories :rl:

One of the reason the FCC isn't doing anything quickly is because many deaf interest groups are protesting any action against these scams violates the relay operator's roll as remaining transparent and detached. These deaf interest groups, that say we should not make judgments about calls, no matter how many times we've seen these scams or how much it fits the patterns, have stirred a lot of anger among relay operators, whom now believe they speak for the entire deaf community. So many RO's now feel like everyone, including 1. the relay provider, 2. the FCC, 3. the scam victim (whom feel we are aiding the scams and just as responsible) 4. and now the deaf community.