Victim Location 27707
Type of a scam Tech Support
I received a pop up in my screen. There was also a voice so loud I could not understand. The message on the screen was to call 1-800-385-6297 for technical support to avoid my computer from crashing. It was alarming. I called and they asked for access which I accepted. Three hours later I had spoken to three persons. One who "tried to fix" the problem. Another who told me about a charge to terminate the process effectively. I told him many times that I was upset because they should have told me from the beginning that there would be a fee and it was not until 53 mins on the phone that they said I had to pay. Originally the charge was over $1,000 but because I am a senior citizen they went down to $299.99. I made out a check and they turned on the camera to copy the check. Then a woman came in and after about another hour finished cleaning the computer. Then she told me to give them a monthly call to update.All three people had Indian accents. I was feeling uneasy about the whole situation and started making phone calls and looking up information in the computer. I found the scam described. Then, I put a stop payment on the check, cancelled my bank account, changed passwords and user names. Today I received an email from them asking to provide a valid payment method because the check had bounced to avoid interruption of network support services. Although I called Microsoft to clean my computer from whatever the scanners had left in it, I’m still concerned that they may still have access and fulfill their promise to interrupt services and worse yet to use my data. All this happened after I received a text message in response to an ad I placed on Craig list suggesting I email information to a certain address, which I did and think is what activated all this. Today I received a similar text but did not answer it.