Whenever Amazon, Norton or PayPal impersonation is taking place, the numbers are frequently on the network of CenturyLink/Lumen. I have been encountering this issue almost daily. Their Fraud Department rarely responds back after i submit complaints. Here is some peculiar information about this carrier:
https://www.reddit.com/r/centurylink/comments/d9n9ed/scammers_calling_me/
It appears to me that Lumen/CenturyLink has been criminally negligent in ignoring the issue of their foreign “clients” defrauding the public for years. It is obvious that it is NOT a new issue with them…
Lumen is one of the best carriers and resellers (they sell numbers to Skype too) when it comes to investigating fraud. The original number reported here (805) 259-3621 has been disconnected by Lumen (“Sorry, but your call cannot be completed” is the Lumen disconnection message).
Some carriers are negligent but Lumen isn’t one of them and we should give credit where it’s due.
I disagree with this statement for the following reasons:
I previously reported several scamming telephone numbers to them to no avail. Their Fraud Team did not respond back to me and didn’t disconnect numbers. The scammers disconnected said numbers later on themselves after I posted them on various forums. It is fairly typical; scammers get spooked and disconnect TNs after scambaiters start calling them. In my experience, this carrier only occasionally responds to complaints.
I only received responses from Lumen after I copied their Legal Team and Execs on my emails. I assume it is the same in this case. @Jhawk emailed their execs, hence the reason this TN was disconnected timely.
Lumen/Century Link is being sued for turning a blind eye to illegal robocalls in Mey vs. All Access Telecom (Onvoy is being sued in Mey case, too, by the way). Lumen also received cease and desist notices from the FTC as recently as last November. I would imagine there are some good and valid reasons why legal action is being taken.
Food for thought.
BUT, it took 3 days to do so. I originally received this burner text on Wed., reported it to them without action. That’s why I posted it here. And that’s because @scamterminator2021 provided me with the execs emails.
They move much faster if you notify them of any threats to life. Did the scammer threaten to kill you, your family or others while demanding money? They move quickly when threats of this type are reported… I also want to add that a child answering your phone and the scammer is yelling how they will ‘F’ the 7-8 year old will also grab their attention as well in a report…
@Jhawk - I cannot agree with you more! It is fairly obvious that US telecom industry has become extremely dysfunctional due to lack of government oversight, extreme deregulation and presence of special interest groups. There is also another underlying theme here - lack of accountability, GREED and lack of enforcement. I will never agree with Spicybrown’s mild-mannered and timid approach. We must be stern, tough and demanding with VOIP telecom, and we should make it very uncomfortable for them to keep turning a blind eye to scam calls.
This issue of illegal robocalls is very unique to the North American and - to some extent - UK market. I have traveled extensively and lived in several countries overseas. Robocalls and scam calls are a rather minor issue there. In fact, in nations like Sweden, Germany and few others they barely even exist. Yes, these are less populous nations than the US, but EU as a whole is far from tiny. I do know that their telecom industry is a lot more regulated. There are great articles about it on Commsrisk.
I do not think that proposing a strong and stern political solution is unrealistic. We can write mass petitions, vote for the right candidates and find ways to spread the message by collaborating with journalists, regulators and other groups. I can tell you that I personally was able to shut down quite a few scammers by relentlessly emailing a multitude of State, local, Federal regulators as well as some individuals within the ITG and Anti-Robocall Taskforce. Naturally, I was always respectful and professional in my communication with them. Yes, I’m just a regular person and I’m often ignored by these individuals. However, I am not giving up, and I have seen telecom held accountable.
There are some reputable telcos that take immediate action on reports. I will continue comparing foreign (and domestic) scammers to terrorists. I am not taking my words back. Their harassing and illegal behaviors cause immense hardships, pain and suffering on some of the most vulnerable people - the elderly, disabled and impoverished persons. I have no compassion for these criminals.
I think some people here overestimate the ethical and law-abiding nature of several foreign enterprises calling the US public. Same is true of certain VOIP telcos. I think there is a major trend with some of them of turning a blind eye to illegal activities due to several factors. After all, they do make money off selling and leasing telephone numbers to their foreign resellers, some of which are not reputable. We have been seeing a significant increase in warning notices sent to VOIP carriers by the FTC and FCC, and I think there are valid reasons for it.
I don’t think I would be exaggerating by saying that MOST American people have no interest in Indians, Pakistanis or other foreign persons calling them. There is simply no logical need for it, in most cases. I definitely would not be upset if there was a way to make my phone number completely inaccessible to all foreign callers. Unfortunately, it is impossible, as they use legitimate local numbers and spoof. I think foreign callers must NOT be allowed to use US numbers, unless they have legitimate business office location here. Yes, I am aware that there are domestic scammers too, but they are easier to catch. In fact, we should be learning from nations like Ireland (I applaud them for banning foreign callers from using Irish numbers!)
Furthermore, we cannot underestimate the power of litigation and societal pressure on telecom. I can tell you that via litigation, legal notices and demands as well as emails to executive leadership, I personally was able to place universal block on my cell phone number with some providers that are frequently utilized by foreign telemarketers and scammers. Yes, I realize that it might prevent legitimate callers from reaching me, but it is okay with me. I communicate a lot via electronic means, such as IMs and emails, and I am fine with accepting this minor risk. On the positive side, I have seen a tremendous reduction in the number of robocalls placed to my telephone number. In my opinion, it is a rather small number of telcos that are frequently used by scammers and spammers. I have also seen it when telcos eventually took action against scammers after multiple people put pressure on them. We cannot underestimate the power of organized collective efforts, as it comes to holding telecom and illegal telemarketers accountable (within legal means).
There is currently a wonderful lawsuit in Federal court titled Mey vs. All Access Telecom. Should Diane Mey win this lawsuit, it would create a powerful precedent. It would imply that we - regular citizens - would be able to sue telecoms turning a blind eye to robocalls and scams. And it would be absolutely epic! It would be a step in the right direction of protecting regular people from annoying and obnoxious scammers.
On a more global scale, the American taxpayers should ask the Federal Government:
Why are foreigners located in the regions crawling with scams, such as India, the Phillipines or Pakistan even allowed to gain access to US telecom network so freely? Isn’t such extreme leniency essentially a national security threat? Wouldn’t it be logical to mandate strict KYC policies for all entities, especially for foreign ones?
Why aren’t we holding the governments of the aforementioned nations accountable for turning a blind eye to illicit conduct? We all know that India and Pakistan alone account for over 60-70% of all scam calls. The US, NATO and their partners have multiple mechanisms to force accountability upon these predatorial regimes. And yes, I do NOT CARE that we’d upset India or Pakistan. I don’t even care if we upset a small number of some naive bleeding-heart sentimental humanists in the EU or - say, Australia 
OUR PEOPLE ALWAYS COME FIRST!!!
Why don’t we criminally charge the leadership of some US VOIP providers for negligence and complacency with fraudulent calls? All these occasional “gazillion dollar fines” and cease and desist notices we have been seeing are clearly not working.
Since scam calls equate to at least $50+ bn a year, wouldn’t it be logical and prudent to place them in a similar category as terrorist sabotage activities? I’d advocate for the use of national intelligence, military and diplomacy to address the issue. Again, it doesn’t matter that it might upset India (oh, no, some random guy named Kumar Chopra might call me a “bigot”. I am scared!) They don’t seem to care about the issue, since it doesn’t impact them. So, we should force them to take appropriate action.
It is fairly obvious that an exceptionally tactful mild-mannered naive approach with VOIP telco scum does NOT WORK. It is 100% illogical, immature and naive to communicate issue to their lazy/incompetent/negligent staff in the politest, most soft-spoken manner. THIS will NEVER work: “Dear Sir or Madame! I hope this message finds you well, and I am absolutely delighted to reach out to you! I sincerely apologize for distracting you during your busy day at work! When you get a chance, would you please mind looking into a small issue that I am bringing to your attention? Thank you kindly, and have a spectacular day at work!” NO! We have to be wolves with these people. Sue them, whenever we can, send legal demands, CC their execs and Legal on issues of continuous fraud, email Federal and State regulators and private parties whose names are tarnished by scammers on their network, talk to journalists and spread the word on social media. I do NOT advocate for any illegal activities or harassment; we can be respectful, yet demanding and stern. They must know that we are appalled by their negligence, laziness or incompetence. After all, these are our rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, and we will exercise them!
Imagine if we had to follow the naive logic promoted by some folks here in the context of real world history. We’d be living under the rule of Hitler, Mussolini and Imperial Japan…or Stalinist USSR now 
“Dear Comrade Stalin! Would you mind not expanding your empire, sir? We are rather alarmed that 30 Soviet citizens have recently perished in the GULAG. We certainly do not mean to dictate our will on your nation, but we feel concerned. Thank you, sir and our apologies for bothering you during your busy day in Kremlin! Say hello to Comrades Beria and Molotov! Warm regards!”
@scamterminator2021 I received this today from an Amazon attorney and his investigator…
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Good Morning Mr. ,
I am an attorney on Amazon’s Customer Protection and Enforcement team regarding a report you made to Amazon last week of the following text message targeting Amazon customers:
“Arrived:We’ll charged $772.50 for Prime - Activation , from your card Act-info. #RX9T0QP587FD, If it is not you? helpline-18052593621. Report us!”
My team investigates incidents of fraud targeting Amazon customers, and we would appreciate the opportunity to gather additional information about this incident. I have copied our investigator Niles Gooding to this email, and I would greatly appreciate if you could provide additional details to Niles about this text message campaign. For example, useful information could include bad actor phone numbers, email addresses, content of other text messages that were part of this campaign, payment identifiers, transaction identifiers, or anything else you think of that might help in identifying the actors behind this scheme.
Additionally, if you received an inbound call from the bad actors could you please provide information in the below chart, which may allow us to attempt to trace the call to help identify the bad actor.
| Bad Actor Phone Number That Called You | |
|---|---|
| Your Phone Number That Was Called | |
| Date Of The Call | |
| Exact Time Of The Call | |
| Your Time Zone |
Thank you for any assistance you are able to provide that might help us in preventing future harm. Please feel free to email me ([email protected]) if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Amazing! I am very happy to hear that the suggested approach is working!
Please share everything you have with them. Also, share that you’ve been repeatedly running into an issue with these Amazon impersonators on the network of LUMEN/CenturyLink and how they have been disregarding your reports. If you have examples of other carriers who ignored your legitimate complaints regarding Amazon impersonation, please do share them, as well. On my end, I will also look for emails indicating Amazon impersonation that I have escalated to carriers like Lumen, Onvoy and few others to NO AVAIL!
It’s time that we - upstanding citizens - start holding the carriers accountable! No more time for gentle gallantry and timid humanism!
I am adding other folks who might be able to share some examples of Amazon impersonation that have been repeatedly brought to the attention of some carriers that disregarded such complaints. @MehNamesJeff @OfclyGoodenough @JusticeinTexas @CatMan - see above from Jhawk. I am going to share my examples with Amazon’s attorneys to share a patter of negligence and willful disregard of legitimate complaints by some carriers.
I am hopeful that we might be able to have legitimate companies like Amazon and others start putting legal pressure and possibly filing lawsuits against non-compliant and unethical carriers! I don’t care what any sentimental softspoken humanists say in that regard; in my opinion, the VOIP carriers are at fault, as they are generating immense profits of these spammers and scammers!
Exactly my response to both of them! I included their email addresses for you to use in the future.
Wonderful! The time for naive tender and merciful forbearance is over! No more silly weird humanism! We will keep the momentum going! Since the Feds for most part refuse to tackle the issue of illegal robocalls, we will continue to utilize a “hybrid warfare” approach. I’ve been routinely copying many execs and attorneys of businesses whose names are tarnished on my legal demands to VOIP telcos. I’ve recently run into a job scam run by Indians utilizing a US VOIP carrier. I’ve communicated the issue to a big manufacturer who they claimed to represent (with some fake “job postings”). I emailed the telco to no avail and then went my favorite route of emailing the business whose name was tarnished. Consequently, I had staff of the Chief Legal Officer of said manufacturer reach out to me. They copied their VP of HR, as well. End result - VOIP carrier immediately banned these Indians from its network!!! I wonder WHY? I bet you the manufacturer’s attorneys sent a stern letter to this VOIP scum!
You are NOT going to believe this @scamterminator2021 …I just received a phone call from Niles, the investigator, at home. We had a very long, long conversation and he has a relative who’s Interpol in India. He wanted me to fill him in and how this all works and was VERY interested in Lumen (your fav) and their involvement. Man I’m so happy to have spoken with him and he wanted to know if David, the attorney could call me. I mentioned you as your very experienced with this. I’ll PM you his phone number.
This is absolutely fantastic!!! If you have other examples of impersonation of Amazon or other legitimate entities, please share all of them with these folks!
@OfclyGoodenough - we are seeing some positive dynamics here!
Here’s another email I just received from…LUMEN (no doubt spurred by our new Amazon friends)
|### fraudoperations [email protected]|12:04 PM (5 hours ago)||
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|to me
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Mr. .
This matter has been referred to my team for investigation. Thank you for this report of the suspected malicious activity. I have terminated service on the (805) 259-3621 number and requested a full investigation of the end-user by the reseller providing the number.
Additionally, our team can be reached at the following 24/7 contact points regarding similar events.
Please feel free to reach out to our team directly if you continue to encounter any issues.
Thank you again,
Brad
|||Brad Gaines
Mgr.Corp Security Network Ops
119675 W 10 Mile Rd Ste 200
Southfield, MI 48075 USA
tel: +1-720-888-7945
[email protected]|
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Of course, they would write that! Carriers do not want you or anyone else to keep informing Amazon about their negligent non-compliance! Nah, we will keep informing businesses whose good names and reputation are being tarnished by such utter disregard and lack of professionalism and decency!
On another note, here is my jovial, yet precise response to those who keep advocating for some naive genteel approach with telcos: Well, apparently, some people’s super-duper nicey-nice, whispery-soft, and gentle-as-a-kitten tactic isn’t exactly scaring those telecom giants. Time to unleash our inner wolves, folks!
