A few days ago, I was playing one of the Apple scammers - don’t remember exactly which one, but it was one where there was apparently a bunch of charges against my Apple account, and I needed to verify where I was by buying some gift card down at the local super market (Publix IIRC) and providing receipt ‘details’ for their database. Anyway, I had this guy pretty well hooked and had him on the line for almost an hour. When it came time to go to the store and buy the card, I let him know that 1) I was calling from my land-line and I didn’t have a cell phone, and 2) My car was broke down and I would have to ask my 70+ year old neighbor to drive me to the store (and he didn’t have a phone either!), so it was going to take me some time to get it. It rattled him a bit, as he was determined to ‘keep me on the line’ the whole time, and wanted to tell me exactly what to do when I got to the store. Well, that wasn’t happening.
Fortunately, I had played the part pretty well, and he more or less trusted that I was a solid mark. So.... he gave me his 'personal' number to call him with when I got to the store, if I could find a phone to use, or to call him direct when I got back: (818) 338-8586
Here is the info I was able to dig up:
Vortex IT Solutions
Phone: (818) 338-8586
https://www.vortexitsolutions.com
1900 E. Golf Road #950-Q
Schaumburg, IL 60173
The address above came from the web site.
The following came from the BBB web site:
Vortex IT Solutions, LLC
Information Technology Services
200 W Madison St Ste 2100
Chicago, IL 60606-3521
Principal/manager name: Bidyut Shome
Phone: (833) 200-0447 (does not seem to be valid)
This number has been a solid bit of fun for the last few days. Both addresses appear to be fake 'virtual office' type fronts though. After multiple times of contacting the number (including really late at night and obviously waking the guy up), they appear to also be doing the fake tech support scam.
Old age strikes! I mixed up my scammers - The Vortex guys were actually a tech support pop-up scam, and they were going to charge me $149.99 to ‘fix’ my computer. I asked about the charge to my credit card and he told me that it would be from Vortex IT Soultions LLC. Said his name was “Adam Watson”.
The Apple scammer was a different company that I hit the same day and they wanted me to go get an "apple black card" at Publix, which I have never heard of nor have I seen when at the market. That guy told me his name was "Mona" and gave me the number 206-519-6080, which doesn't appear to work any longer.
A little more info about Vortex after a bit of googling some information found in the BBB complaints about them. There was a return phone number for the company in a response letter - (224) 535-1199. A search on that also turned up our friend Mr. Bidyut Shome as having the same number. He also had a couple of 847 area code numbers listed under his name, as well as a number of mailing addresses all listed in Illinois - So it appears that either he possibly does live in Illinois, or he seems to be very fond of it!
One BBB complaint mentions them also doing business under the name "QB Pro Advisor Services", but the web site address was redacted. A quick search turns up qbproadvisorservices.com who's address also in Chicago, and while the street number is different, the suite (#2100) is the same. It's also one of those virtual office listings, so it's just another front and the web page has all the template default text except for contact info. Phone numbers listed are 1-800-941-4384 for a 'guest help line' and 1-844-744-2010 for existing customers.
Finally, I noticed that LICONNORLI wrote a scammer.info entry for them back in Feb of 2019. His entry can be found here: http://scammer.info/d/15978-vortex-it-solutions-scam and the phone number used was 1-888-983-2636. I just tried it a moment ago, and they did answer 'technical support' in a heavy indian accent. I played it off as a wrong number. I also tried the 818-338-8586 number for Mr. Shome and he is still answering as well. These guys seem pretty well entrenched, but not that large of an outfit, so they should be fairly easy to take down.