3 ms·

Fax spam is super illegal, btw. Heavy fines per fax.

by cm2012 8y ago

metildaa 8y ago
A prior place I worked at paid somewhere around a million of dollars as part of a fax blasting settlement (an employee sent around 1000 faxes iirc). I don't know how this business didn't get nailed to the wall for it, the fines are per fax and crazy. One errant employee can fax blast once and wreck an entire company.
- cm2012 8y ago
  The problem is the loan brokers in the story are fly by night middleman operations - hard to pin down.
  - varjag 8y ago
    As long as they collect their money from the victims, they can't be too hard to pin down. Sounds more like a bureaucracy issue, falling between the responsibility boundaries of different agencies.
    - cm2012 8y ago
      The problem is with how user acquisition is done on the shady side of the industry. At the top, there's a lender. In this story, the lender is Yellowstone. The lender actually gives money to the customer. A lender like Yellowstone has 200+ brokers they work with. The brokers are independent companies - "Business Lending LLC" or some generic name. The brokers do whatever they can to find customers interested in a loan. They package that customers info into a loan application, and send it to Yellowstone. Yellowstone then decides to fund it or not. If they do, the rest of the contact is between Yellowstone and the small business borrower. How does the borrower know which broker they worked with? Fax letterhead? Fake generic business name. Email of the rep they worked with? Possibly some random gmail. Etc. They get super unlucky and get fined? Declare bankruptcy, make a new company called "Business Lending 2 LLC". It's not impossible to catch these guys, but it is hard enough to enforce that no current agency is especially interested.
      - varjag 8y ago
        I still assume there are wire transfers of money involved, even if its between the enterprises. The whole point of this activity is criminal profit. There is absolutely no way to anonymously cash out that in 2018 unless transferring out to offshore havens. And often even then, if the US govt throws its weight.
srcmap 8y ago
Fine for do not call is very high also. But those fine/regulation doesn't seem to stop the telemarketers. Any idea on why that's the case? The gov agency is not enforce it? The lawyers can't do class action and make $ from filing those cases? Can they file any cases against AT&T or other phone companies? The spammers are outside the US?
- cm2012 8y ago
  Spammers outside the US + it's way too easy to spoof numbers now. Major legislation is needed to fix this, and it is technically fixable.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
So, a crazy question. Who pays in the following situation: Company A fax-spams people. Answer: It should be Company A, right? Good. Now how about in this following situation: Company A is legit. Person B doesn't like company A, and decides to make fake adverts and fax-spams people using a voip circuit. Does Company A pay, because it was abut their products in a spammy manner? Or do they find who did it, and try to determine Person B?

Fax spam is super illegal, btw. Heavy fines per fax.

by cm2012 8y ago

Fax spam is super illegal, btw. Heavy fines per fax.

A prior place I worked at paid somewhere around a million of dollars as part of a fax blasting settlement (an employee sent around 1000 faxes iirc). I don't know how this business didn't get nailed to the wall for it, the fines are per fax and crazy. One errant employee can fax blast once and wreck an entire company.

cm2012 8y ago
The problem is the loan brokers in the story are fly by night middleman operations - hard to pin down.
- varjag 8y ago
  As long as they collect their money from the victims, they can't be too hard to pin down. Sounds more like a bureaucracy issue, falling between the responsibility boundaries of different agencies.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    The problem is with how user acquisition is done on the shady side of the industry. At the top, there's a lender. In this story, the lender is Yellowstone. The lender actually gives money to the customer. A lender like Yellowstone has 200+ brokers they work with. The brokers are independent companies - "Business Lending LLC" or some generic name. The brokers do whatever they can to find customers interested in a loan. They package that customers info into a loan application, and send it to Yellowstone. Yellowstone then decides to fund it or not. If they do, the rest of the contact is between Yellowstone and the small business borrower. How does the borrower know which broker they worked with? Fax letterhead? Fake generic business name. Email of the rep they worked with? Possibly some random gmail. Etc. They get super unlucky and get fined? Declare bankruptcy, make a new company called "Business Lending 2 LLC". It's not impossible to catch these guys, but it is hard enough to enforce that no current agency is especially interested.
    - varjag 8y ago
      I still assume there are wire transfers of money involved, even if its between the enterprises. The whole point of this activity is criminal profit. There is absolutely no way to anonymously cash out that in 2018 unless transferring out to offshore havens. And often even then, if the US govt throws its weight.

srcmap 8y ago

Fine for do not call is very high also. But those fine/regulation doesn't seem to stop the telemarketers. Any idea on why that's the case? The gov agency is not enforce it? The lawyers can't do class action and make $ from filing those cases? Can they file any cases against AT&T or other phone companies? The spammers are outside the US?

cm2012 8y ago
Spammers outside the US + it's way too easy to spoof numbers now. Major legislation is needed to fix this, and it is technically fixable.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

So, a crazy question. Who pays in the following situation: Company A fax-spams people. Answer: It should be Company A, right? Good. Now how about in this following situation: Company A is legit. Person B doesn't like company A, and decides to make fake adverts and fax-spams people using a voip circuit. Does Company A pay, because it was abut their products in a spammy manner? Or do they find who did it, and try to determine Person B?