[E-trademarks] Spam caller

[Carl Oppedahl]

What baffles me about this particular scam is that it differs in kind 
from the usual patent or trademark scam where the target is asked to 
drop a check into the mail.

For this scam to make money for the scammer, the only choice is for the 
scammer to ask for and receive a credit card number.  And then the 
scammer must actually process a transaction with a credit card 
processing service provider.

For the patent and trademark scams where the target is asked to drop a 
check in the mail, it is pretty easy for the scammer to do the duck and 
run.  You open a bank account someplace, deposit a few hundred checks, 
transfer the money someplace else, and then shut down the bank account 
after a month or two and high-tail it to some other state.  When we see 
these scams popping up again and again like a whack-a-mole, it becomes 
pretty clear that setting up a new bank account in a new state is not 
too difficult.  And the entire scam is conducted by means of paper 
correspondence, meaning that so long as the physical documents are 
worded very carefully, it is probably fairly challenging to prove that 
an actual crime happened.  (The scammer does publish the patent or 
trademark in some meaningless register, just as the scammer promised to 
do.) Probably nobody trying to prosecute would ever get their hands on 
any human being to try to get them to turn states' evidence against some 
other human being.  Layered on top of this is that the victims know 
perfectly well that there is quite literally nothing they can do to get 
their money back.  It is gone, gone, gone.

But the credit card scam is conducted with live human beings. Many of us 
have gone through the process of getting set up to be able to get paid 
with a credit card.  That process involves some amount of vetting.  Not 
only that, the victim that manages to catch on that it was a scam can 
file a dispute with the victim's credit card company, and this could be 
done a week later or a month later.  And there's a chance the victim 
would actually manage to get the money back.  One of the points here 
being that the credit card processing service provider that got suckered 
into agreeing to process charges for the scammer might very well get 
wise to the scammer being a scammer within mere days of the start of the 
relationship.

Cycle time for "high-tail it to another state" for the check-based scam 
is very likely on the order of months, as may be seen from the fact that 
the scam letters often use the same post office box address for several 
months in a row.

Cycle time for "high-tail it to another state" for the credit-card-based 
scam is very likely on the order of only a week or two, surely never 
better than a month.

The number of banks that the scammer might move to next is in the tens 
of thousands.

But in the world of credit card processing, there are actually only a 
few dozen distinct wholesale credit card processing service providers.  
They are visible to the public through retail presences that number in 
the thousands, but the number of underlying service providers is quite 
small.  When you go to your locally owned bank or credit union to see 
about processing credit cards for your business, it turns out they 
outsource everything about the actual credit card processing to Alliance 
Data or any of a few other companies.

So the scammer using credit cards might only be able to do a few 
"whack-a-mole" high-tails before the scammer had used up every possible 
credit card processor.

I cringe to think how the high-tails actually get accomplished in real 
life.  What must surely happen is that the scammer is constantly 
recruiting shills to do the actual opening of the bank account or the 
opening of the credit card processing account.  The shill is somebody 
who has little or no money, and the thing the shill brings to the table 
is that they have a Social Security Number and (until now) an 
untarnished reputation.  The scammer pays the shill a thousand bucks 
(with promises of future riches that never actually arrive) to set up an 
LLC and to open the bank account or credit card account.  When the 
high-tail out of town happens, the shill is left holding the bag, so to 
speak.

On 12/11/2023 4:41 PM, Jessica R. Friedman via E-trademarks wrote:
>
> That does sound more urgent because a nervous client may not want to 
> take the time to notify their lawyer.
>
> Jessica R. Friedman
>
> Attorney at Law
>
> 300 East 59 Street, Ste. 2406
>
> New York, NY 10022
>
> Phone: 212-220-0900
>
> Cell: 917-647-1884
>
> E-mail:_jrfriedman at litproplaw.com_
>
> URL: _www.literarypropertylaw.com <http://www.literarypropertylaw.com>_
>
> 1479430908386_PastedImage
>
> *From: *E-trademarks <e-trademarks-bounces at oppedahl-lists.com> on 
> behalf of dbmelnick--- via E-trademarks <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Date: *Monday, December 11, 2023 at 6:40 PM
> *To: *'for trademark practitioners' <e-trademarks at oppedahl-lists.com>
> *Cc: *dbmelnick at gmail.com <dbmelnick at gmail.com>
> *Subject: *[E-trademarks] Spam caller
>
> A client just advised me that she received a call from someone 
> claiming to be the USPTO, asking her to pay a fee online to complete 
> the registration.  He was calling from a spoofed version of 
> *571-272-6500*, which is a USPTO phone number*.*
>
> **
>
> Calling the USPTO about this seems futile, but I do think that this is 
> beyond what we have seen before and I am considering further action.
>
> Diane
>
> Diane Melnick Esq.
>
> Practus LLP
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20231211/42cacc38/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 8892 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20231211/42cacc38/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 4514 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://oppedahl-lists.com/pipermail/e-trademarks_oppedahl-lists.com/attachments/20231211/42cacc38/attachment.p7s>