Shadowing Practice: Destroying a scam call center - Learn English Speaking with Video

Right from when I started creating YouTube videos,

I've always wondered what scam call centres look like.

But because it's difficult for me to get to Delhi,

I've done the next best thing.

I've got someone in Delhi to help me out.

And that someone is Karl Rock.

He's another YouTuber, and there'll be a good bit more about his channel later in this video.

So between us, we've managed to expose yet another call centre.

This one is called Renewed Technology of the Rohini District of New Delhi.

And this video is going to describe how we managed to take this call centre completely out of action.

Critical alert from Michael Shaw Like a lot of other scam call centres,

Renewed Technology pays a third party to divert a phone number

to their call centre at certain times of the day whenever they have people ready to man the phones.

These are two examples of the pop-ups which were used by this call centre.

There's a UK and a US version of it.

And of course this sort of pop-up deliberately freezes your PC and is an audible warning to try and attract phone calls.

And it doesn't matter who phones the number,

they will get young or old in any profession, including nurses.

Thank you for calling support,

this side Mac, how may I help you?

Yes, my computer's beeping.

It says someone signed on to my computer.

and it's a suspicious activity and I could get an infection from it.

I'm really sorry to hear that, ma'am.

Can I ask you what exactly you was doing when you got that kind of a message or an alert, ma'am?

All I did was put in the American Heart Association.

All I did was put in,

typed in AmericanHeartAssociation.org to print my...

I'm a nurse and I took a CPR class.

These fake virus adverts typically reside on websites which are quite close to the real thing,

but may be misspelled by a couple of letters.

And now that he has the call,

this scammer will attempt to get money out of his victim.

When I phone with new technology,

just like the nurse before me,

they tried to convince me that it was a real virus and that I needed to pay something for new security.

So most people who do fall for this sort of scam aren't even aware that they're a victim.

I fast forwarded through the scam to the point where Steve Smith,

whose real name is Mohamed Aftab,

is trying to get me to pay for this software.

He's typed in renowncomputer.com.

There's a link in the description but I suspect this site won't be around for very much longer.

Always upgrade the security anytime and we will be purchasing the security in front of you.

whatever we will be going to do sir will be done

in front of you only sir my key logger shows clearly

that his password is anshu at zero zero this is not an insignificant password

and i need to tell you sir like just need to let you know about it in today's time

never use your any device without a security sir you can see we are what we are putting

is an advanced identity protector sir let's ignore his waffle here for a second

and look carefully at the delivery address the name is clearly

himanchu nagam it will again come back without putting the security

sir as it turns out himanchu nagam is the managing director

of this company the real name is renewed technologies not renowned

computer write it down my details on a piece it's a visa card

or a master card

which you'll use for the payment sir whilst i'm keeping him

busy pretending to pay him i'm actually making a reverse connection to his pc

and downloading some of his files some of the documents reveal

that they have several different aliases renowned computers is one web info tech llc is another

and some of their older checks showed that they used the name Tech Philosophers LLC.

But most revealing of all was a password protected spreadsheet.

In this spreadsheet I had the full details of all of their victims

and just how much money renewed technologies had made in the last three months.

Nearly $90,000.

There were other tabs in this spreadsheet which clearly showed

that they pretended to be QuickBook tech support and also aimed their pop-ups at UK people.

But I still wanted to find out more about who these scammers were.

I had the names of the managing directors but who were the people manning the phones?

This is why it's always useful whenever a scammer logs onto their personal Facebook page.

Here we have Mohamed Aftab looking at a Facebook page called Call Centre's Forum.

These forum pages advertise legitimate business but also scams.

When Aftab goes back to his personal page I can see exactly who it is that's logged in.

And from that Facebook page it's possible to get a better look at the person who tried to scam me.

This is what he looks like.

And I was also able to find out the names of all of the other scammers.

Praveen, Chander, Sonny, Manish, Sivan, Peter and Sahil.

This spreadsheet shows that they are taking gift cards as payments as well.

eBay, GameStop, Gateway, Xbox, Target amongst others.

But I wanted to find out exactly where this call center was.

When I looked at Zubacorp for Renewed Technology Private, it gave one address.

But yet, when I looked at Google Maps for Re-owned Computer,

it gave a completely different address.

Close by, but still, I didn't know exactly where this was.

So this is where I needed a bit of help from my friend Carl Rock.

Carl is originally from New Zealand,

but he now lives in Delhi,

and he produces lots of videos on what it's like to live in India.

Some of those videos include all about scammers and travel safety,

but he also has a much more realistic view of the rest of India.

I would really encourage you to have a look and subscribe to Carl's channel.

Carl's channel will tell you about the real India and how much Indians actually hate the people who are running scams.

Please take a look.

So thanks to Carl and another one of my subscribers,

I managed to get a number of pictures of this call centre.

It sat above a solicitor's office in Rohini in Delhi.

The agents only operated at night time because that was the US daytime.

There was no obvious signage that this was indeed Renewed Technologies Private Limited,

so Carl's wife asked the solicitors downstairs whether there was a call centre above them.

She confirmed this.

100

And I've linked to Carl's version of the video down below.

101

He wasn't able to see into the offices because as you can see there's some blackout curtains.

102

There was usually a window open and they seemed to be using it as an ashtray.

103

The agents would use a door at the side of the premises whenever the US shift started.

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So I spent the next few days and weeks working out exactly how the scam centre operated.

105

I observed how they bought pop-ups from various vendors.

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I saw them make outbound calls pretending to be Yahoo and Apple.

107

I even watched them create one of their outbound robocalls.

108

And if you're a patron of mine,

109

you can see a much more detailed version of this video in your feed.

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So over those days, I created a one-page version of how that organisation fitted together.

111

And this is what it looks like.

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We have a company called Renewed Technology in Delhi,

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which is owned by Himanshu Nagam,

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who's also the director of Dexter's Communication.

115

Both of these companies buy VoIP services and pop-up services from various people around them in India.

116

They make use of these services in order to scam people,

117

mostly in the USA.

118

When they do get victims in the USA,

119

they will process the check payments through webinfotechllc.com.

120

This is a company which is owned by Mahir Shah in the USA.

121

The various call centre agents will use a number of company aliases to collect these payments,

122

either Web Infotech, Webmasters or Tech Philosophers.

123

Having multiple sites allows them to continue their business even if one gets shut down.

124

All very clever.

125

So now that I knew how the whole organisation worked,

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it was time to dismantle them,

127

and I started with their phone numbers.

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What you're looking at here is the scammer managing their phone service.

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It's provided by a legitimate company called the real pbx.com,

130

and they supply the US phone numbers which these scammers in India use.

131

However, what I'm just about to do is flood those phone numbers.

132

The call blasting software is supplied by scammerblaster.com

133

and as the name suggests it's a very effective way of taking a phone number out of service.

134

I've left a link to this in the description below.

135

So I picked all of the numbers and over the next few days I consistently blasted these numbers with various floods.

136

And you're probably wondering what it's like to be at the

137

receiving end of one of these call floods we'll have a look at this.

138

And don't forget that every one of these calls is not only costing these scammers some money,

139

but it's tying up the phone lines so that real victims can't even get through.

140

Win-win.

141

I also did the right thing

142

and reported these numbers to the rail pbx.com where they had most of their US phone numbers

143

and ringcentral.com where they had some UK versions.

144

When the call flooding started renewed technologies didn't know exactly what to do

145

so they got in touch with their VoIP provider

146

and I could see them having an online conversation with one of the agents.

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for some reason our scammer just doesn't know how to explain

148

that he's getting bombarded by these calls our scammer tries to explain

149

that there's lots of these prank calls and the helpful agent suggests

150

that perhaps the phone number was submitted to the wrong campaign the scammer explains

151

that they're not customers or even people but they're actually songs playing

152

and the big advantage with scam blasting is that they're random numbers every single phone call

153

so there's no way that they can just ban a single number.

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That won't stop it.

155

The ever helpful agent suggests that a way around this is to get the customer to press a button.

156

So this will reduce the number of calls reaching agents but they will still be charged for every single call.

157

But they still can't quite work out why they're getting all these calls.

158

Everything was okay until that day and the agent again suggests that someone is trying to hamper their business.

159

They say they haven't shared these numbers with anyone so they're still confused as to why they're getting the calls.

160

Finally, they suggest that they need to replace the two numbers that they've been given.

161

So, to my absolute delight,

162

they ordered two new phone numbers,

163

and guess what my next move was.

164

But call flooding was only

165

part of the way to bring down this call centre.

166

I noticed that they also used Authorize.net for their payments.

167

And the payments were substantial,

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over $500,000 in the space of nearly 3 years.

169

So I wrote to Authorize.net and provided them some audio and video of the scams in action,

170

but I couldn't rely on this alone.

171

Most victims of this scam won't even know that they're a victim,

172

so I decided to write to every one of the people that I'd found on their customer list.

173

In the email I pointed out to each victim

174

that it was a scam and how they should go about getting their money back.

175

They should approach their bank or credit card company and ask for a refund.

176

I also confronted the owners of Renewed Technology and Web Infotech LLC. Can you refund them?

177

Yeah.

178

Okay, and have you started doing that?

179

We started making, like I said,

180

we started making the calls.

181

If they ask for a refund, we will refund.

182

No, no, no, no, no,

183

no, no, not if they ask for it.

184

So you've taken money off them under fraudulent circumstances.

185

you don't need to have the excuse

186

that they didn't ask for their money back you should be

187

just giving it no no no we we are not giving it back because

188

if they want the support to continue we are supporting ridiculous

189

they were scammed into getting services from your company you should

190

return this I told you my side of the story you are free to do whatever

191

so you actually want to keep their money yeah

192

if they will ask us for a refund we will refund them okay that's yours that's fine you stick with

193

that then and we'll see what happens thank you okay thank you bye

194

and next i go after him i confront him with all

195

of the evidence before he finally admits what he's going to do next

196

okay okay so ronnie would like to tell you i've already shut it down everything is shut it down

197

and what else you want to know? well I would like to know are you really going to shut down

198

or do we have to keep flooding those numbers the blaster does it need to keep going?

199

no no no I only do the genuine work so you're gonna stop scamming are you?

200

You're not doing anything wrong.

201

Okay.

202

So all of the people that you've taken money from via your various company names,

203

renowned computers and web info tech and tech philosophers,

204

you're going to shut all that operation down.

205

Yeah.

206

Yes.

207

You're going to.

208

Okay.

209

Are you really going to shut them down?

210

Yes.

211

Yes.

212

well okay so when does that happen

213

we already wrapped up everything

214

if you got this much information then you must have aware about

215

that we started calling to our customers who are not happy

216

and we have already told the customers

217

that we are going to refund the many and all everything

218

and of course i didn't believe one word he said to me

219

but what was clear was that he was really going to shut down the operation

220

I observed as I started to delete all of the files,

221

not only on the local PCs,

222

but on the servers that they used to store important information.

223

So, with a bit of perseverance,

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we've finally managed to get one call centre shut down, if only temporarily.

225

Lastly, if you enjoy watching videos about getting one over on scammers,

226

please consider becoming a patron of mine.

227

You'll get early access to videos or,

228

like in this case, access to a more detailed video which gives more information on this call centre.

229

The link is on screen now,

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patreon.com slash Jim Browning and also I'm on Twitter at JimBrowning11.

231

Thanks again for watching. so

📺 Zelfde Kanaal

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Deze spreekles op niveau B2 is gebaseerd op de video “Destroying a scam call center”. Deze woorden komen het vaakst terug: scam, centre, scammer. Deze video bevat 231 zinnen en 2553 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 16:49. De spreker praat in een natuurlijk tempo van ongeveer 152 woorden per minuut, dicht bij een alledaags gesprek. 83% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

De 15 moeilijkste woorden uit de video, met uitspraak en betekenis:

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
scam zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈskæm/	oplichting, deceptie
renew werkwoord	/ɹɪˈnjuː/	hernieuwen, vernieuwen
refund zelfstandig naamwoord	/ɹɪˈfʌnd/	teruggave
spreadsheet zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈspɹɛd.ʃit/	spreadsheet, rekenblad
philosopher zelfstandig naamwoord	/fəˈlɑsəfɚ/	filosoof, filosofe
renowned bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ɹɪˈnaʊnd/	vermaard, beroemd
password zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpæs.wɜɹd/	wachtwoord
patron zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈpeɪ.tɹən/	beschermheilige, schutspatroon
confront werkwoord	/kənˈfɹʌnt/	confronteren
observe werkwoord	/əbˈzɜːv/	respecteren, in acht nemen
advert werkwoord	/ædvˈɝt/	verwijzen, aandacht vestigen op
ashtray zelfstandig naamwoord	/ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/	asbak
audible bijvoeglijk naamwoord	/ˈɔ.dɪ.bəl/	hoorbaar
bombard werkwoord	/ˌbɑmˈbɑɹd/	bekogelen
dismantle werkwoord	/dɪsˈmæntəl/	ontmantelen

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Woord	Uitspraak	Betekenis
shut down werkwoord		afsluiten, uitzetten
find out werkwoord		ontdekken, onderzoeken
pop up werkwoord		opduiken, te voorschijn komen
work out werkwoord	/ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/	uitrekenen
come back werkwoord		terugkomen
turn out werkwoord		uitvallen, resulteren
wrap up werkwoord		inpakken, omhullen

Zinnen om te herhalen

Korte, volledige zinnen uit de video die je in alledaagse gesprekken kunt gebruiken:

I've always wondered what scam call centres look like.
I've done the next best thing.
I'm really sorry to hear that, ma'am.
Can you refund them?
Are you really going to shut them down?

Grammatica in deze video

De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:

Structuur	In de video
Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt	I've always wondered · I've done · we've managed
Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet	is called · was put · may be misspelled
Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding	ups which were · websites which are · people who do

Uitspraak om op te letten

De spreker gebruikt 56 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals they're, you're, I'm. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.

De klanken “sh” en “zh”: spreadsheet /ˈspɹɛd.ʃit/, ashtray /ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/, suspicious /səˈspɪʃ.əs/, profession /pɹəˈfɛʃ.ən/
Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, perseverance /ˌpɝsəˈvɪɹəns/, insignificant /ˌɪnsɪɡˈnɪfɪkənt/, solicitor /səˈlɪsɪtɚ/, deliberately /dɪˈlɪb.(ə.)ɹət.li/

Klanken die Nederlandstaligen lastig vinden:

Stemhebbende eindmedeklinker — /b/, /d/, /g/, /z/, /v/ niet verscherpen: refund /ɹɪˈfʌnd/, renowned /ɹɪˈnaʊnd/, password /ˈpæs.wɜɹd/, outbound /ˈaʊtbaʊnd/, observe /əbˈzɜːv/
/æ/ — opener dan de Nederlandse “e”: scam /ˈskæm/, password /ˈpæs.wɜɹd/, advert /ædvˈɝt/, ashtray /ˈæʃ.tɹeɪ/, blaster /ˈblæs.təɹ/
/g/ — een harde plofklank, geen Nederlandse “g”: logger /ˈlɑɡɚ/, insignificant /ˌɪnsɪɡˈnɪfɪkənt/

Zo oefen je met deze video

Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als scam, renew, refund.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

Shadowing-techniek: lees de volledige stap-voor-stap-gids →

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Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les

Belangrijke woorden in deze video

Phrasal verbs die je zult horen

Zinnen om te herhalen

Grammatica in deze video

Uitspraak om op te letten

Zo oefen je met deze video

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?