“Technical Support” scammer resorting to death threats

We’re confident that all of our followers will be very much aware of how the Microsoft “technical support” scam works.

We discuss it here, but it essentially involves a scammer pretending to be a technical engineer from Microsoft in order to try and trick a victim into installing malware onto their computer. The scammer calls the victim over the phone and provides instructions that result in a malware infection – the scammer often claims the victim’s computer is already infected with viruses.

Of course many of these scams fail. Most people recognise the scams for what they are and hang up. Some people claim they don’t want to follow (or can’t understand the instructions) given to them and the scammer gives up.

However Jakob Dulisse from Canada got a particularly nasty response from one of these scammers. After being called by someone identifying themselves as a technical support technician, Dulisse quickly recognised it to be a con, and started questioning the scammer.

Upon realising the scam was fruitless, instead of terminating the call – which is what often happens – the scammer quickly turned sinister, threatening to send someone around to Dulisse’s address to kill him, also admitting to living in India and not California which the scammer originally claimed.

According to recordings, the scammer also claimed that Anglo people who went to India would be “cut up into little pieces” and thrown into the river.

Dulisse later highlighted that this appeared to be merely a tactic to get him to comply. The scammer had actually given up on the ruse of pretending to be a technical engineer and had resorted to outright extortion to get his victim to comply.

Of course Dulisse was having none of it. Despite being a potentially scary call to be on, these scammers don’t have a history of actually hiring people to cause harm to victims who do not comply. The scammers may claim they are living in the same country as their victim, but these calls often come from countries like India or Nigeria.

Dulisse was right not to give in, knowing that the threats were empty, though it is feasible that many people could succumb to outright threats of violence.

How would you feel if a scammer started making death threats to you over the phone? Would you or someone you know fall for this? Let us know below. If you have any friends or family who you think could become a target for this type of crime, make sure you share this information with them.