Telemarketing, also known as Telesales in the United Kingdom, is a way of making direct sales in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers through the telephone.
Also included in telemarketing are methods such as recorded sales pitches that are programmed to be played back through the telephone via automatic dialing.
Unfortunately, telemarketing has also been used to commit a large amount of scams and fraud. The term "telemarketing boiler room" or simply "boiler rooms" are used to describe fraudulant telemarketing companies.
Here are 5 of the most common telemarketing frauds being committed today:
1. The "Advance Fee Fraud" is typically used to claim that the victim will receive a lottery prize, government loan or grant. The victim is told that they need to advance a sum of money in return for getting a significantly larger gain. Some of the variations include the "Nigerian Letter", the "Spanish Prisoner", and the "Black Money Scam" which includes the "Russian/Ukranian Scam."
2. "Pyramid Schemes" are often used to misrepresent investments or business opportunities. This is typically a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme.
3. The "Overpayment Fraud" is where a victim is overpaid for a classified ad or online auction purchase with a counterfeit check or money order, and then asked to wire back some of the excess.
4. The "Charity Fraud" is the act of using deception to get people to donate money to fake charities. Deceitful business acts are frauds in which businesses solicit money but do not use the money for the stated or intended purpose.
5. The "Telephone Slamming" fraud is an illegal telecommunications practice in which a victim's telephone service is changed without their knowledge and/or consent. Some variations of this scam include the "merchant account slamming" or "credit card processing slamming" where a business's debit or credit card machine is reprogrammed to process charges through a different company.
