I previously posted about Marc Haberman years ago.
Microsoft filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a bogus tech support service that allegedly used the company’s name to persuade victims, many of them seniors, to pay hundreds of dollars for worthless advice or even viruses.
According to a complaint filed in Los Angeles, an outfit doing business under names like OmniTech Support and TechSupport Pro tricked people into signing up for “support” through fake web ads and using “technicians” who claimed to work for Microsoft.
The complaint describes how Microsoft, which says it received over 65,000 complaints about tech support scams in 2014 alone, used undercover investigators to look into online ads posted by the scammers.
The investigators report that the scam involved a “technician” asking to take over a computer, claiming to scan it and then demanding $249 to fix it. When a investigator remarked that the price seemed high, the scammer would respond with gobbledygook tech speak like:
“the issue present in your system is also very critical because of presence of polymorphic infection which has a tendency of damaging the core system files. So in case of a delay the chance of a system crash is very high.”
For some victims of the scam, the ordeal could get even worse if the “technicians” used the support session to install viruses and shake them down on further occasions.
In its lawsuit, Microsoft asks for an injunction and damages against a number of people and companies, including Marc Haberman of a marketing racket called Customer Focused Services, who appears to be the mastermind behind the scam.
Here is an excerpt of the Microsoft complaint:
In an attempt to profit from Microsoft’s substantial investment in its
Marks, Defendants sell and offer to sell their phony technical support services through means that utilize spurious marks that are either identical to or substantially indistinguishable from the Microsoft Marks. Consumers naturally expect that technical support offered and sold using the Microsoft name and Marks are, in fact, provided by Microsoft, or at least licensed or sponsored by Microsoft. However,
Microsoft has investigated several examples of purported technical support services provided by Defendants and confirmed that not only were these services not licensed or sponsored by Microsoft, but also that they were not even providing any services at all. Instead, Defendants fraudulently charge consumers for unnecessary services
while gaining access to computers beyond the scope of any consumer authorization, then installing password reader programs and other malware rather than protecting the computers from such technical problems. Consumers are therefore likely to be (and have been) confused and/or disappointed by obtaining fraudulent services which they are persuaded they require.
Microsoft investigators have witnessed the Defendants use these
practices, including Defendants’ fraudulent sale of unnecessary technical support, installation of malware on the investigators’ clean personal computer, and an attempt to steal an investigator’s passwords. On information and belief, Defendants’ practices cost consumers across the United States and elsewhere significant financial losses and erode their confidence and trust in their technology.
Defendants Marc Haberman and Rachel Eilat Haberman are residents of
Los Angeles, California. On information and belief, Marc Haberman is the CEO of CFS and he owns, operates, supervises, and/or controls its conduct and business. On information and belief, Marc Haberman either (a) personally participated in and/or (b) had the right and ability to supervise, direct, and control the wrongful conduct alleged in this Complaint, and derived a direct financial benefit from that wrongful
conduct. Marc Haberman registered the domain name for fixnow.us. Rachel Eilat Haberman is a resident of Los Angeles, California. On information and belief, she is the wife of Marc Haberman and a director of C-Cubed.
