Telephone scams are constantly increasing in Spain. Many people claim to have been victims of one or, at least, that they have been tried to scam them. But there are times when the ‘executioner’ is not aware that he is scamming and believes that he is doing a legitimate job. That is what seems to be happening with a supposed electricity supplier, which has given its employees scripts that they had to follow to the letter and they have begun to get suspicious.
MarÃa Aperador, a criminologist and cybersecurity expert with almost 100,000 followers on Instagram, has warned of a suspected fraudulent contract. A girl contacted her via direct messages to explain that she believed she had been hired to scam.
According to her, a supposed “energy management company” for which she had started working had given her a script that she had to follow to the letter. “Her job consisted of calling hundreds of people to convince them of a contract change disguised as a deception,” says the IT security influencer.
When she found out that the job seemed to be a kind of scam, she and other employees stopped going to work. However, there are people who do not know how telephone fraud works and could have become scammers without knowing it. For this reason, from ADSLZone, we tell you all the details of the fraudulent job, so that you avoid becoming the executioner of hundreds of victims.
The script for employees was full of lies
The fake electricity supplier that seeks out employees to carry out what appear to be scams has a script that the employees must follow to the letter. Every day, the workers had to call numbers that were in a database with personal information of thousands of Spaniards. With their full name, ID and home address, possibly taken from data leaks or previous scams.
In the call, employees had to advise that the deadline had passed to decide between two options: upgrade to a new electricity supplier to obtain discounts or enter a blacklist and see prices rise. The first scenario involves giving more personal and even banking information, while the second scenario, where the rate continues to increase, is not something that anyone wants. By giving an urgent character, the user will have to decide in that same conversation and, by doing so, they would be making a mistake.
The script shared by Aperador shows that the call was made regardless of the energy supply company contracted (Iberdrola, Endesa, Natural, Repsol…). The contracted companies were not from one of these brands, but were only in charge of management. In addition, the supposed company that called was prepared for any rebuttal that the victim could make, to convince him to act immediately if he did not want to pay.
The script rebates for the scam
For example, if users asked why a company other than the supplier had their data, the employees had to say that their own company had provided it to them. The exact wording of the script dictates that, in such cases, employees had to explain that the company had sent a form with personal information because it had not updated its supplier company in time.
In the event that the victims asked to do so in person at an office, the contractors had to say that the deadline for doing so had expired. Therefore, it was no longer possible to do so in person and that the last option was through that phone call.
From her Instagram account, MarÃa Aperador comments that the majority of people in the database of the supposed energy agency were elderly. These individuals are usually easier to fool because they are not as familiar with telephone scams. For this reason, from ADSLZone, we recommend that you pass this article on to your elderly loved ones, so that they are alert to these possible scams.
If you receive this type of call, it is advisable not to make any changes to your contract or rate over the phone. If we do, it will have to have been us who made the call and not the other way around.
