Computer Techs Turn Normal Virus Removal Into Multi-Million Dollar Scam
from the opus-dei-has-infected-your-computer dept
Lots of people suspect that the various companies out there who promise to clean viruses off your computer are a bit of a scam -- and, apparently, in at least one case, it turned out to be a huge scam. Apparently a guy working for one of those companies, Vickram Bedi, realized that Roger Davidson, who brought in his laptop to have it cleaned of a virus, was a wealthy composer (and heir to a fortune). So, rather than clean up the virus, Bedi and his girlfriend, Helga Invarsdottir, worked out a scam that bilked Davidson of somewhere between $6 and $20 million.When asked to remove the virus from the laptop, Mr. Bedi allegedly told Mr. Davidson that his computer had in fact been attacked with a virus so virulent that it also damaged Datalink's computers, according to prosecutors.According to the article, this scam only came to light after law enforcement was investigating Bedi and Invarsdottir for another scam, suggesting that this may have been an even bigger scam, with more targets.
Mr. Bedi told Mr. Davidson that he had tracked the source of the virus to a remote village in Honduras and that Mr. Bedi's uncle, purportedly an officer in the Indian military, had traveled there in a military aircraft and retrieved the suspicious hard drive, prosecutors said.
In addition, Mr. Bedi told the victim that his uncle had uncovered an assassination plot against Mr. Davidson by Polish priests tied to Opus Dei, according to prosecutors....
In addition to the thousands of dollars charged to secure Mr. Davidson's computer, Mr. Bedi and Ms. Invarsdottir allegedly charged thousands more to provide 24-hour covert protection for Mr. Davidson and his family.
Harrison Police Chief Anthony Marraccini said the couple charged Mr. Davidson about $160,000 every month for bogus security and other services. At the time of their arrest, Ms. Invarsdottir had $1.6 million in a bank account and Mr. Bedi had $6 million in a separate account, Mr. Marraccini said. Those accounts have been frozen and computers and business documents were seized by police, Mr. Marraccini said.
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Filed Under: roger davidson, scams, viruses
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Once the ink is dry, they (if you're lucky) pretty much ignore you unless you're willing to pay for 'programmers fees' or the like. (If you're not lucky, they bring these 'issues' to your attention.)
So, while I think all these people should DIAF, I especially want to hear the marrow crack on the 'manager' who thought that was a good idea.
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Why? So plain honesty has no place in your world view? The guy deserves to be ripped-off because he hasn't taken the time to learn about crap he really doesn't give a shit about to begin with? The victim here contracted a service from a con artist. Maybe he should have vetted the business. Maybe he shouldn't have been so trusting. I suspect the guy is not in IT. This is why people hire people, isn't it? To get things done for us that we don't know how to do for ourselves. And for that the guy deserves to get conned?
Come on.
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He deserved to have his money taken if he is that dense. You don't need to know a single thing about IT to see this is a scam.
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The difference? Because the "victim" in this case was scammed willingly. I see nothing willing about child slavery. I have kids. When I put them to work they want to quit immediately.
If you can't see the difference between an idiot willingly giving away 6 million dollars and child slavery, I can't really help you much.
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Or Snuggies for dogs...
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That is TOO funny though.
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I think Homer Simpson already has the "I GRIFT" vanity plate, though...
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Just Proves you can't buy smarts
{
Ripped_Off = TRUE;
}
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Re: Just Proves you can't buy smarts
if((!Smart) && (Rich))
{
Ripped_Off = TRUE;
}
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Re: Re: Just Proves you can't buy smarts
I would also like to add that Roger Davidson is obviously smart, I should have used 'sophisticated'.
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@ Ima Fish: refine it to rich people deserve no mercy.
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I think after receiving this info, if not beforehand, I would've involved the police.
The fact that no-one in his circle of family and friends found some parts, or all of this, incredulous is quite surprising. I'm guessing, the guy does talk to others close to him about what's going on in his life?
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I guess from now on I'll have to give them a break. Afterall, there really are retards that stupid.
Like others have said, this retard deserved to lose his money and then some.
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Its not yet April fool's day!!
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Surely, as things escalated he'd have paused to think of how completely unreal something like this guy having a general in the Indian Army is, as close to the square root of zero the chances are that said uncle would commandeer an official aircraft that would fly to Honduras to grab a hard disk is and then fly back again (at which point we have to be closing in on the highest cost ever for a consumer grade hard disk), and how completely insane the idea is of Opus Dei is of cooking up such a plot in Poland when there's a far better supply of ultra-conservative priests are in Spain which is where Opus Die is headquartered?
None of this raised any kind of alarm bell?
Now I realize that some people have been raised in such a sheltered way that they'll believe just about anything but Davidson might just as well have lit a neon sign at his house saying "Sucker Lives Here".
To borrow from The Bard "A fool and his money are soon parted".
Sorry interval but this guy was practically inviting this to happen.
The larger issue of whether or not the majority of companies promising to remove malware form your hard disk are scammers (IMHO, they are) seems well illustrated here.
Truth, as it's been said, is stranger than fiction.
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I can't help but think.
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Unfortunately, these consultants are too often the perpetrators of such scams.
I've long believed that virus and malware removal service providers were scammers so I learned to do it on my own. No one can protect my data as well as I can.
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To remove any virus just make a backup of the original state and install that every week or like internet coffee shops every night, you never will have a virus that last more then a week on your systems.
How hard is to hit the button "restore".
ps: Of course the data is in a different partition than the OS for this to work.
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Re: Restore
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Gullible?
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wow..
Maybe I'm just used to seeing scams like this on the internet (hello, 419?).. but how can anyone seriously buy into what these people were saying? Really.. HOW??
It's like a paraody of the tv sci-fi series "Chuck", IRL. How does this guy have millions if he's so stupid?
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