Complaint Review: iTechZone.net

My father-in-law (FIL) unfortunately fell for one of these Indian Tech Support scams from a company called iTechZone (ITZ).

First they got him to pay for remote Tech Support services. Then they called him back with the following story:

1) ITZ: We accidentally charged your credit card $500 (they didn't) 

2) ITZ: We put $1,000 into your bank account to fix the problem. We had to put $1,000 because that is the minimum we couold deposit (FIL checked his bank account and there was indeed a PENDING transaction for $1,000, which his bank told him would be impossible for the perpetrators to retract.)

3) ITZ: We now need you to buy $400 worth of iTunes Gift Cards and tell us the numbers off the backs of the cards. Not $500 worth, because we are so nice we are going to let you keep $100 for your troubles.

4) FIL buys the cards from a grocery store, calls them back with the numbers, and viola, money has been laundered with no digital trace. 

5) ITZ retracts the $1,000 PENDING transaction, and to boot, moves money from savings to checking to disguise that the PENDING transaction has been cancelled.

I did some research on my own, and found out the following information.

iTechZone.net
-------------
whois info:
Name: jeet singh
Organization: av
Mailing Address: mOdel, jalandhar Punjab 144001 IN
Phone: +91.8556833980
Email:jeet98150@gmail.com

Website analysis:

Phone number used: 844-845-2142
Named as dangerous phone number:
https://www.shouldianswer.com/phone-number/8448452142
https://thisphone.us/8448452142

Address listed on website:
Address: 41024 Iron Point Road, Folsom
95630, USA
This physical address doesn't exist in reality, but it is a different address than on their contact page, which is 1024 Iron Point Road, a Regus office. Almost plausible deniability. The images on their customer quotes section come from the US and New Zealand passport websites. Dumb, but not yet a smoking gun. Typos and bad English all over the place. An interesting connection comes when you look at their refund page, which lists lockforsure.com as the support address. Which leads me to lockforsure.

LockforSure.com
---------------
whois info
(registered with domains by proxy. nice one.)

Website analysis:

Phone number on website: 1-888-569-0037
Phone number results in a nice little ripoff report:
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-888-569-0037
And this:
Computer-Fix (same phone number as Lockforsure) named on RifoffReport website
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/computer-fix-inc/las-vegas-nevada/computer-fix-inc-gotechs247-i-was-scammed-by-a-company-claiming-to-be-apple-tech-suppor-1227699 [Note to Ripoff Report: The URL computerfix-inc.com listed on this link is NOT the URL for the scam company Computer Fix Inc which operates via telephone mainly, it seems. Please fix.]
Getting closer.

Address listed on website:
4133 W Maplewood Ave,
Bellingham, WA 98226
This a hotel called the Shamrock. Nice. Not even trying.

By googling the email address jeet98150@gmail.com I found two more identical sites, tech-abs.net and avinfotechline.com:
https://thedailywhois.com/2017-03-03/tech-abs.net

Tech-Abs.net
------------
Whois info
Name: Avtar Singh
Organization: Avinfotechline
Mailing Address: Jalandhar heights, Jalandhar Punjab 144001 IN
Phone: +91.10057085
Email:jeet98150@gmail.com
Note the email address and mailing address is the same as iTechZone.

Website analysis:

Phone number on website:
877-231-7882
Nice little ripoff reports here:
http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/8772317882
http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-877-231-7882

Address listed on website:
Sayreville NJ 08872, USA
(no street listed, oh well, no fun to be had.)

avinfotechline.com
------------------
Whois info:
Name: Avtar Labana
Organization: Infotechline
Mailing Address: D-471 Groung Floor, New Delhi Delhi 110077 IN
Phone: +91.9810057085
Email:avtar.labana@gmail.com

Website analysis:

Phone number on website:
888-569-0037 (same as lockforsure, see above)

Address listed on website:
2525 Iron Point Rd Folsom, CA 95630 USA
THIS IS AN IHOP RESTAURANT. THIS IS AWESOME.

I decide to look up intotechline separately.

InfoTechLine.net
----------------
Whois info
Name: Avtar Labana
Organization: Infotechline
Mailing Address: D-471 Groung[sic] Floor, New Delhi Delhi 110077 IN
Phone: +91.9810057085
Email:avtar.labana@gmail.com
Note the same email address here as avinfotechline.com.

Scam reports for InfoTechLine:
(((REDACTED)))
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/infotechline/boston-select-stateprovince-02210/infotechline-remote-access-to-my-computer-wanted-me-to-give-credit-card-info-over-the-ph-1081105
(((REDACTD)))

The google search of the phone number of tech-abs.net resulted in finding yet another site of theirs:

pcfixandrepair.com
------------------
Whois info:
Name: Ariana Franzman
Organization: Pcfixandrepair
Mailing Address: 3326 Galena lane #201, Bellingham Washington 98225 US
Phone: +1.9810057085
Email:jeet98150@gmail.com
C'mon dude, same email address. Not trying that hard.

So there you have the dots connected from iTechZone.net to LockForSure.com to Tech-Abs.net to avinfotechline.com to infotechline.net and pcfixandrepair.com. All connected. All scams.

Here is the dude himself:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/avatar-singh-ba61a87b/
Probably not a real pic or name, but who knows. These guys aren't rocket scientists.

Here is a guy that supposedly works for him:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurpreet-singh-bab31bbb/
If you use the google "search by image" featuer on Gurpreet's image, it turns up the following names:
vivek samuel, Rohit Monde, Farhat Sophia, chelsea kikon, Himanshu Narula, Bhagwant Purbha PMP. Obviously a guy who is busy creating fake linkedin profiles all the time.