The U.S. Attorney General gave a speech to the Cross Border Crime Forum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on June 20, 2001. In that speech he noted that "In 1997, the United-States Canada Working Group on Telemarketing Fraud found that telemarketing fraud accounts for as much as 10 percent of the total volume of telemarketing." That was in 1997. That percentage is almost certainly larger now.
In 2003 PSEPC (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada) issued a report to the U.S. Attorney General and the Canadian Solicitor General in which they noted that "Cross-border telemarketing fraud remains one of the most pervasive forms of white-collar crime in Canada and the United States. The PhoneBusters National Call Centre estimates that on any given day, there are 500 to 1,000 criminal telemarketing boiler rooms, grossing about $1 billion a year, operating in Canada." Those scammers are just waiting to nab you.Need more? Try this from the Texas Attorney General.
The Federal Trade Commission provides a comprehensive web site covering telemarketing frauds.
There's also an excellent site by the
U.S. Department of Justice.
When it comes to telemarketing, the first thing you must do is protect yourself.
You do not want to be the victim of a telemarketing scam. We have, so far,
been able to come up with only one way to be sure of protecting yourself from scams.
That way is unfair to legitimate telemarketers but is the safest thing for you;
it is to assume up front that ALL telemarketers are scammers and refuse to
do business with any of them. Yes, you might turn down some legitimate callers,
but you won't get scammed.
Remember - you have
See fraud.org's resource on telemarketing scam statistics. Very interesting. Seems that 2006 is the latest year covered.