New Report Reveals Details of Popular Telecom Fraud Schemes

A new report from TransNexus examines the schemes being used for telecom fraud today and industry best practices for prevention.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, telecom fraud accounted for 34% of fraud complaints in 2012, up from 20% in 2010. These numbers continue to grow, as new technology has led to an onslaught of new telecom fraud tactics. The latest schemes are difficult to track and investigate because of their frequency, their layers of anonymity, and their global nature. The new report includes detailed call flows and money flows for a dozen different telecom fraud scenarios. It divides the many telecom fraud schemes into three broad categories, based on who the fraudsters are targeting. These categories are:

• Traffic Pumping Schemes. These schemes use “access stimulation” techniques to boost traffic to a high cost destination, which then shares the revenue with the fraudster.
• Schemes to Defraud Telecom Service Providers. These schemes are the most complicated, and exploit telecom service providers using SIP trunking, regulatory loopholes, and more.
• Schemes Conducted Over the Telephone. Also known as “Phone Fraud,” this category covers all types of general fraud that are perpetrated over the telephone.

“Many of these scenarios are new to the telecom and VoIP industries,” says Jim Dalton, president of TransNexus. “The first step to stopping telecom fraud is to understand it. The charts and diagrams in our latest telecom fraud report help our customers to realize the weak points in their network security.”