BEWARE: I was scammed and a Verizon tech support person was involved

Question

Yesterday I tried to trace a package that Verizon shipped to me but when I went on the UPS web site and put in the tracking # I had I was told by UPS that they had no record of the #. I then called Verizon tech support. The person I was eventually connected to looked into the problem and told me that my computer had been compromised and had been hacked. He then directly connected me to a comapny (Mandatech) that he said was a Microsoft associate companyh and that they would take care of the problem for me. Mandatech took over my computer and, according to them, cleaned out all of the garbage and took care of the hacking problem. This service cost me $350 plus I bought a 1 year service contract to make sure I was never hacked again, this cost $300. At the end of the session Mandatech contacted Verizon and I was given the delivery information for my package. Today when I tried calling the support phone number for Mandatech I got a recording that said that the line was not in service. At this point I realized that I had been scammed. I contacted Verizon's frlaud department and was told that they would look into it but had no way of determining who the Verizon tech person was that connected me to Mandatechl and that Verizon had no responsibility to what happened to me. I also reported this incident to Microsoft and they are checking it out.
I find it incomprehensible that although it is obvious that the Verizon tech person was directly a part of the scam Verizon couldn't find out who the person was and took no responsibility for this action.

Answer 1

Welcome to the forums.  You're talking to Verizon's customers here.  If you want to talk to Verizon, click here: Contact Us.
Unfortunately, it looks like you fell into one of the many methods scammers use to steal money. Scammers have figured out how they can get bogus phone numbers to turn up in search results.  When you use those numbers, you end up calling the scamers instead of the company you really want.  I'm guessing that you used a search engine to look up Verizon's support phone number.  If you didn't call 1-800-VERIZON this is most likely what happened.
Verizon will never, ever ask you to pay money to fix a computer virus problem.  They simply do not do that.
If you google "telephone tech support scams" you can learn a lot about how the scammes operate.
If I were you, I would immediately cancel the credit card used to pay the scammers and report it to your bank.
You should also find a local computer expert to help you remove any software the scammers installed on your computer.  A complete system wipe may be the best course of action.
Good Luck.
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