Internet Regulation - Part...(oh hell, I don't remember the part)....CONTINUED!!

National Platinum digital check.  They just drew it up, and poof!!  Instant money out of YOUR account!

I bring you this post America, due to the fact that something has re-reared its ugly head (is it possible to re-rear?  I suppose all is possible in the English Language...lol)

Three years ago, my wife and I were looking a little sad, money-wise.  This of course was not long before my home was stolen from me (See INTERRUPTION OF SERVICE - PART X).  We got online and checked out a few companies, and selected one, then filled out the application.  We then got another pop-up, concerning a membership with a place named National Platinum, which was, at that time, located in Charlotte S.C.  We have since discovered that these people sure get around.

There's a site on the web (well, to be honest, more like about 10-50 sites+++) that mentions this wonderful company..and some others just like it.  The BBB gives them a D.  I think they're being awfully nice, really.  Here are some of the names they've gone by, as well as some online businesses they've been affiliated with:

National Platinum (This was their name back in 2010, and I noticed complaints as late as 2012, and then they just stop...I'm not entirely sure they're still dumb enough to use that one).  At the same address, they were also called Maximum Platinum.  They have had offices in Jacksonville, N.C., as well as Reno, NV.

NSC (National Credit Services) - This one's a doozy.  I'll get back to this one.

ULSC - United Lending Services Co.

Can Capital (www.cancapital.com)

Money Start (www.mmoneystart.com)

Magic Installment Loans (magicinstallmentloans.com)

Just to name a select few.  And, just so you know...I'm not just pulling names out of thin air. Please, if you would, go to:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/national%20platinum

...as well as the BBB, and look up the primary company (National Platinum...a name I'm guessing they no longer use).  Amazingly enough these people have been getting over on America...FOR YEARS!!  With the same M.O. all along, no less.

Oh.  Just another loan company on the take you think?  Yup.  There is that.  But there's tons more.  See, this place doesn't just do loans.  Matter of fact, I think it's rather safe to say that these people don't do loans...at all.  No, these folks are...well, they're a trip, I'll give them that.  Thank God I'm a law student, or I would have been just as bamboozled by these folks as my wife was...wait, no, is...no, let's make that "Might be for some years to come".  Here's how the whole thing went down:

See, they pop up as you fill out your info for a payday loan.  Whether personal, or business, it matters not.  It became frighteningly apparent, rather quickly, that these folks are the ones that run the show, and are actually in charge here, not the original folks that you were signing up with.  Oh, sure, you can ignore the pop-up and just close it...but once it's there, it doesn't exactly go away.  If you read any of it, it offers you a 10K line of "credit, on a card, then when you receive this card (and a catalogue of their choice of items) you're allowed to charge any of these items offered...with a small down-payment on the item, using your credit card, of course.  What they DON'T tell you is, that if they, National Platinum, after checking your credit (which I'm betting is also done by them) determines your credit to be crap (after you pay them their $20 membership fee) then the "down payment" on the product is going to be around 75-85 percent of the full price...and the rest of it is "borrowed"to you at 30% interest.  But of course, a smarter person would just shut it down.  Funny thing is, next thing you know, even though you didn't even look at it, there's a rather large sum of money being taken out of your account...somewhere around $100.  When we noticed this, they had already taken that amount twice.

They had produced and sent an electronic check to the bank, using the routing and account numbers that we had entered into the loan application, and used it to draw money out of our account...without permission.  Verbal permission that is, I'm sure, in the loan app, it probably reads that they are allowed to do this, under whatever umbrella business name they might have been using at the time.

In a panic, we rushed to close the account before any more debits were made, and called Wells Fargo, where we had the joint account.  They told us there was NOTHING they could do about it, except what we had done, close the account, then report it as fraud to the police.  Nothing was ever said about getting the charges reversed, yet another thing I just love about banks.  They won't tell you anything that might assist you, especially if it costs THEM money.  But that's been discussed in other posts, and if it hasn't, you can sure bet it will be.

It was certainly no shock to me, that, upon calling their "Customer Service" line, I received nothing.  No, no, I take that back.  I received rudeness.  I received yelling.  I received threats.  I even received a few hang ups when I asked to speak to a supervisor.

Now, granted, if this had been all that had happened, we would have written it off as another mistake made without checking into the company.  What would happen next surprised even me.

We soon began (both of us) getting calls from these people...claiming NOT to be these people, but law enforcement.  Lawyers.  The threats were evil at best, and full of things you could never imagine anyone, even those that are about scams, using.  "We're going to be serving you papers to appear in court" and "We're going to be putting out a warrant for your arrest...today!"  One day she called me to tell me that someone had talked to her boss, to tell her that someone from our police department would be down to put her in handcuffs and arrest her there on the spot, if she didn't re-open her account and pay them immediately.  At the time, I had not attended law school as yet, but I was sure that whatever they were saying was quite illegal.  I reverse looked-up the number, and found that these people were in South Carolina...but that the calls were coming from somewhere in unincorporated South Dakota somewhere.  They called themselves representatives of Wells Fargo bank, and the company name was NCS.

Knowing this was the case, I contacted the police departments in the area.  They had said that I would have to file harassment in my state, then they would contact their police departments in South Dakota.  I thought of a better idea.  I told her to have her boss take any phone calls, then her and I both got our numbers changed, and after a week or so, the calls stopped.

And so, we had gotten rid of them...or so it seemed.  Not just a week ago, three and a half years later, my now separated wife called me to tell me that I wouldn't be able to reach her anymore, that someone had called to tell her boss that an attorney in New Jersey, who worked for a company there, was serving papers to have her entire check garnished, and if she didn't make payment arrangements immediately to pay them $1200, that she would be arrested by the Polk County Sheriff's Department, here in Des Moines, Iowa.

I told her to give me the number.  I called this person, who was, indeed in (unincorporated, once again) New Jersey.  I called the man and threatened him to leave her alone, that he was harassing her at work, and that he was to cease all collection activity toot-sweet.  It didn't stop.  For the entire day, they called her...and me. I got a different person's name every time I called the place, and obviously people were on the phone a lot, because I kept getting their answering machines about every time I called...and got through to someone twice.  The first time they answered they just said "Hello".  Wow.  The 2nd time, they used my name...Bruce.  I hadn't said a single word, either time.  I could hear a sea of voices on the other end talking to people on the phone.  I finally decided to make them a scary enough threat...I threatened to come to Belle Mead, New Jersey with as many bombs as I could carry, to blow up the building they worked in.  I never heard from them again.  Neither has she.  That's what it took to make them stop.  The name of the company making the calls?  NCS.  National Credit Services.

I have the feeling, though, that they'll be back.  After I went, once again, down to our local police department, to once again file charges (which, by the way, garnered zero results the last time we'd done it), I talked to the detective there about it, and he said "Oh, we get complaints about things like this all the time." The stories differ, but it's evidently rampant."  As for how these people get away with doing it so long, and why they don't get in trouble for impersonating law enforcement officials, or lawyers, is beyond me.  The BBB has 50+ logged complaints against the former incarnation of this company, and Ripoff Reports, who is dedicated to exposing these kinds of scams has over 128, on National Platinum alone.  For NCS (National Credit Services), the company that was supposedly hired by Wells Fargo to retrieve payments on the money that we supposedly owed National Platinum (funny, that...I'm thinkin' these are the same people), has 151 reports on the same site.  That link is here:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/NCS

How this stuff goes on and on unchecked is beyond me.  As I studied this "Electronic Check" closer, I remember noticing the name it was made out to (besides the name of the company), Ryan Greaney.  This must be the mastermind, I'm thinking.  I looked up the name, and the closest thing I could find was a Ryan Greaney, from Jacksonville, N.C., as being the son of a lady who had her obituary online.  Sounds like the same guy to me, but it's hard to tell.  For all we know, this guy changed his name to mimic someone more famous.  There are other people with that name that own corporations.  Hard to say.  Either way you slice it, there's someone out there actually getting away with this stuff, and I'm sure a lot of it has to do with lax rules on how a business is allowed to operate on the Internet.

Internet Regulation

Where do I start with this one??

I think we'll begin with what the internet started out as...and what it still SHOULD be.  A world-wide source of information.  A collection of data that we, instead of having to go to a library to look it up, or have to have a special program installed to have this data at our fingertips, can now search on a world scale and probably find out all that I'd like to know on the subject...and more that I didn't really need to know as well.

This is where the internet should have stopped.  I don't know about the rest of the earth, but pretty much everything that follows, I can, without question, live without.  At the very least?  Regulation on what is posted freely as well as is what is accessible to whom, should have very quickly been implemented to protect the privacy of American citizens.

Now, 1st Amendment supporters will scream out "FREEDOM OF SPEECH/EXPRESSION!!", waving their little banners, and say everything should be left as is.  No regulation whatsoever.  Oh, there's no bigger supporter of free speech than myself, trust me.  I'm the type of person who, when his mouth is open, just about anything could come out, and I could care less who's feelings I hurt in the interim.  But come on, ARDENT RIGHT DEFENDERS, do you really mean for all of this as well?  Let's be real here.

Let's start with a very obvious concern, the safety of our children.  Before the internet, your average pervert had to really work to figure out how he was going to catch that 14 yr. old girl he's had his eye on for some time now.  Once he's figured out how to accomplish this, getting her to talk to or trust him was another big job altogether.  Thank God for the internet!!  In one fell swoop, the internet has managed to make easy all the tasks previously difficult at best!  Thanks to a collection of computers stretching the globe, and no world regulation, anyone can now know everything there is to know about anyone, given the price is right, right down to the color of their panties, if so needed.  Then, when he know all their personal data, including relatives, friends, etc., he can then talk to her, via social media, and get to know even more about her!  Then meeting her is as simple as posting a picture of a gorgeous 17 yr. old male who "Would really like to get to know you", and if somehow he manages to avoid the slight possibility of a television news reporter from MSNBC who's attempting to expose perverts from being the person he's really meeting up with, he can accomplish his goal in a whole lot less time, with a lot more info than he really needs.  Now, defenders? Close your eyes...now imagine, it's YOUR 14 yr. old he's after...How's a little regulation looking now eh, dad?

Then there's scams and cons, which, previously, were limited to local phone use and snail mail, and to the occasional door to door vacuum salesman.  Thanks to the internet, no world regulation and lax foreign policy, scams and cons are now done on Americans from every corner of the universe...and beyond!!  Regulars now include Nigeria, the Philipines, anyone in the third world...the possibilities are endless!  They started in normal places...email, messenger, but have since moved on to Craigslist...Facebook...and now, they've totally infested the world of internet dating.  They pose as available attractive women or men, with pictures of normal American models (although they're now catching on to us not being fooled by that, and are now switching to more normal pictures), either for straight dating or for sex, with the intent of stealing your heart, or playing on your sympathies, then cleaning out your bank accounts.

I have a friend who, after joining a facebook group, was hit on by an Egyptian who promised to send her money...in the rather large amound of $1500, then, because he needed her bank account numbers to "wire her the money", almost had her talked into it before I very quickly intervened.  Oh, but he was good.  He backed off all of that, still promising the money, and told her he would send it to her instead, no bank account needed.  In the mail it came, a week later, in the form of a cashier's check, in an envelope 3 times too big for it, delivered by FedEx, drawn on a bank account of some average Joe in America somewhere, with a nice big fat check number on it, I'm sure, for proof of legitimacy.  They had indeed gotten a lot better with the scam.  I told her to immediately call the bank it was drawn on, and, sure enough, it was stolen.  When I had experienced a different source of a similar scam, a couple of years prior to this one, I was sent a hand-written company check from the American Bar Association.  Much stupider.  Sure.  Some guy in Washington was buying my bed, in Iowa, wanting it shipped to him, also in Washington...with a check drawn on a major U.S. establishment...in Washington D.C.  This one was a legitimate-looking, finely typed Cashier's Check.

They're getting a whole lot smarter...and will probably get smarter yet, with every passing day we don't appeal to that country's (as well as ours, of course) government to stop the madness, or find a way we can uphold a sort of world regulation.  If you won't regulate?  Then you are banned from using or being a presence on the network.  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the government of whatever poor country we're talking about didn't dream up and implement the scam themselves!!  "We can't take care of our poor, and we're running out of funds...so let's take advantage of rich Americans!  That'll give our people hope!!  And just think of the prestige we'll enjoy when the people of the world recognize that we single-handedly scammed those naive and trusting Americans out of their wealth!"  Well defenders?  Argue this one, will ya?

Let's move right on to identity theft, shall we?  Thank the internet for this epidemic as well.  Before the internet, criminal intent to steal a person's identity had to be done in the underground black market, or with the shady guy standing in the dark corner of an alley.  The common way to handle the conversation was "I know this guy's brother's girlfriend...for $5000 and a little time, we can make you fake ID's, a social security card, passport..."  These ID's and passports often sported the picture of a man/woman who looked nothing like you, and hopefully, if the conditions were right, whoever was scoping you out didn't notice the obvious differences.

Then came the internet to the rescue.  Now, with a few minutes research and infinite possibilities right down to a man/woman who looks just like you, you can produce all of these documents yourself, right in your own home.  What's more, you can apply for numerous credit cards in just about anyone's name, steal all the money from their bank or bank accounts without even going to the bank, and transfer all their money to some bank in the Carribean or Switzerland, somewhere where it can't be touched by the already too long arm of American law.  And just in case someone gets the bright idea of tracing my computer, location, or my cell phone records, I can easily download or purchase countless masking programs that can project me as being in a farmhouse in the mountains of Arkansas, or on an Island on the Black Sea.  As for the cell phone, I can get something that'll bounce my signal off of every cell tower in a five state radius.  No problemmo muchacho.  You'd have to be pretty stupid to get caught these days, heck, we practically hand you the keys to the kingdom and give you a playful wink, while out of the other corner of our mouths we might slap you on the hand and say "Bad Hacker!"  How many people are actually caught and jailed for this?  Very few, comparatively.  A lot more get away, scott-free, believe that.  HEY DEFENDERS...YOUR OPINION....PLEASE!!!!!

I think we've taken this far enough.  You can't convince me that we haven't been practically begging for some law to cover our asses on these and other matters already.  We have, I guarantee it.  I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, however.  Left up to our Government, I can pretty much say good luck with that.  The defenders of our very outdated Constitution (and the absolute vagueness of its language) would have you believe we are trying to infringe on their rights to freedom of speech.  I guarantee the owner of the wildly popular and very lucrative teen porn site he started last year is the loudest yeller in that group.  Let me know how that works out for you.

I can honestly and truthfully say that I believe any attempt to try and get the government to implement regulation at this point would be a more than futile attempt.  Why do I say that?  Because I believe the Government...ours as well as others, plotted it out like this.  Put the internet in place, under the pretense of what it was to start with, knowing full well we'd love it and take to it; no matter for what original stated reasons it might have been sold to us, to eventually be used for what I guarantee it's being used for freely and commonly today, and for what we've feared it would be used for for some time now:  A way to keep tabs on us Americans (and/or other citizens in other countries), and to be used to take away the only right we have that's yet to be violated...those of our much-deserved and constantly infringed upon PRIVACY!!  Put in both hands, weighing them up, I'm sorry kids.  Freedom of speech vs. An Expectation of Privacy?  Gotta go with privacy here.

Why do you think it is that every laptop has a web-cam, and every phone a camera, front and rear?  And they're all hooked to, world-wide, the very thing I don't believe we Americans could, to this day, live without.  The Internet.  Pretty soon, you won't be able to say you love your wife without someone somewhere knowing about it.  Bet on it.

Who said the mark of the beast had to be physically put in place?  The invention of the digital tattoo probably isn't too far off.  'Nuff Said.  G'nite.  Sleep tight.  Let the bedbugs bite.