"Windows Log" Says You're Doomed: RevenueWire Pays $6.75 Million for Processing Tech Support Scam Payments

A "technician" connects to your computer. Opens a program. Shows you a scary list of errors and warnings. Tells you each one is a "red flag." Then sells you a fix.

The program? Event Viewer. It's built into Windows, and it logs harmless stuff, like a keyboard getting unplugged. Every computer has those "errors."

So what happened?

In April 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued RevenueWire, Inc., a Canadian company also doing business as "SafeCart," and its CEO, Roberta Leach, in federal court in the District of Columbia. RevenueWire and Leach agreed to pay $6.75 million to settle.

The FTC says RevenueWire ran a business model called "Call Stream" that provided lead generation, payment processing and money distribution services to tech support fraudsters. According to the complaint, that led to "hundreds of millions of dollars of consumer injury." Read the FTC complaint against RevenueWire.

The heart of the case is credit card laundering. According to the FTC:

• RevenueWire got merchant accounts to process its own sales of eBooks and software.
• The contracts prohibited running third-party sales through those accounts.
• RevenueWire ran payments through them anyway for ICE and Vast, two companies the FTC had already sued for tech support scams.

The complaint says telemarketers used Event Viewer, often calling it "Windows Log," to convince people their computers were in trouble. It also says that around April 2014, RevenueWire added bogus warning pop-ups to Call Stream, which drove calls to the tech support call centers.

Here's the thing ... people warned them

This is the part that really gets me. According to the complaint, a RevenueWire fraud analyst warned the company's Vice President of Finance in January 2013 against taking Vast as a client. And in January 2014, a software company that worked with Call Stream warned RevenueWire that ICE was making misrepresentations about Event Viewer.

Warnings. In writing. Read that again.

These are the FTC's allegations, resolved by settlement.

Why should you care?

Look, the TCPA world and the payments world are connected. Every phone scam needs a way to get paid. The Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) makes it illegal to give "substantial assistance or support" to a telemarketer when you know, or consciously avoid knowing, that it's breaking the rules.

"Consciously avoid knowing." That's the line. You can't close your eyes and cash the checks.

What to do this week

• Listen to your fraud team. If they raise a hand, stop and look.
• Don't run other people's sales through your merchant account. DO NOT.
• Watch chargebacks. They tell you what customers think happened.
• Vet your partners' sales scripts, not just their volume.

It's not rocket science. If it smells like a scam, it's probably a scam.

You're smarter than this. I believe in you.