Ninety-two-year-old US army veteran Richard Guthrie was one of the victims. He ended up losing his lifetime savings because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his money. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, US, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers. They went to Wachovia, the US’ fourth-largest bank, and emptied his account.

The thieves operate from small offices in Toronto, Canada, and hangar-size rooms in India. Every night, working from lists of names and phone numbers, they called World War II veterans, retired schoolteachers and thousands of other elderly people and posed as government and insurance workers updating their files. Then, the criminals empty their victims’ bank accounts.

Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other people every year. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorisation.

The banks and companies that sell such services often confront evidence that they are used for fraud. Although some companies have made refunds to victims who have complained, hardly any have stopped working with criminals even after executives were warned that they were aiding continuing crimes. Instead, those companies collected millions of dollars in fees from scam artists.

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