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By Jared Evan
The U.S. government says Google has a more than 90 percent share of the business that serves ads to websites, Google controls about 80 percent of the Google Ads network where advertisers compete to place ads.
As of July 2023, Google had a share of around 83.49 percent of the search engine market.
One would think with such a strong market share of online advertising and search engine use, Google; would surely do business with only trusted advertisers and easily be able to sift out, scammers and international criminals from buying top ad placement for keywords.
You would be wrong.
Goolge is allowing fraudulant “Phishing” companies, hiding in all corners of the globe to pose as legitimate service providers.
Optimum is an American telecommunications brand owned and operated by Altice USA and is the fourth largest cable provider in the United States and a Fortune 500 company.
Optimum offers Internet, television, mobile and home phone serving Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia, covering move than 20.6 million people across 21 states
Recently Optimum sent out the following information via email to millions of customers:
We’ve seen an increase in scammers claiming to be your service provider. Scammers may try to trick you into paying your Optimum bill through fraudulent phone numbers and third-party websites.
We’re reaching out to help you stay safe and provide you with some tips on how to recognize and avoid scams:
• The best way to reach us is via our website optimum.net or optimum.com or the phone number printed on your bill. Don’t use search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc.) to pay your bill online or find our phone number.
• We offer many convenient bill payment options, but we’ll never ask you to pay by gift card, wire transfer, cryptocurrency, payment apps (Venmo, Zelle, Cash App, etc.), or other nontraditional methods.
• We’ll never ask for your banking account information or your credit card’s CVV/CVC number over the phone.
There is good reason this email was sent out to millions of customers. There is an incredibly sagacious scam going on, and it all starts by typing in a specific search into the google search engine.
Optimum , like most internet and cable service providers, will turn your service off , if you are behind on your bill.
Millions of consumers in the digital age, pay their bills directly on their laptops , with all of their passwords stored. Many consumers rarely even look at the paper copy of the bill , or have “gone green” and opt to not have a traditional bill sent to them.
This scheme targets those who are unable to pay their bill instantly online and do not have the Optimum phone number handy but are in a rush to get their service returned.
Here is how the scheme works.
A. Victim has internet and TV shut off for being late on bill
B. Victim has no access to optimum payment website because their wi-fi is turned off, does not have optimum password on smart phone nor official customer service number handy.
C. Victim still has internet access on smart phone, goes to the most popular search engine in the world, Google, to locate the Optimum phone number to make a payment, and types “Optimum make payment” in the search engine
The following is a series of screenshots showing what google pulls up when you search “Optimum make payment” as of Septmber 4th 2023.
One who is in a hurry to get their TV and internet turned on in their house; especially in the work from home age; will quickly call one of these numbers becasuse they came up at the very top of the search. The problem is, these first four google search results, are not actually Optimum.
Amazingly enough, the real company showed up 5th for the google search “Optimum make payment”
The first four listings, which are illegal, “phishing” fronts, will take your banking and credit card information and wreck havok on your finances if you do not catch on.
Look carefully at the google search results and you will see the word “sponsored”.
In other-words criminals are paying Google to turn up on the top of this particular search phrase “Optimum make payment”.
The actual cable/internet company shows up after the con artists who paid for this top placement.
Google key words are not cheap either !
Let’s get back to the scam…….
D. After calling the con artists or using their website, they will take your credit card, debit card or banking information and actually turn your service back on !!!
E. The fake company will submit a fake payment to Optimum, by using a bad routing and account number, which will trick Optimum into turning your service back on.
F. When you look at your banking statements, you will not see Optimum as a vendor who charged you, but another random company.
G The scammers wil then keep submitting fake payments to Optimum, over and over, so your service will not be cut off. Doing this prevents most victims from noticing they were scammed.
H. Eventually Optimum will send you an email about the rejected payments, which will usually trigger the victim to take note of the strange company which took their payment instead of their internet/cable company.
Hopefully the victim of the scam will notice the email alerting them that their payments were declining .
In the end; IF the victim , catches this scam, the false charge ( which was supposed to be going to Optimum) will almost certainly be reversed by their bank, and they will have to cancel their banking information (debit , credit card, bank account) becuause criminals now have access to the victim’s money and personal information.
This is what happens if the victim catches on to the scam fast enough.
If you don’t catch it quickly, the real damage begins and they will siphon off your entire checking account or charge away all of your credit , becuase GOOGLE IS NOT LOOKING AT WHO IS BUYING TOP ADVERTISING SPACE.
Google, is the top search engine in the world, in fact almost every smart phone on the market’s browser is programmed with Google as the search engine automatically; Iphone or Android. If a company like Optimum is being impersonated, you can guararante this is happening to hundreds of other companies.
TJV News focused on Optimum because we have received reports in the Tri-State area of this scam.
The question is why is Google doing nothing about this?
For the last 30 days, the search for “Optimum make payment” is directing people to criminal enterprises, who are robbing people blind. TJV News has reported these ads to Google, they have not been taken down . Optimum is aware of the scam, as they notified millions of people via email, but still nothing is being done about it.
Google (Alphabet Inc.) is infamous for delisting conservative news sources such as Breitbart, Gateway Pundit and Epoch Times from their news search engine, and refusing to sell google ads to independent news sources; yet they seem to have no problem selling top search engine placement to international criminals.
Are our elected officials aware of this? Why is this tolerated? How can a technology company as large as Alphabet Inc. continue to gladly take money from criminals and allow them to be marketed on the largest search engine in the world?
