NetGear Inc.

Victim Location 07930

Total money lost $300

Type of a scam Tech Support

On August 3, 2016 I received a phone call from "John [censored]al" technician from Netgear asking how it was working. I replied the wifi range extender was not working well. I was asked to share my computer screen with him which I did. He informed me my computer was full of viruses and that’s why the extender was not working well. He offered a service to protect my computer from viruses called a "Netgear External Firewall". I paid $300 for protection for all devices in my home for an unlimited time.

On September 20, 2016 I received a phone call from "Microsoft Service Center" stating their server was down and asked how was my computer working. Coincidentally, I haven’t been able to access the internet for the past 2 days. The voice and accent was identical to the previous caller. He identified himself as "John Martin" . I was asked to share my computer screen with him which I did. He informed me my computer was full of viruses and he was offering another service to protect my computer for a cost. I asked to be disconnected from his computer and ended the call.

I called the "Technical support # provided to me from the Netgear Tech on August 3, 2016: 855-222-1444 and spoke with Jacob. I asked for my services to be cancelled. Jacob stated that he could not do that because my "number" (he was unable to explain what my number was) had already been assigned to me and it couldn’t be cancelled. I stated it was a service that I no longer wanted and a service should be able to be stopped. He repeated that it could not be done. I asked Jacob the name of the company I was calling and he would not provide that information other than he worked through Netgear. The email on my charge statement was: [email protected] which is not United States based as far as I could determine.