1-800-UNLOCKS

The Today show uncovers deceptive locksmith practices and scams! A must see!

unlocks — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:18:37 +0000

On November 16, 2011 the Today show did a very revealing story on how deceptive locksmith scams are taking advantage of people in emergencies. A local locksmith installed a Kwikset knobset and a Kwickset deadbolt (which was never locked) and a reporter for a local news channel called several locksmiths and secretly recorded them as they used several unethical, and most unprofessional methods to open one of the easist locks to simply pick open.

It was hilaious to hear them say that they cannot pick lock, and even one man when confronted said that NOBODY picks locks because they cannot be picked anymore! These guys were so brazen, a supposed locksmith charged $685 to drill out her lock and replace, and when she said she did not carrry that kind of money he asked her to take him to her bank to withdraw it. The best part was when each of them were confonted by the cameras the ducked heir head, even pulling hoody over his face and left without payment, even after being asked if they were a licensed locksmith…one guy said yes but failed to reveal his license number. his video is a perfecet example of the destructive ways that thesse crooks will attempt to open your door such as prybars and channel lock pliers ripping the lock off the door. Most of the others broke out their drill without even attempting to pick the locks open.

See for yourself! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45320607/dis…

10 Connects investigates local locksmith with hidden cameras

unlocks — Fri, 20 May 2011 16:01:32 +0000

CLEARWATER, Fla. – The company is accused of preying on people in their most desperate moments. A national locksmith chain, which recently moved its headquarters from New York City to Clearwater, continues to rack up complaints by people who say they were taken advantage of when they needed a lock open in a hurry.

Over the course of a month, 10 Connects investigated “Dependable Locks” – a company that has more than a dozen alternate names, including several variations of “A 1 Locksmith.” Hundreds of consumers have accused the company of deceptive sales practices and the themes of those complaints were caught on-camera when a 10 Connects executive producer called the company for emergency service.

Or, our follow-up reports on the federal raid or Florida’s lack of locksmith legislation!

After calling the locksmith listing closest to her locked home in South Tampa, our producer was told someone would be there in less than 30 minutes. But the operator refused to tell her where they were located and when the locksmith called her cell phone to get directions, he refused to tell her where he was coming from.

Even though she was led to believe the locksmith was coming from the listed address just one mile away, our producer waited 40 minutes for someone to show up. He later said it was because he was coming all the way from Clearwater. And the $54 quote the phone operator begrudgingly gave her didn’t really exist either.

“He looked at the door and said, ‘Ooooh, that’s one of the harder ones,’ ” she said, saying he then said it would cost $120.

But the locksmith was working harder on his acting than the lock. He had the door open after jiggling a simple tool in the keyhole for about 60 seconds.

When 10 Connects encountered the man from Dependable Locks, he said “it’s not a simple lock,” despite the ease he had it opened. But what he didn’t know was that an hour earlier, 10 Connects had the lock inspected by professional locksmith Frank Torrens from Henry’s Locksmith.

“It’s just a standard, normal opening,” said Torrens, before opening the door himself in under 60 seconds. “It’s not a high-security lock, it’s just a regular, standard residential lock.”

The man from Dependable Locks collected our producer’s $120 – more than double her $54 quote – and took off without saying much more to 10 Connects.

It’s a story John Zajac with the Better Business Bureau has heard before.

“They’re expecting to pay a certain price and they end up paying three times that price,” Zajac said, citing more than 225 complaints from all over the country in 21 months since Dependable moved to Clearwater. “This is deceptive advertising and deceptive sales practices. The company’s rating with us is ‘F.’ “

Complaints about Dependable have also reached several attorney generals’ offices, as states such as Missouri and Illinois have filed suit. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has received upwards of 20 complaints to his office, but since locksmiths are unregulated in Florida, his office hasn’t been able to take any action.

Local locksmiths with better reputations at the BBB tell 10 Connects that Dependable Locks makes up company names and fake addresses, then saturates the phonebook so when you call a locksmith in an emergency, there’s a good chance your call will end up at their offices in Clearwater.

When 10 Connects went to the office, employees refused to acknowledge anything about a locksmith business. Owner David Peer asked us to leave the property, but after repeated requests, agreed to speak off-camera.

He said the multiple phone numbers and business names were for marketing purposes, but the multiple addresses were a mistake.

His lawyer also said many of the complaints were for other national locksmiths but were “hopelessly cross-linked” to Dependable Locks.

Tampa-based Ken Kupferman, the former president of the Associated Locksmiths of America, suggests finding a good locksmith now so that when you need one in an emergency, you won’t be taken advantage of.

United States Attorney’s Office has stopped FL scam with Judgement!

unlocks — Mon, 02 May 2011 21:08:01 +0000

UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI

RICHARD G. CALLAHAN
United States Attorney

NEWS RELEASE

——————————————————————————–

For further information call (314) 539-2200
——————————————————————————–

February 18, 2011
For Immediate Release

OWNERS OF FLORIDA LOCKSMITH SERVICE INDICTED IN SCAM TO OVERCHARGE FOR LOCKSMITH SERVICES

St. Louis, MO: The United States Attorney’s Office announced today that the owners of a Florida based locksmith service were charged in a superseding indictment on multiple federal charges involving a scam to overcharge customers for locksmith services, as well as employing and harboring illegal aliens.

According to the superseding indictment, Dependable Locks, Inc., headquartered in Clearwater, FL, managed a national network of locksmith technicians, operating from major population centers across the United States, including St. Louis. It also maintained a full-time staff of telephone operators and dispatchers, who were on duty 24 hours per day in Clearwater. The dispatchers received phone calls electronically forwarded from hundreds to thousands of telephone numbers listed nationwide for emergency locksmith services, all of which forwarded consumer calls to the call center in Florida. The dispatchers received the calls and the business dispatched locksmith technicians from the area of the call to respond. Many of the locksmith technicians working for Dependable Locks were aliens who were unlawfully present in the United States and were not authorized to work as locksmith technicians.

The indictment alleges that the locksmith company engaged in deceptive marketing by purchasing directory listings and advertisements in cities across the United States that identified the business to the public as a set of local locksmith companies. The company’s listings used multiple business names, local phone numbers and fake local addresses that had no affiliation with the company. Phone calls to the listed phone numbers were automatically routed to the company’s call center in Clearwater, Florida. In addition, telephone operators for Dependable Locks were instructed by managers to mislead customers to believe that they would be charged around $54 for a car lockout, while the responding technician was instructed by managers to charge up to $179 for a lockout. Technicians used techniques such as accusing the consumer who objected to the overcharge of “theft of services,” threatening to call the police, withholding the customer’s keys or driver’s license to compel payment or following the customer to an ATM machine to ensure payment.

The locksmith technicians allegedly were allowed to split the profits of the fraudulently procured locksmith services with the company and were required to remit the company’s share of the proceeds by regularly purchasing and shipping cash, checks and money orders to the Dependable Locks location in Clearwater, FL.

“After more than a year of following numerous leads with ICE and the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, we are pleased to see this case continue to progress,” said Postal Inspector J.R. Ball of the St. Louis Field Office. He added, “The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is vigilant in investigating allegations where the mail or postal products are used to conceal or further a crime.”

DAVID PEER, Clearwater, FL; and ADAM OLIVKOVICH, address unknown, were indicted by a federal grand jury on one felony count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, five felony counts of mail fraud, one felony count of conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens for private financial gain and one felony count of engaging in a pattern of hiring unauthorized aliens. MOSHE AHARONI, Clearwater, FL, was indicted on one felony count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and one felony count of conspiracy to harbor illegal aliens for private financial gain.

Conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and/or a fine up to $250,000. Mail fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and/or a fine up to $250,000. Conspiracy to harbor unlawful aliens for private financial gain carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and/or a fine up to $250,000. Engaging in a pattern of hiring unauthorized aliens carries a maximum penalty of six months in prison and/or a fine of $3,000 per alien. In determining the actual sentences, a Judge is required to consider the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which provide recommended sentencing ranges.

This case was investigated by the United States Postal Inspection Service, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Assistant United States Attorneys John Sauer and John Ware are handling the case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

As is always the case, charges set forth in an indictment are merely accusations and do not constitute proof of guilt. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The Society of Professional Locksmiths dispell myth of 1-800-UNLOCKS

unlocks — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 04:37:36 +0000

Author: Tom Lynch, Founder of The Society of Professional Locksmiths
1-800-UNLOCKS IS A LEGITIMATE DISPATCH SERVICE

12/30/20102 Comments Today I received and email from a person who stated they would not have anything to do with the SOPL because it was associated with a locksmith dispatch scam. WOW! I thought to my self did I do something with the SOPL that I forgot to tell myself about? I don’t think so! After some thought I realized this person was referring to the 1-800-UNLOCKS relationship with the SOPL.

I think it is about time the facts are presented in a blunt fashion to dispel the ignorance of those who do not do their research or get involved in their industry enough to know the facts about services within their own peer group. 1-800-UNLOCKS is a legitimate nationwide locksmith DISPATCH network..It is not a scam operation like the ones being found in the news. 1-800-UNLOCKS has been around for a long time. They had some issues in the past with some operational problems and that has been corrected a long time ago and has nothing to do with any “scams” so in fairness and to show everyone how I am not a shill for them, I will say the only thing I don’t like about 1-800-UNLOCKS is their website, which by the way I have openly criticized to them about.

So let see if I can help both the misinformed Locksmiths and the consumers about this service. It is a DISPATCH service which routes the consumers call DIRECTLY to the local locksmith registered in their network for the callers area. It is not a remote out of state SUB-CONTRACTED scam. What 1-800-UNLOCKS does is pre-screens real working locksmiths who chose to pay for a territory and be allowed to use the vanity number to route calls directly to their business rather then into a phone bank. So, the consumer actually gets an established locksmith in their neighborhood, not some dispatch center a 1000 miles away who sends out some guy who is 2 hours away and has no clue about the skill sets or craft of locksmithing.

So to set the records straight, 1-800-UNLOCKS works for those locksmiths who take the effort to market the vanity number in their territory because the calls come back to them and help to promote a professional franchised image without the cost of a franchise fee and the consumer is serviced professionally. To the best of my knowledge, 1-800-UNLOCKS maintains a standard of performance and if they fell a provider is not operating above board, they reserve the right to pull the territory. Do a Google search and you you are not finding locksmiths registered with 1-800-UNLOCKS involved, period.

So I am completely comfortable having 1-800-UNLOCKS associated with the SOPL since they are not a scam in my opinion and others in this business who know what it is about. I actually believe that if misinformed locksmiths spend more time opening their mind to the idea of what 1-800-UNLOCKS could do to improve their image and bottom lines then they would be better off doing it. In the face of real scams that are going on, 1-800-UNLOCKS is the locksmiths secret weapon to create their own threaded cooperative network to combat these scams and recapture the call volume that has been lost to this nationwide dilemma.

It all comes down to marketing which many locksmiths are just flat out terrible at doing, and that is a subject for another days blog post.
Tom Lynch the Society of Professional Locksmiths blog entry

1-800-UNLOCKS helps Locksmith Fraud in Virginia

unlocks — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:18:57 +0000

LOCKSMITH FRAUD
3-25-11
AIRED: Can be heard by visiting www.1-800-UNLOCKS.com
Prosecutors in most big cities have heard about con artists who prey on people locked out of their homes or cars. Some have taken the worst offenders to court, but here in Virginia phony locksmiths appear to be scamming consumers and driving legitimate locksmiths out of business, while state regulators struggle to keep up. Sandy Hausman has details:
Joanne Grimes had turned her cell phone off and gone to the theater, so when her tenants in Alexandria called to say the lock on their condo door was broken, she didn’t pick up. They went to the building manager who found them a locksmith online. According to one of Joanne Grimes renters, one came, looked at the lock, took pictures of the lock, and ultimately said he needed to advise his company’s specialist (typical scammers). When he arrived, he was everything the typical scammer locksmith tends to be, an unmarked car, no tools, foreign accent, and very rude!
The renters had been told that a service call would cost $185:
After the scammer opened the door by drilling the Kwikset lock open, they presented him with a bill for $586.
The tenant paid, but the landlady – who had to reimburse them – was furious. She called a Maryland number on the company’s receipt. A man answered and said he knew nothing about Locksmith Payless. Grimes then tried the Virginia number and spoke with a woman called Maya:
Of course Mya sounded receptive to the problem, but nothing was ever corrected. Mrs Grimes replied, “Well, y’know I can go to Home Depot and buy a lock and a door for $600!” and Mya was unaffected.
Maya made excuses, then said she’d adjust the bill, but she never did, so Grimes called the Better Business Bureau and Alexandria police, who told her this was not a criminal matter. She then phoned the state’s Department of Criminal Justice Services – a 100-person agency with just 3 people designated to investigate violations by a range of licensed security professionals:
We have some responsibility … that our agency has, from corrections officers to private security firms, but due to specific budgeting freezes, we are outnumbered by the illegal and unethical services that are being performed by out of state, unlicensed, fraudulent scammers posing as DCJS licensed locksmiths who are using false addresses by the thousands to get phone directory ads. Most importantly these blocks of numbers associated with the bogus addresses assure the first several hundred numbers will go to the illegal entities when dialing 411 for a locksmith!
Leon Baker, Director of the division of Regulatory Affairs, says the department is trying to hire a few more people, but they need special permission to get around a state hiring freeze. Last year, his department investigated only 44 cases of locksmith fraud.
License fees paid by legitimate locksmiths should help to cover the costs of enforcement, and Mark Baldino says he’s not getting his money’s worth. For years, the business he and his father built has suffered because phony locksmiths have flooded the yellow pages and the Internet with listings:
You will see, up in Northern Virginia, it is next to impossible for me to get a call with all of the illegitimate ads in most cases coming before any of the local, established, licensed locksmiths who pay the licensing fees…not to mention the high cost of directory advertising.
Baldino has also discovered many locksmith listings with addresses that don’t actually exist or belong to other businesses, so he says the state should be getting rich:
In the code of Virginia, under the Consumer Protection Act there is a $2500 fine for falsely advertising an address or name of a company. At $2500, the state would be able to afford the resources to police the licensing and pursue the thousands of bogus addresses and fictitious names of the scammers.
It is also a violation of the Terms of Services for telephone directories and online directories such as Superpages.com and yellowpages.com to publish companies without a legitimate address, and to comply with each states licensing law. Each ad, whether internet or phone directory should include the DCJS license number for each company they are advertising.
Jeff Musser, founder of 1-800-UNLOCKS in Richmond says the problem lies, in part, with consumers who are vulnerable:
Whether they’ve lost their keys, locked their keys in the car, or something similar; most likely they are in an emergency situation such as to get to work, pick up a child, or other important errand. They will most likely pay just to get to their appointment, but then they get angry when they realized they had just been scammed. In these situations, if a locksmith will not take a credit card or check, instead of forcing the customer to take them to their ATM to withdraw cash, it is most likely a scam. Checks can be stopped, and credit cards can be disputed. NEVER deal with a locksmith who deals in cash only, unless you know this company and the invoice is in a range you are comfortable paying.
And his partner, Barry Wilson, says some victims are afraid to complain. He recently got a call from a woman scammed by a guy who charged her a fortune and left her in the lurch:
Her door lock was drilled open that night and the scammer made her take him to the ATM to get the cash to pay the bill. “I was pretty sure that she was scared, and most likely threatened by the scammer”, says Barry Wilson.
In Virginia Beach, officials were so concerned that they produced a public service announcement.
In the Newport News area, there had been only two official complaints, but consumer affairs investigator Julie Pickell figured there were a lot more victims out there:
A lot of people don’t realize that they can report this … in the first place
But that’s something she recommends all consumers do. Better yet, she says, find a trustworthy local locksmith before you need one, and share the name with everyone in your family:
Even if you have access to the web … trustworthy locksmiths are often found after weeding through the scammer operations that utilize the internet search engines to trap you by offering low quotes, but when the job is completed with subpar satisfaction they give you an invoice for up to 10 times the quoted price. It’s always a dead giveaway when the person on the other end will not give you the DCJS license number, an address with a local number, or the person is unfamiliar with your location.
Mark Baldino thinks the yellow pages and search engines need to have some obligation to delete them when complaints come in. We have contacted Google advertising and exposed thousands of bogus addresses with listings, but were told they would look into it without any further action.
So Baldino is suing Google and several online listing services that publish false information, even when they’re informed that it’s bogus. And retired high school teacher Joanne Grimes is pursuing her complaint through the state’s Department of Criminal Justice Services:
“I’m the kind of person … don’t rip me off”, Joanne Grimes explained!
She’s also contacted the FBI and Associated Locksmiths of America – a trade group that’s hired a lobbyist to try and get stronger state laws against phony locksmiths.

Sandy Hausman©

An audio version of this annoncement will be available at http://www.1-800-UNLOCKS.com

TN tries to shutdown locksmith scams

unlocks — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:12:27 +0000

TN Tries to Shutdown Locksmith Scams

Tealy
Devereaux
MEMPHIS, Tenn. – After months of getting complaints about these deceptive locksmiths operating across the Mid-South, the West Tennessee Locksmith Association went to Nashville asking for help in putting them out of business.

Glen Peifer had hoped his meeting with the state’s Department of Commerce and Insurance would generate a sure fire way of stopping the locksmith scammers his association says have flooded Memphis recently. But he says it’s going to take a little more time to eliminate them.

“Certaintly they can take the unlicensed and fine them if they can find them.”

Peifer says a possible solution may lie in litigation. He says he was successful in stirring up interest in following Missouri’s effort to fight deceptive locksmiths.

“The state attorney general is literally going after the company’s who are doing this and are going to the AT & T’s, Yellow Pages, folks posting numbers and making sure they do more research.”

According to the Better Business Bureau some companies outside of Memphis are using call centers to intercept local calls and farm out jobs here. People are getting scammers’ numbers when they call for a locksmith because the scammers are using bogus addresses on the internet and in phone book listings. And in some cases scammers are stealing the numbers of legitimate businesses.

On Wednesday, Peifer’s company, Peifer Safe & Lock was called to fix Toni Hughes lock. She says the previous locksmith swindled her out of $200 cash.

“I happened to have the money, I wanted him out of the house.”

Hughes says she used the phone book to look up a locksmith she thought she could trust. Instead she says she got someone who left her worse off….with a lock that didn’t work correctly.

“I said that’s not like the lock on the door. He said it’s a better lock. You’ll like it better.”

Peifer says there are too many stories like Hughes’ happening everyday. He says what Missouri is doing to stop the overcharging and fraudulent advertising could set a precedent. One he hopes Tennessee considers repeating.

“I’m hoping they do something through the state attorney general’s office to get these numbers out of the airwaves.”

While the state reviews its options, Peifer says the only thing to do is get the word out about the problem.

People who think they have fallen victim to this scam are urged to report it to the Better Business Bureau and the Tennessee Locksmith Licensing Program.

Report Locksmith Scams:
Better Business Bureau @ bbb.org
TN Locksmith Licensing Program
(615) 532-9170

TN Locksmith Licensing Program
Call Pat Smith at (615) 532-9170

Scammer locksmith steals California locksmith’s license

unlocks — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:10:44 +0000

California businessman who has 13 locksmith companies registered in his name in Colorado believes he is being victimized by someone who is using his name without his permission.

Omar Hammud, 30, of Irvine, Calif., said he recently became aware that someone is registering locksmith companies with phony addresses in his name in Colorado and several other states. The Beacon published a story on the locksmith companies in April.
Hammud says he isn’t sure who the person is or what the motive might be ¬ only that it’s hurting his image.
“I have nothing to do with Colorado,” Hammud said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “I never did anything outside of Irvine. I called the Colorado secretary of state and the (Colorado) attorney general and they say there’s nothing they can do.

“I even called the police and the FBI. They said there was nothing they could do either because no law had been broken.

“I was shocked when I found out what was happening. I really don’t know what to do.”

According to information available on the Colorado secretary of state’s Web site, someone using Hammud’s name registered 13 locksmith companies on June 17, 2009. The person left three addresses as a primary residence: two in Denver and one in Dunedin, Florida.

An Internet check on Wednesday confirmed that one Denver address is a Burger King restaurant. The other address is nonexistent. The Florida address belongs to a UPS mail-drop company.

In addition to the two phony primary residence addresses, the person using Hammud’s name also attempted in recent months to place the 13 companies,¬ all with phony addresses,¬ in a state phone directory listing service.

Sherry Wirtz, the owner of the Local Pages in Windsor, said she became suspicious last month when she was reviewing locksmith phone numbers she received from a list provided by Qwest.

“In a town our size, I knew we only had a couple locksmiths,” Wirtz said. “I looked at the phone numbers for the companies and they were almost all the same but for different places. I also knew that some of the addresses were residences.

“So, I called one. It was one of those message machines with a man who had a Middle Eastern sounding voice. He prompted you to either press 1, 2, or 3. When I hit 3, it disconnected.”

Wirtz checked with local locksmiths who agreed they had never heard of the businesses. Wirtz said she then decided to pull the businesses and not include them in her upcoming phone book.

“I’m not about to publish numbers for God knows who,” Wirtz said.

A random check Wednesday of several alleged Windsor locksmith businesses had the same automated message identifying the phone line as the Locksmith Emergency Line. The male voice had the same three prompts: press 1 to place an order, press 2 for customer service, or press 3 if it was a sales or marketing call. If 3 was pressed, the line disconnected immediately.
After pressing 1, a woman came on the line and said she was the dispatcher for K&D Locks in Denver. She said she could have a locksmith on site in Windsor in 30 minutes after she received some key information that included name and address.

A second call reached another Locksmith Emergency Line dispatcher who said she was in Texas but could have a locksmith in Windsor in 30 minutes.

Windsor police have been notified about the phony business addresses but say that there is little they can do since no law has been broken and no Windsor resident has filed a complaint.

Mike Saccone, the communications director for the Colorado attorney general, said Wednesday that locksmith misrepresentations are not uncommon in Colorado.
He agreed that in most instances no laws are broken. However, he pointed out that these companies could be in violation of some parts of the Consumer Protection Act.

He encouraged anyone with a question about this to contact the Colorado attorney general’s office.

Newest state of the union on locksmiths

unlocks — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 02:59:45 +0000

State Attorney General goes after fraudulent locksmith

Simply copy this address into your webrowser!

http://www.ksdk.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=47376221001#/State%20Attorney%20General%20goes%20after%20fraudulent%20locksmith%20co…/47376221001

All it takes for us to win is links, and then links from those links!

unlocks — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:17:02 +0000

Links are a virtual highway of roads to other roads that eventually lead somewhere. In my opinion Google has overdone themselves with all of the ads, pay per click, and all of the other projests of displaying the Googe logo on the page. I prefer the less ambitios sites such as Bing…you type in your quere and up cpmes a list,withuout all of the ads, and specials with advertisements from every walk of life.

deal with website calling Jeff Musser of 1-800-UNLOCKS a fraud. Finally the extortionists known for their deceptive “consumer site pay”

unlocks — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 05:55:31 +0000

Since 2003 Jeff Muser, founder of 1-800-UNLOCKS has been dealing with a controversial consumer complaint from a website for its empty accusations refering to the business as a fraud, and then attempting to defraud them of tens of thousands of dollars to write positive posts. It appears that the owner of the bogus consumer site has over 17 serious lawsuits ranging from the federal RICO acts to extortion to delamatory remarks that could not only break him financially but put him behind bars for a long time.