The Beekeeper (2024)
Large-Scale Tech Support Scam Disguised as a Call Center Preys on Elderly Victims to Fund a Presidential Campaign
The Beekeeper, the crime thriller about a former US government operative known as a Beekeeper now living the quiet life uncovers a fraud scheme that funded a presidential campaign. Adam Clay (Jason Statham), a former Beekeeper, now raises bees on a remote farm property in Springfield, Massachusetts owned by a retired educator, Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rishad).
In the opening scene, Ms. Parker accesses her laptop to perform her daily accounting activities when the computer screen prompts a warning notice that her hard drive has been infected with a virus and to call an 800 number immediately to ensure she does not lose her data. As Ms. Parker gets frustrated, she calls the number and is connected to a ‘Boyd’ at United Data Group. Unbeknownst to Ms. Parker, Boyd is really Mickey Garnett (David Witts) running a boiler room-style ‘call center’ focusing on stealing people’s money with a well-coordinated tech support scam. A tech support scam preys on the victim to trick them into believing the company is trying to help fix the virus issue, however, the scam is to remote desktop into the victim’s computer to access any and all information, including bank account details.
As Ms. Parker talks with Boyd, he expresses empathy with her about the situation and then engages in familiarity with the issue that the virus shield software was already pre-installed on her laptop and how she can fix it. However, the fix is complicated, requires physical travel, and threatens to delete all Ms. Parker’s data. As such, she agrees with Boyd’s suggestion to help as he can fix the problem remotely by steering her to ‘friendlyfriend.net,’ which features a legitimate looking homepage stating, ‘A Remote Desktop Solution That Makes Sense.’ Ms. Parker follows along to download the software to reinstall the virus shield, which is really providing remote access to her computer for his boiler-room team. Unfortunately, according to the FBI, the elderly are prime targets for tech support scams due to their increased age, lack of tech savvy, and the embarrassment of losing their data.
As Boyd keeps Ms. Parker on the line, the team combs through her accounts to identify she has $10k in checking, a life insurance annuity, a teacher’s pension, and that she is a signatory on a charity with an account balance of more than $2M. Boyd is elated and calls out to the boiler-room team to ‘let the strip mining begin.’ Subsequently, the team starts to overwhelm Ms. Parker with various windows opening and closing where she believes her computer is going ‘crazy.’ Again, Boyd expresses empathy and due to the inconvenience of this whole situation, he is going to credit back to Ms. Parker the subscription fees. Here, as part of the scam, the victim is overwhelmed and does not even realize they were never paying any subscription fee, however, the credit keeps the hook going to get her computer working normally.
To subvert Ms. Parker, Boyd states he’s going to credit her back $500 to her bank account ending ‘2020’ – the account of the charity with the $2M balance. Ms. Parker admits that is not her account, rather an account she manages, and she follows Boyd’s instructions to log into the charity account to verify the transfer. Now, much to her surprise, Ms. Parker sees a $50,000 transfer in the charity account, to which Boyd admits he made a huge mistake and he’s going to lose his job. Ms. Parker responds that she can send him back the money with a wire transfer, however, she will need to use a different password, which is ultimately the master password across all her accounts. Bank credentials are a key part of any scam.
She begins to doubt herself and believes its best to call the bank to confirm, however, Boyd applies subtle pressure that he is going to lose his job, and Ms. Parker is going to lose all her data, including all her cherished family photos. Once she enters the password, her computer screen goes blank and the phone call cuts, the video board in the boiler-room shows zero balances across all her accounts, and Boyd cheers Wolf of Wall Street-style on his theft. Once Ms. Parker’s computer comes back to life, she sees the zero balances and receives text message alerts on her mobile phone alerting to possible fraud on her accounts. She realizes she’s been scammed and lost all the money in her accounts.
That same night, Clay heads up to Ms. Parker’s house with some freshly jarred honey, where he notices that Ms. Parker committed suicide. While Ms. Parker’s daughter, an FBI agent, is initially suspicious of Clay, she realizes her mother was scammed, however, her contacts at the FBI cybercrimes revealed the fraud ring has been running for two years and they have no identities of the perpetrators. From there, Clay, the Beekeeper, goes all Transporter-like to reveal that the call center operation is the most profitable part of United Data Group, which is run by the youngish heir to a family fortune, and he uses the call center funds to fund his mother’s presidential election campaign.
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