Hacker Cinema
Telemarketers
2023 · TV series · documentary · 1 season
Created by Sam Lipman-Stern
This docuseries chronicles the darkly comedic, unexpected 20-year journey of two unlikely office buddies, who stumble upon the murky truth behind the work they’ve been doing at a seedy New Jersey call center – persuading people to give money to charities – and vow to expose the crooked American telemarketing industry from within.
4 positive1 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
It cooled under Biden for me, but who am I to say. I wouldn’t be surprised if current admin stop prosecuting against the spam callers. Some times these outfits are connected to politicians. Have you seen the 3-part documentary, Telemarketers?
If you want to see a whole documentary that really outlines and emphasizes this point, the ‘Telemarketers’ documentary follows a few workers for a police lodge hotline that also keeps 90% of the revenue for themselves.
For an absolute wild docuseries about one of these related scams, check out Telemarketers on HBO.
This is a rampant industry in the US as well. The Telemarketers mini-series shows how these call centers operate, the scams they run, how police associations are involved, and how the government is basically complicit with what they're doing. This must be even easier and more profitable to operate from a more corrupt country with no regulations or law enforcement of these activities.
AI will make this industry even more successful. Telemarketers read from a script anyway, so it's only a matter of time until these scams are fully automated. We're starting to see some of this already, but it will be fully adopted in a few years.
Perhaps not as dramatic, but this is not uncommon.
HBO is right now running the documentary series Telemarketers, about a US operation that is clearly a fraud, but it's protected by corrupt and bribed police union management.