Just spoke to a scammer!

[Nicola]

Was looking around on Google at some of the "dishonest" casinos out there and had a pop-up saying my computer was locked and I had to call this freephone 0800 number to unlock it. It was a fake web page made to look like a lock screen, amateurish to me, but could easily fool someone who didn't know what was happening!

So called the 0800 number from a voip phone and was connected within one second to a Indian gentleman who said "Thank you for calling Microsoft tech support". I went on to explain the lock screen and he told me to open another window (lol) and go to a web site so he could resolve the issue.

Having many old laptops around the office I chose a old Win7 one which I test games and is on it's last legs anyway! I downloaded a small file from the site he gave me and then he was instantly connected to my PC!

I was then transferred to a woman who was the "Senior Support Technician" who started explaining I had little security on my laptop. She started talking about antivirus that I could buy from "Microsoft" for £299 a year. At this point I was very interested, asked her for more information sounding as keen as possible!

While I was talking to the her, I could see someone deleting files from the computer, opening folders and changing settings. I calmly carried on chatting to the woman and wasted as much of her time as possible. In the end I decided to buy the THREE-YEAR plan of the anti-virus at the discount price of £599. She even offered to install it for me! Bargin!

I had to complete the order form my end in a window that she had opened, so filled it up with fake name and address. When we got to the credit card section, I put in one of the test (dummy) numbers we got from our merchant account at NatWest. The transaction kept getting declined but she kept trying and loaded up so many different forms!

After a hour (yes, a hour) I was transferred to her manager who was so rude. At this point, the game was up and they knew I was wasting their time!

The man I first spoke to completly ruined the computer deleting key files and adjusting system settings. The best thing about that was, it only takes 15 minutes to reinstall windows and it needed doing anyway!

What amazes me is, this was a large call centre. There were so many people talking in the background. Fraud on a epic scale. Having searched the 0800 number on Google, so many victims of this scam which has been going on years

Probably the most exciting 90 minutes I've had in months. Hopefully wasting the time on the phone I have saved some poor sod from buying whatever software they were flogging.

 

[philderby]

Really enjoyed reading that haha why not waste their time!
Every few weeks I receive a phone call telling me Ive been involved in an accident that wasnt my fault, so I agree and get transferred to an indian call centre for more details. They ask what happened and I laugh and say, well im surprised you heard about me and my mate steve joking around leaving the pub and I tripped over the curb?
They soon realise im wasting their time but they called me so why not just go along with it?

 

[bebo67]

Was looking around on Google at some of the "dishonest" casinos out there and had a pop-up saying my computer was locked and I had to call this freephone 0800 number to unlock it. It was a fake web page made to look like a lock screen, amateurish to me, but could easily fool someone who didn't know what was happening!

So called the 0800 number from a voip phone and was connected within one second to a Indian gentleman who said "Thank you for calling Microsoft tech support". I went on to explain the lock screen and he told me to open another window (lol) and go to a web site so he could resolve the issue.

Having many old laptops around the office I chose a old Win7 one which I test games and is on it's last legs anyway! I downloaded a small file from the site he gave me and then he was instantly connected to my PC!

I was then transferred to a woman who was the "Senior Support Technician" who started explaining I had little security on my laptop. She started talking about antivirus that I could buy from "Microsoft" for £299 a year. At this point I was very interested, asked her for more information sounding as keen as possible!

While I was talking to the her, I could see someone deleting files from the computer, opening folders and changing settings. I calmly carried on chatting to the woman and wasted as much of her time as possible. In the end I decided to buy the THREE-YEAR plan of the anti-virus at the discount price of £599. She even offered to install it for me! Bargin!

I had to complete the order form my end in a window that she had opened, so filled it up with fake name and address. When we got to the credit card section, I put in one of the test (dummy) numbers we got from our merchant account at NatWest. The transaction kept getting declined but she kept trying and loaded up so many different forms!

After a hour (yes, a hour) I was transferred to her manager who was so rude. At this point, the game was up and they knew I was wasting their time!

The man I first spoke to completly ruined the computer deleting key files and adjusting system settings. The best thing about that was, it only takes 15 minutes to reinstall windows and it needed doing anyway!

What amazes me is, this was a large call centre. There were so many people talking in the background. Fraud on a epic scale. Having searched the 0800 number on Google, so many victims of this scam which has been going on years

Probably the most exciting 90 minutes I've had in months. Hopefully wasting the time on the phone I have saved some poor sod from buying whatever software they were flogging.

That scam has been going on for a number of years here in Canada I'm glad that it was YOU that were able to waste that 90 minutes and not someone who was not computer literate.

 

[lockinlove]

Yeah that scam has being going on for many years here

 

[slotter999]

There is a person that runs a twitch channel that basically does the reverse scam on these guys and others. His name is Kitboga if interested - look him up on twitch / YouTube.

I wouldn't recommend doing this sort of thing yourself unless you're very tech savvy. By allowing an unknown person uncontrolled access to a system on your personal network you are potentially putting everything on that network at risk i.e. they might use your burner windows 7 laptop as a stepping stone to attack your router internally. Stay frosty

 

[Latina]

We get lots of those here too and they target the elderly and that really piss me off. My neighbor got $10K stolen from his bank account when a person rang him passing as his internet provider and got access not only to his computer but to his bank account, stealing money.
Some of these scam people called me passing as our Tax Office informing me that I owe them money and they would send me to jail if I didn't pay it. LOL
I record the conversations in my phone and let them talk, when they finish I say "You should feel ashamed of yourself!" "How can you live with yourself doing that to people?" "What would you mother think of you if she finds out what you are doing?" and bla bla bla Off course they hang up on me after that and I even got a FKU once from one of them. LOL

I don't want to offend anyone here so I will not mention the country but all the calls comes with that very clear country's accent that there is no way to miss. Since this scam started our government don't have that nationality on the phone anymore and all the people calling have a very good native English accent. They called me just last week and as soon as they said "We are from the Tax Office and we need you to confirm your details" I say.... Ok you have a very nice English accent but I am not telling you anything. LOL
So these days they register the call in their system so that you can ring them on the phone number from the government website and find out what they need from you.

The days to give details over the phone are over and we also must be careful checking the website before we add details there.
Got my credit card details stolen online just 2 weeks ago and its painful to get all those transactions disputed and canceling the credit card.

 

[RichyJ75]

Ha ha ha, of course Microsoft have your personal contact details to call you.....! Had a few if these, to which I respond that I have an Apple Mac computer and ask them if Microsoft are compatible. Of course they say yes! Other times I ask which computer are they talking about as we have 5 of them, or I ask them to call back on a different number which is nearer to the computer and give them contact details for the local police station! My missus has the best reply by blowing a whistle down the phone as loud as possible - should bugger up their headset and ear for their next call!

 

[cj1990]

Was looking around on Google at some of the "dishonest" casinos out there and had a pop-up saying my computer was locked and I had to call this freephone 0800 number to unlock it. It was a fake web page made to look like a lock screen, amateurish to me, but could easily fool someone who didn't know what was happening!

So called the 0800 number from a voip phone and was connected within one second to a Indian gentleman who said "Thank you for calling Microsoft tech support". I went on to explain the lock screen and he told me to open another window (lol) and go to a web site so he could resolve the issue.

Having many old laptops around the office I chose a old Win7 one which I test games and is on it's last legs anyway! I downloaded a small file from the site he gave me and then he was instantly connected to my PC!

I was then transferred to a woman who was the "Senior Support Technician" who started explaining I had little security on my laptop. She started talking about antivirus that I could buy from "Microsoft" for £299 a year. At this point I was very interested, asked her for more information sounding as keen as possible!

While I was talking to the her, I could see someone deleting files from the computer, opening folders and changing settings. I calmly carried on chatting to the woman and wasted as much of her time as possible. In the end I decided to buy the THREE-YEAR plan of the anti-virus at the discount price of £599. She even offered to install it for me! Bargin!

I had to complete the order form my end in a window that she had opened, so filled it up with fake name and address. When we got to the credit card section, I put in one of the test (dummy) numbers we got from our merchant account at NatWest. The transaction kept getting declined but she kept trying and loaded up so many different forms!

After a hour (yes, a hour) I was transferred to her manager who was so rude. At this point, the game was up and they knew I was wasting their time!

The man I first spoke to completly ruined the computer deleting key files and adjusting system settings. The best thing about that was, it only takes 15 minutes to reinstall windows and it needed doing anyway!

What amazes me is, this was a large call centre. There were so many people talking in the background. Fraud on a epic scale. Having searched the 0800 number on Google, so many victims of this scam which has been going on years

Probably the most exciting 90 minutes I've had in months. Hopefully wasting the time on the phone I have saved some poor sod from buying whatever software they were flogging.

Care to share the number? Love messing with these guys. It's fairly easy to screw with these guys using a virtual machine, even better when you run linux and they have no idea what they are doing. Lately what has been happening is the remote support companies like TeamViewer and other products have been warning customers before known scammer IDs connect to victim PCs. If you wrote down that ID they told you to connect to it would be quite useful. To Circumvent these messages attackers are forcing their Victims to connect to the scammer PC's and then switch sides. Anyways good job wasting some time, you might just have saved some 90 year old elderly person from getting scammed their pension.

 

[dunover]

Look, can any of you people help me? My uncle works in the Oil Ministry and has asked if I can facilitate the transfer of approximately 12.3m USD for which I need a third party account holder to transfer the funds to and to whom 10% will be paid as an arrangement fee......

 

[eizei]

There are loads of vids on youtube of people doing this as a hobby. One particularly funny one was when a guy managed phish the scammer's email & bank info and went to town refunding payments made to the scammer's account totalling tens of thousands of dollars. Like others said you should be extra careful though. I wouldn't recommend letting a scammer connect to anything but a virtual machine and you probably have to hide the fact it's a VM if you don't want the jig to be up immediately.

 

[goatwack]

 

[lotusch]

They still do this scam? Must still make loads of money for them..
It is already so old and people should know by now it is a scam, so much written about it.

 

[lotusch]

Look, can any of you people help me? My uncle works in the Oil Ministry and has asked if I can facilitate the transfer of approximately 12.3m USD for which I need a third party account holder to transfer the funds to and to whom 10% will be paid as an arrangement fee......

But first you have to pay me $1100 for me to be able to release the funds and arrange the necessary paperwork.
Was e-mailing with one of these a few years ago for fun (scambaiting, gotta love it) and kept telling him to deduct the $1100 from the money I would receive..It drove him nuts..

 

[mack341]

I miss the scam emails, they were always good for an unintentinal chuckle

 

[Alsetly]

love this! well done! there are some great books where folks do this as a living, i'll find out the name of the one i read and get it over to you all

 

[mack341]

love this! well done! there are some great books where folks do this as a living, i'll find out the name of the one i read and get it over to you all

I think I would enjoy reading something on scams, these merchants must live on another planet, what goes through their heads when they compose these emails, they read it back to themselves nod sagely and say 'yes this is convincing, no one will be suspicious when they receive this out of the blue' or perhaps they just hope they get lucky and somebody not in control of their full faculties [but who has a bank account] receives it.

 

[Casinomeister]

I get these in Germany. I can see the +44 or some weird 800 number, and they immediate start speaking in English. I try to keep them on the phone as long as possible since they are paying for a long distance call. Either I repeat everything they say back to them in an alarming way, or start talking about Jesus and the upcoming rapture. "Have you heard the word? The bird is the word." They hang up after about a minute.

 

[Alsetly]

I think I would enjoy reading something on scams, these merchants must live on another planet, what goes through their heads when they compose these emails, they read it back to themselves nod sagely and say 'yes this is convincing, no one will be suspicious when they receive this out of the blue' or perhaps they just hope they get lucky and somebody not in control of their full faculties [but who has a bank account] receives it.

check out delete this at your peril and letters from a nut (this isn't about scams, just crazy letters) both crazy funny books

 

[Janek12]

I think I would enjoy reading something on scams, these merchants must live on another planet, what goes through their heads when they compose these emails, they read it back to themselves nod sagely and say 'yes this is convincing, no one will be suspicious when they receive this out of the blue' or perhaps they just hope they get lucky and somebody not in control of their full faculties [but who has a bank account] receives it.

They write such e-mails stupidly on purpose and they also put grammar errors in these e-mails on purpose - it is brilliant, actually, because in this way they eliminate the smarter people who see right through this. And unless these smarter people scambait them, the writers of such letters achieve a much greater efficiency by effectively reaching and achieving response from only those people with whom there is a realistic chance that they are naive enough (or uneducated enough or just with a threshold IQ, etc.) to follow through with this and to eventually send some money to the scammer.

 

[mack341]

They write such e-mails stupidly on purpose and they also put grammar errors in these e-mails on purpose - it is brilliant, actually, because in this way they eliminate the smarter people who see right through this. And unless these smarter people scambait them, the writers of such letters achieve a much greater efficiency by effectively reaching and achieving response from only those people with whom there is a realistic chance that they are naive enough (or uneducated enough or just with a threshold IQ, etc.) to follow through with this and to eventually send some money to the scammer.

I never knew they did the mistakes on purpose, I did wonder once how come they are clever enough to do virus attachments, dodgy bank accounts etc.. yet couldn't write an email without simple errors. Right it makes sense though, its kind of a reverse filter/screen, they don't want to reel in too many smarter people as ultimately they won't be duped and it will time wasted.