My sister saved a Deaf/mute couple!!

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 10 Mar 2009 Posts: 20

hey everyone!! omg the best thing happened to my sister today!

so she works in an establishment that has a western union office. and she does western union transactions. well this deaf/mute couple came in and wanted to send money to someone offering them a laptop. well she noticed it right away when she saw the country (regretably Nirgeria) and the person had 2 first names (D4rrin K3n).

well she saw the e-mails because they gave them to her to get the receivers information. she saw it was a classic scam letter!.. well skipping the details (it took 1/2 hour to convince the couple that it was a scam and to look into it more so they went home and got a phone number.. the whole thing took like 3 hours with wetsern union on the phone and stuff and people involved)...

well she got the phone number from the couple that the scammer gave to them and a person from the store tried to call it and it didn't work.

so yea the couple went home with their money ^_^ and my sis gave them this website for them to read up on scamming so it doesn't happen to them again.

p.s. if you are just visiting this site and you know anything about this in real life and are connected to my sister, me and anyone at her workplace in any way please protect our and everyone's identities!!...

my sister felt to great today for saving this couple! she was so surprised that it was happening right before her eyes and that she stopped it!

I am so glad that i found this place and told her about it and got her to read some scambaits so she knew what to look for!

i am so glad ^_^. 1 <3 my sister!! the hero of the day!!!!

Elite Baiter Joined: 01 Oct 2008 Posts: 1192

That's awesome!!!! She gets a big BOOYAH from the good rev!!

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 3:16 am

That is a GREAT story on a rather dismal day. I hope that the lad just wonders why he never got his money. I do hope they stay away from he lad and offers that are too good to be true!

Thumbs up

Not quite a Newb Joined: 10 Mar 2009 Posts: 20

yea i really hope that they will watch out for this kind of thing again..

you know my sis also told me that they were contacted by this person on facebook in a community.... :S i really hope that no one else in it will be scammed.. makes me feel sad just thinking about it..

bad bad lowlife scammers for doing this! grr. Smile

hope they spread the word to the people in their community about it too Smile

that'd be great Smile

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 7:33 am

I like to read these stories, great yob Thumbs up

Makes you wonder. If every employee who works at WU or MG did this most of the lads would be out of money soon. Very Happy

But it is sad to realize that a lot of them know about the scams but don't care.

419Eater is my life Joined: 25 Feb 2009 Posts: 299

Excellent! I hope that everybody who works in Western Union is as well-informed as your sister about the 419 scams.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Apr 2008 Posts: 1301

Agree with all previously said. It is good to hear that your sister was able to stop one of these scumbags getting money off of vulnerable people. Please pass on all our thanks to her.

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 10:43 am

lareneg wrote:

Excellent! I hope that everybody who works in Western Union is as well-informed as your sister about the 419 scams.

I hope not.. that would mean they really don't care...
If they were uninformed something might be done by informing them, but if indeed they know but don't care it's really a lost cause and it's up to us to balance the Karmic scales...

419Eater is my life Joined: 25 Feb 2009 Posts: 299

No need to quote the post that's just right here ^^ -- JMR

Fair enough. Let's just give the lads extra hell Wink

Not quite a Newb Joined: 10 Mar 2009 Posts: 20

well my sis doesn't work at WU though.. her store she works at has a WU service and she does transactions for people there along with a whole lot of other things.

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:46 pm

You can understand how it happens, and in this case the person spent over 3 hours of their time (which could get a person sacked) and was turning away money, so the pressure is on not to do the right thing - so it took courage, patience and a caring heart.

Scammers particularly feed on the disabled, as they are easier prey for them and are less likely to be able to find and get help, and may more easily fall for the attention they get from this scum.

I'd like to be more evil to Lads, but I'm running in the red zone already. Laughing

Posted: Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:47 pm

Well done to your sister!

I'd really like to talk with a WU franchisee about the rules and guidelines they are given by WU, and specifically about the clawback laws concerning credit cards and illegal payments (who bears the burden? WU, the franchise that accepted the payment, the one that gave the cash, shared, who?). If anyone knows one, put me in touch please.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 10 Mar 2009 Posts: 20

GomerPyle wrote:

You can understand how it happens, and in this case the person spent over 3 hours of their time (which could get a person sacked) and was turning away money, so the pressure is on not to do the right thing - so it took courage, patience and a caring heart.

Scammers particularly feed on the disabled, as they are easier prey for them and are less likely to be able to find and get help, and may more easily fall for the attention they get from this scum.

I'd like to be more evil to Lads, but I'm running in the red zone already. Laughing

yea she told me that she was in "wow mode" like shocked this was happening the whole time.

by the way she had the higher up managers informed so it was ok Smile

. she might actually get some recognition at work for stopping that scam. the place she works at gave recognition to someone before who helped stop a credit card scam.

yea it was a good thing she wasn't alone and there were other people who do her job too so that she could spend those 3 hours helping these people and sorting it all out.

yea it floors me how people can prey on innocent and even disabled people just to get money.. gawd. they should get a job losers!! <-@ scammers Razz

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1440

Kudos to your sister for putting such effort into helping strangers.

Most people would shrug and say "Not my problem."

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 3:21 am

BlueTwilight,

..... "the kindness of strangers" Very Happy

What a great job your sister did!

They must have given her the (disconnected) phone no. from one of the scammers emails. Is it possible to get the email address?? A whole lot of us could then have a whole lot of fun with him.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 10 Mar 2009 Posts: 20

ya i would have liked to get the e-mail too.. but i think it's beyond our reach now Sad

.. maybe someone should join the community on facebook or at least look for it and maybe could find the scammer?

Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:22 pm

manbiteslion wrote:

I'd really like to talk with a WU franchisee about the rules and guidelines they are given by WU, and specifically about the clawback laws concerning credit cards and illegal payments (who bears the burden? WU, the franchise that accepted the payment, the one that gave the cash, shared, who?). If anyone knows one, put me in touch please.

I've read up on the WU site and bent the ear of a few customer support people at WU. They have a phone number you can call and they seemed okay with answering questions a couple of years ago. It was toll free and that might serve as a better source than my years-old answers and formed impressions.

Clawbacks don't apply is the way I understand it. You can only "clawback" money for an unauthorized charge or a seller who did not provide the service/merchandise they agreed to provide for your money. The sender is asking for cash to be made available elsewhere. If it is, WU did what you asked, no clawback. If the receiver scams you, the credit card consumer protection does not apply. You did not engage in a credit card transaction directly with that person. The scammer was not a merchant with a merchant account who accepted the CC directly. The official issuer response will be "Tough crap. You paid WU to transfer money with our credit card. They did just that. What the receiver did with that is not our problem. Fraud claim denied."

Unless your card was stolen, presented in person at the WU counter or used online to send a transaction, you're going to have a hard time proving fraud in the actual CC transaction, because there was none. From the issuer point of view, it's like trying to take the charge for stamps at the local post office off your bill because you used them to send off for a cool pair of X-ray glasses in the back of the comics that didn't work. Seeing as most senders won't bother researching this before they pop off and tell the credit card issuer what really happened, I doubt clawbacks are much of an issue. If you're a really good customer, the CC issuer might eat the expense to keep you as a customer, but I don't think they're in any way obligated to do so. The merchant certainly wouldn't be responsible.

If you send money and get sender's regret before it's picked up, you can cancel and get back the transfer but not the non-refundable fees.

And what would you mean by an "illegal payment"? Aside from making sure they don't fail to document transactions that are of a sufficient size to fall under money laundering laws, (which used to be > $10,000, not sure what the trigger is now) it's not WU's business why you're sending cash or to whom you're sending cash.

I've brought this up in several threads on the subject, but I get the impression that most people sending WU transactions are not direct WU employees. Expecting them to be better trained at spotting fraud than the public at large is probably unrealistic. They're more likely the assistant manager or the bagger or the cashier at the local Piggly Wiggy that happens to have a terminal to bring in a little extra income.

Our "local WU" is all of a foot and a half at the local Kroger Customer Service counter. The lady generally working there evenings when I'm there is fab at her job, but I think it might be a bit much to ask her to not only handle the cigarette sales, lottery tickets, money orders, stamps, overseeing the cashiers, returns, rainchecks, customer inquiries, phone calls, monitoring the need for baggers and stockers, problems at checkout, refilling and balancing the cash drawers plus being an expert in all manner of 419 fraud/victim educator on top of that.

I've seen one transfer go through, and again, this is just my impression, it appears to be a "ask question, enter answer, follow prompts on screen" thing. Press here, have customer sign form A... Yes, you could install the tech to make the whoop-whoop noises when a high risk country like Nigeria pops up as a receiver country, but what then? There's a world of difference in educating someone about a bogus laptop sale versus an inheritance scam versus a lottery scam versus an overpayment scam.

And on the original point, awesome news. Buy your sister some chocolate.

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