Whos fault is it? The criminals or Western Union

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 19 Dec 2012 Posts: 24

I know that a lot of these scammers use Western Union and Money Gram because it is hard to trace where the money is sent to, but I ask myself is this the fault of the criminals or of the companies?

Shouldn't Western Union and Money Gram acknowledge that scammers try and use their services for scams and that they should change how the company runs to eliminate such scams.

Or do these companies want scammers to use their services because they gain a profit from it? If hundreds of thousands of dollars are sent by Western Union and Money Gram each year from scams then these companies might actually be gaining a profit from this.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

It's not Western Union and Money Gram's fault, any more than it is Yahoo email or Craigslist's fault. The fault of the crime is solely on the criminal. These are legitimate services abused by scammers. Western Union is well aware of scammers and their tactics and have a ton of anti scam information. They continually update and have warnings on printed signs and even on some of their forms. I've also heard many stories of victims trying to send money and either being warned by Western Union or the Western Union clerk refused to let them wire it.
They make much more profit from legitimate use of their services than scams.
I'm absolutely certain that with no WU or MG available, scammers would just use another way. They find and exploit every single method they can.

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 6:14 am

Ima pretty much summed it up, but as a side note:

In real life, I live on an island that has a large Polynesian, Micronesian, and Filipino population. I very often see some of these people in stores using Western Union or Money Gram to send money home to their families, as it's a common and an easy way to transfer money out of the country. Just the other day I overheard a clerk asking someone who was legitimately sending money home to a family member whether they knew the person they were sending money to, and if they had been contacted by someone they met online and asked to send money.

Obviously the scammers are still going to convince people to use these services and money is still going to be sent, but I think the services know there is a problem and are doing what they can. Especially if they're even trying on an island in the middle of nowhere like I'm at.

Millions of legitimate transfers are made with these services, and as Ima has already said, if they weren't around the scammers would find another tactic anyway. It would just be an inconvenience to legitimate users.

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:12 am

It's true to say that Lads will exploit any system or service whether it be a bank of the deaf phone service.

One interesting development I have noticed in the UK is Lads coming to court who are described as operating money transmission services without naming any company. I suspect that they may have set themselves up as WU agents and then facilitated the receipt of money from victims, as some of the stories have noted that they have been found to be holding multiple sets of identity documents.

Baiting Guru Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Posts: 5905

As already mentioned for people who live far away from families they are trying to support WU and MG offer an invaluable service. I live in a city with a large 1st, 2nd & 3rd generation immigrant population and as such in the areas of the city they populate you can hardly walk past a corner shop (the English version of a Convenience Store) without seeing a WU or MG sign, I've seen some shops that offer both.

They use these services because they need to get money to their families quickly to an area of the world where they may have family members who don't have a passport, a driving licence or even a bank account. Which is why WU & MG use test question and answer to eliminate this need. If you add extra security features it will inconvenience hundreds of thousands if not millions of customers.

Having said that I'm sure there are isolated problems as WU & MG operate as a franchise and anyone with a shop can apply to sell their services. I have seen some clerks taking the issues facing WU very seriously asking the customer politely the nature of their transaction and who they are sending money to where as I'm sure other cashiers wont give a fig who is sending what where.

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:52 am

I used to feel that WU and MG had at least some measure of culpability in all this...that the very ease of wiring money makes it inevitable that it will be exploited, so if they either didn't exist, or did more to prevent money being sent to scammers, then these scams simply wouldn't happen.

But I don't feel that way anymore. As Ima and others pointed out, there is a very real need for this type of service. If it didn't exist at all, it would pose a terrible hardship on people who don't have the resources some of us have to get money to family members who need it. And if these types of services exist at all (which they must, to serve the people who need them), then scammers will find a way to exploit them.

And I no longer feel they don't try hard enough to stop scams. I recently had to wire some money to my son, who is in the Army (long story why...it wasn't a normal situation and he needed the money fast). I used a local MG, and holy COW did I have to work hard to convince the nice lady there that I wasn't being scammed! I ended up having to show her a photo of my son, and even tell her a little about my former scambaiting activities so she'd believe me that I knew what I was doing. I didn't mind a bit - in fact I felt better knowing that they are working so hard to make sure nobody gets scammed.

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 6:25 am

hehe, yeah it's good to hear that they actually asked you if you knew the person you were sending money to.

I also used to think they were only for suspicious activities as well - as I used to do a bit of scam baiting a few years ago and had never heard of WU or MG other than through scams. Last year I was in Thailand on my honeymoon and my both of our bank cards were chewed up by an ATM - so we had to do an emergency VISA transfer where they wire money to you via WU and I was very pleased with the ease of use in doing so (we had to do this twice while we were there). Of course they wanted to see every form of ID we had and I had to tell them everything about us and why we were there, so I was happy with the security.

Having said that though, I get the feeling that some of the agents who handle WU withdrawls in some countries can be a little "lenient" on mugus who go to pick up payments and not necessarily require a reasonable amount of identification - maybe some of them get a kickback from successful scams.

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 3:37 pm

ATM machines take a photo of each transaction. Would it take too much resources to require the same for Money Gram and Western Union? A case could be quickly built against an individual if every fraud case has a photo and LOCATION of each completed fraud transaction. Sending money to a family member would be no problem at all. Those who make a living scamming would stick out in a database. A stakeout or bait could end the crime wave much like bait cars do. I think WU and MG are negligent in this regard and are guilty of enabling the crime. This is not a new crime and steps could have been taken to eliminate it long ago.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

I'm curious if any of the members who are so quick to blame Western Union have looked into what WU is actually doing to try to help curb the abuse, and prevent success of scammers?

Have you seen this: http://www.westernunion.com/us/security-center
this: http://www.westernunion.com/sites/us/consumer-protection/ConsumerProtection.page
or this? http://denver.cbslocal.com/2012/09/21/western-union-working-to-stop-scammers/
Do you help WU stay on top of current scams by reporting anything to them, as they request?
I do, and have talked to people from their security/fraud dept several times on the phone. They are doing what they can, while making sure the service they provide is still usable by others in the vein that it is needed. If they add the stricter security that seems to be being advocated, how are people going to send money in an emergency? We're talking about a HUGE company with franchises world-wide.

As I said in my first post - the fault of the crime lies solely on the criminal. WU, just like Email, voip, and other services such as internet providers, are all legitimate services being ABUSED by criminals.

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

Agent1002 wrote:

I think WU and MG are negligent in this regard and are guilty of enabling the crime.

I'll reply by simply re-posting a quote from jose_cuervo from over two years ago. Wink

jose_cuervo wrote:

***WESTERN UNION IS A SERVICE THAT SCAMMERS ABUSE.***

WU is a legitimate service that is abused by scammers. Other services that the scammers abuse include, but are not limited to; MoneyGram, TDD/TTY services, the US/UK postal service et al, UPS, Fed Ex, DHL and every single free webmail provider past, present and future.

Western Union is a business, like all businesses, their goal is to make a profit, not to make decisions for their customers or get involved in every aspect of their customers personal affairs. They are aware that the scammers use their service and have even taken the initiative to provide warnings on their website. To my knowledge they are under no legal obligation to do so.

I have gone through the effort to provide some links and PDFs from Western Union's website that clearly addresses specific scams and specific types of scams and even what one should do if they suspect that they may be involved in a scam. I would highly suggest that you read them very thoroughly before making another libelous public post about a very large corporation which you very obviously know nothing about other than what you have read, were told, or have heard, from other equally uninformed sources.

http://www.westernunion.com/info/fraudIndex.asp?country=global
http://www.westernunion.com/info/fraudProtectYourself.asp?country=global
http://www.westernunion.com/info/fraudProtectYourPassword.asp?country=global
http://www.westernunion.com/info/fraudScams.asp?country=global
http://www.westernunion.com/info/fraudTips.asp?country=global

http://members.419eater.com/~jose_cuervo/western_union/wu_pdf1.pdf
http://members.419eater.com/~jose_cuervo/western_union/wu_pdf2.pdf
http://members.419eater.com/~jose_cuervo/western_union/wu_pdf3.pdf

If you have any evidence of Western Union or its employees' direct involvement in advance fee fraud, you may post it here to support previous statements. Failing that, please either submit it to the proper authorities in the appropriate jurisdictions (IE Law Enforcement) or write a letter to Western Union's complaint department, corporate headquarters, sponsors etc, but do not make unsupportable claims of fraud on this forum based upon opinions and conjecture.

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 6:27 pm

Is this customer appeasement or do they enter the receiver's name in a do not pay database to prevent the scam?

Thanks for the links. I did not know they were very active on this. I'll keep the [email protected] in my contacts to forward any and all WU scam requests. If it prevents any transfers, it is a job well done. Has anyone seen any transactions stopped by this reporting?

Baiting Guru Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 18313

I'm not sure what you mean by customer appeasement. Do you mean the info sent to the reporting address, and whether they do anything with it or not?
I don't imagine they keep any sort of database of all of the sender names as it would be rather useless - scammers change names very often and there are thousands and thousands of them, some of which are impersonations or the same as the names of innocent people.

You're welcome for the links. From what I've seen, they are doing way more to try to curb scams than many of the other services that are also being abused. When I talked to people in their fraud dept, they were very knowledgeable about all of that which we know, which is rare outside of our circles.

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 11:49 pm

I have two real life experiences with Western Union:

1 - I sent money to my Sister who had absolutely everything stolen from her in Paris by a gang of you know what's. It worked and she could afford to eat/drink/live on her honeymoon.

2 - A kindly Western Union employee stopped my Mother from sending $5,000 to a Scammer.

Both worked out rather well in my opinion!

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 6:13 am

If you get to the WU payment stage with many scammers, they will instruct you to tell the WU employee that you are sending the money to a family member. Some go so far as to claim that the fees will be much higher if you don't tell the clerk it is for family. Why do they keep doing this? Because they have lost several payments when a customer gave a WU clerk an honest answer to the question about why they were sending the money.

There are corrupt WU and moneygram agents, just as there are corrupt bankers, store clerks, and everything else. But as corporations, both have grown and changed tremendously. Granted, pressure from the government and some pretty severe fines may have helped, but they have made huge efforts.

Many of us have seen firsthand where WU and/or MG did in fact take additional measures. Two real-life examples:

The Vasseurs, the mother-daughter mules who were indicted earlier this year: If you look at the actual indictment, you will see they used a variety of names, even fake ID's, for collecting money from WU and Moneygram. Tracy even used her kids and others. They were also driving to other towns, sometimes significant distances, to use different locations. Why? Because both WU and MG had flagged them, and both were refusing to let them pick up money under their own names.

A romance victim I dealt with a couple years ago on scamwarners, who is unfortunately also a perfect example of just how irrational a hooked victim can become:
This woman fell for a fake "Jeffrey Remington" in a textbook military scam. She sent money twice to her scammer (unfortunately quite a bit of it too.)
The third time she went back to WU, she set off a flag. Not only did they warn her, but they refused to let her send the money without additional verification.

Unfortunately, it didn't end there. Instead of taking their advice, she followed her "fiance's" instructions: Cut the center out of a bible, stuff it with cash, and send it to him!

That particular victim was interviewed by a local news station, who ran a 2 part feature story on romance scams.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjBcgexKj38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dwchKFRO_Y

Baiting Guru Joined: 17 Sep 2006 Posts: 5905

Upon returning to baiting last year I have to say I noticed that these days there are more lads using Western Union/Moneygram mules to pick up payments for them in North American and Europe than there used to be. Three years ago this wasn't the case so it seems it has become harder for lads to pick up their ill gotten gains.

Maxpwr wrote:

Having said that though, I get the feeling that some of the agents who handle WU withdrawls in some countries can be a little "lenient" on mugus who go to pick up payments and not necessarily require a reasonable amount of identification - maybe some of them get a kickback from successful scams.

Yes they do it is documented in Chidi Igwe's Taking Back Nigeria from 419. Lads do try to chum up with local WU/MG agents for obvious reasons.

I try to read Western Union notices whenever I can to see what they are doing and it appears most stores now require ID for the receiver to pick up. I find this a little strange because I thought the whole idea of the test question and answer was to substitute the need for ID so people can receive money if their money and ID documents have been stolen? Surely this is losing WU potentially legitimate revenue?

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jun 2011 Posts: 1066

I've used WU a few times and I can say with certainty that it's the criminals' fault. The sheer third degree I got when my boss wired a few hundred to me because my office needed petty cash to get through the weekend... Sheesh. And yes, they even took my picture. Of course, I was happy to oblige because I understand the necessity for such measures.

ut yeah, Western Union is definitely doing what it can to stop scammers from abusing it's service. Unfortunately, as with most large companies, bureaucracies, and other similar entities, corruption amongst low level employees can be an issue. That's life in an unfortunately corrupt world.

Elite Baiter Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 1440

Many people's families can't stop them from sending every penny they have to Nigeria, so for sure WU clerks can't stop them.

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 4:56 pm

Excellent point.

Anyone who spends time at scamwarners has undoubtedly seen the frustration of many family members and friends who just can't get a victim to face reality. Some have even had the police in to talk to the victim, to no avail.

We can't realistically expect a business like WU to be responsible for these victims. And even if wu refused, some victims are so hooked they will find another way to send that money.

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 12:31 am

Western Union is awful.

I was trying to send 5000 dollars to the barrister who had my long lost uncle's consignment box to pay for the diplomatic certificate and the damned Western Union employee in Ghana tacked on a 2000 dollar international barrister transfer surcharge! His name was Godswill Mboko.

Criminals all of them!

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