Alan Rocks!

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Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 10:55 pm

My lad gave me the bank details of his "broker" in Hong Kong last week to pay the fees to, so I sent it off to Alan and meanwhile carried on with my bait. I strung him along for a week and finally got to the point yesterday where I told him I would do the transfer today (Thur). Today I got an email from my lad telling me to send the money to a different account, the same day that I "sent" the money to his (obviously closed) account! How perfect is that!!

So, I've sent off his new account details to Alan... rinse and repeat!

I'm going to enjoy this slapping session Laughing

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 10:04 am

Having an almost similar experience the past couple of weeks, I have pondered over what happens when an account is closed. Are any funds therein frozen and/or confiscated, or is the account just blocked for a period of time? Can the owner access balance details if it is closed?
Not being a US citizen, I am startled at the apparent ease with which these lads can arrange an alternative account in the US.
It would be interesting to have an expert supply some comment on the ramifications of an account being closed.
These queries are posed in the context of accounts that are obviously conduits for fraudulently obtained funds. I realise a wider context would be far more complex, and innappropriate for this forum.
That said, Alan does a terrific job getting these closed in a timely manner.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

It's quite simple for a lad to get an anonymous bank account in the US. He doesn't need identification, a USA address or anything. All he needs is a job scam format. The victim of the job scam receives funds into their USA bank account and sends them to the lad by WU.

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 12:34 pm

@thud419

Interesting, I've never heard of a job scam so I've just read up on it. One thing that puzzles me is why do they go to the trouble of doing a job scam to get an account then telling the 419 victim to wire the money and then get the job scam victim to WU it... seems like twice the effort when they can just get the 419 victim to WU it direct in the first place and not bother going through a bank account? I'm always quite disappointed when they deprive me of the chance to send them to 1TV5 Laughing

@Afferbecklauder

Good question, I would be interested in an expert's comments on this too. The 3 accounts I've passed on have been in Hong Kong and Taiwan, it seems to be a hotspot area for this type of thing - Hong Kong is mentioned specifically in this sticky. I will offer a complete guess on what happens: I would imagine the bank freezes the account and if the lad wants his money he'll have to convince the police to give it to him, but I doubt if he would dare to even contact the bank about it once it's closed. That's if the account even belongs to him in the first place, if it's a job scam.

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 5:45 pm

First of all i don't believe you deal with a lads bank account, more likely a victim, probably job scam indeed (money mule), as people tend to trust a bank account, in contrary to WU. If your average mule doesn't send the cash, pity, then the lad takes another. If your mule gets burned by Leo Law Enforcement Officers , too bad, but WU isn't trackable. So it adds a safety barrier for them, and a way to trace victims for us. I suppose Alan gets the account closed, the victim runs to the bank, and hears the full story. If he's lucky, he won't end up in jail.
I might be wrong on all this, but it's just my idea of how things go

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 8:27 pm

Okay, this is a first for me. After a long session with McDuck and a refusal to call Bevis, my guy sends me his bank info. So do I just take that e-mail (headers and all) and forward to Alan? Does Alan need anything else to get it shut down? I plan to stall on the transfer so that by the time it supposedly goes through hopefully Alan has it shut down and we can lather rinse repeat.

The Man

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 9:26 pm

Alan needs some prove that there is indeed fraud involved. Just sending a mail with "Send 2000$ to account XYZ" is not enough.

I've sent him mails that showed the reason why I need to send money.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Send enough evidence to him to prove a fraud is taking place. To protect the anonymity of his sources, ie you, he will not reply, so you need to prove your case in one go. (It doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm sure he knows lots better than me.)

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 10:58 pm

Just to try and make it quite clear ...when you report bank details to Alan it doesn't necessarily mean that the bank account will be shuttered; the account details may belong to an innocent victim that has been roped in as part of another scam.

A bank won't close an account just because you have seen the details mentioned in a scam mail.

A bank will, and have to, investigate the account thoroughly and act accordingly.

Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 11:55 pm

Finbarr Saunders wrote:

One thing that puzzles me is why do they go to the trouble of doing a job scam to get an account then telling the 419 victim to wire the money and then get the job scam victim to WU it... seems like twice the effort when they can just get the 419 victim to WU it direct in the first place and not bother going through a bank account?

Ethian is right on here. In this case, the scammer uses a mule to make the original victim(s) believe in the scam. People that might twig if asked to send funds via western union to Nigeria or Russia will often trust that a bank transfer, especially to someone in their own country or the country the lad claims to be in, is traceable and therefore the "transaction" is real.

Job scams run a few different ways, and the same mule will sometimes be used to cash fake cheques, reship goods bought with stolen CC info, and also receive payments from other victims. Keep in mind that a cheque mule victim has an expiration date from the get-go, as its only a matter of time before the scam falls apart and the bank (or the Law) comes after them. Scammers know this, and want to get as much out of a mule as they can before it goes all pear shaped. We often joke about the "stupidity" of the average lad, but some are quite sophisticated when it comes to keeping the money moving, and none of them give a damn what happens to their victims.

That said, it doesn't really matter if the bank accounts reported to Alan belong to mules or to criminals. The evidence we send is enough to get the banking authorities to investigate and see if there is a reason to act. If the account belongs to a criminal, it may well be closed and the appropriate action taken. If it belongs to a mule, the sooner they find out what is happening, the less trouble they will be in. Better they get a wake up call before they cash that $10,000 fake cheque and send the money off to their "company" than they wind up heavily in debt that will take years to pay off, or worse, in prison for being an accomplice to a 419 scam.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 12:43 am

Thanks SF that's very interesting.

@The Man - one thing to note is that Alan doesn't like attachments, the first one I sent he wrote back and asked me to send only normal text in future. All I've been sending him is the email (with headers) showing the banking details, maybe I'll start giving more info now though.