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Master Baiter Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 130

I�m sure this has been brought up before, but the contents of my question make a search a daunting task to say the least. Searching WU and scam on here brings up a lot of results for some reason! Shocked

It would appear to me that WU has little or no interest in deterring fraud even though their product(s) seem to facilitate a large percentage of what we are fighting. Obviously they are aware of the problem and posted a vein attempt at some due diligence with various blurbs and postings regarding protecting yourself from fraud, and even go into some detail about Nigerian/419 scams.

I suppose I�m maybe missing something , but regardless of the angle I take I have a hard time understanding their position which (appears) to be unwilling (or unable?) to do anything about. How difficult would it be to put some additional customer safeguards in place such as; some type of �hold� mechanism if a transfer is picked up in a location other than what is listed on the senders form, and particularly if the location attempting to collect is in a �scam-prevalent� region ?

What about providing first-time customers with a questionnaire and/or information sheets to alert the sender of the potential for fraud based on the transaction(s) they are about to partake in. This is not and invasion of privacy, and certainly can�t hurt WU�s long-term customer base. How many current �customers� will ever return as a WU customer if their products were used as the vehicle to bilk them out of money? Again, I�m having a hard time understanding WU�s (apparent) lack of action.

I certainly do not claim to have the answers but for as often as the name is mentioned, I find it odd that they seem to profit here without any retribution. As a man of business, if it were my company (don�t I wish!) at some point I�d be concerned that having the name of my company come up in what 80, 90% (more?) of the internet scams occurring in the world today . I�m not even so much as �demanding� some accountability on their behalf, but their actions (or lack thereof) certainly have me suspect.

They (WU) have made a profit from scams and are fully aware of that fact - they absolutely HAVE to be. What percentage of their income is generate as a result? I have no earthly idea, however, if it is large, they have to understand that it will be transitory at best, if it�s small, they should have no qualms about reacting in a manor that one would expect from a responsible corporate citizen.

Sacrificing the company for a short-term profit is certainly not unheard of in the business world, but this is a company that has been around for...forever, has a global "household name" status, survived the extinction of the very product that brought it to fame (the telegraph) and numerous other feats, yet seems to be stuck in a quagmire over internet scams. What the hell are these people thinking?

True, some innocent people may become temporarily inconvinced by policy changes that would greatly curtail the scammers. At the cost of what? Maybe 3 customers in the history of the world that legitimately had money sent to them in Arizona or where ever and somehow ended up in Lagos, Nigeria� (and I�m think I�m being VERY generous with that number).

Again, I�m not claiming that everything going into Lagos, or wherever needs to be locked down, but without a doubt there are some very clear reoccurring patterns in the scams that could trigger flags (and most likely do) yet they have yet to react. WTF?

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 3:43 am

unfortunately you're preaching to the choir, and something tells me the money western union makes off these scams helps them to turn a blind eye... also they're able to wipe there hands of guilt with these little disclaimers.

Master Baiter Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 130

Obviously, yes, they are - they even go so far as to have just held a contest for US customers sending money to Africa Mad

- If they would react in a decent and responsible fashion, they could do more to curtail more 419's in one day than probably 50 of us could hope for in a lifetime. Maybe it doesn't include funny pictures and the cool stories and such, but let us not loose sight of what our (hopefully) common goal here is.

I can honestly understand the motivation they have with the status-qup and to "do the least we can do" - but in the long-run, what do they really hope to accomplish? Being known as the preferred service of scam-artists world-wide is not a sound business plan. They have plenty of "legit" business in place, as well as having made some in-roads to e-bay and the like - taking a strong stand in a responsible action could do far more for their reputation than a "bad" spot (again) on a 60 minutes type program.

The folks here are a resourceful of a group as I've seen anywhere, surely there has to be a way to get some reaction out of them.

Trophy Videos · Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:20 am

It's all about the cash$$$ they make, and nothing more. Profit is King.
They don't care about their "reputation as good world citizens."
They hide behind disclaimers, and place all the "Blame" on the customer sending the money. Hey, it's their money, not ours, so we don't care where it's going...and it's never going to change.
They used to have a monopoly in telegraph, made tons of money, but technology, anti-trust laws, and other innovations by others left them in the dust. They are much smaller than they used to be, and maybe they just miss all the money they used to have...and don't care how they get it.

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:37 am

I checked out their rates. It's actually cheaper for me to send a WU to Nigeria, then to somone in the same state I live in. The same is also true for Moneygram. At the very least, their pricing helps facilitate the fraud. I can only hope the victoms organize a class action law suit.

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:48 am

I had an opportunity to question a WU agent, regarding a very similar subject in an ongoing bait.
The agent informed me that WU requires the receiver to be in the same country as what the sender has specified. For the US, they even have to be in the same state- no going from KY to OH to cash a wire sent to Cincinnati.

The reason for this is to their benefit: it's all about the exchange rate.
When you wire money from the US to say, Nigeria, WU does the currency conversion at somewhere near the official exchange rate minus a slight discount. The discount is just considered part of WU's vig.
If I wired money from NY to AZ, and the receiver tries to cash in Lagos, then the amount that shows up is in USD- the currency of the desitination country.
WU corporate loses the exchange rate vig, and indeed can go in the hole, depending on where the money is sent.
That is not to say you couldn't have a dishonest agent who manages to circumvent the system- I'm sure it happens- but I figure WU has safeguards in place to protect THEIR interests, Wink

As far as doing their part to combat fraud, the first thing they tell you is DO NOT send money to people you don't know.
I can't condemn them for doing nothing, because I think it IS on the person sending the money to be sure of what they're doing.
Could WU come up with a better system to safeguard fraud?
Sure, they could go hi-tech as in biometrics, but they would not only lose all of their fraud business (temporarily) ,
but their legiit business involving the truly poor would have to pick up the tab in form of higher rates- penalizing the people who can least afford it.
Frankly, I don't think WU seriously worries about fraud either - it's too profitable.
I'm not an apologist for these companies, I just think people have to conduct their affairs "eyes wide open".

Thanks for the opportunity, I'll now relinquish the soapbox.
LaBrea

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

flushmynutz wrote:

they even go so far as to have just held a contest for US customers sending money to Africa Mad

The huge majority of people sending money from the USA to Africa are honest migrant workers sending funds home to their family.

Yes, WU could do more to combat fraud, but it is not easy given their situation.

They have a large number of franchisees, who would be expensive to train and expensive to monitor.
Many of the honest receivers of funds in the developing world do not have official identification.
Policing the franchisees in the developing world must be near impossible.

Also if you do something to prevent a problem, you end up responsible for it. If I leave the snow on the pavement outside my house and someone slips on it, no problem. If I clear it and someone slips, then I can get sued. If WU puts in the wrong sort of measures which only half work then they could be leaving themselves open to a large class action.

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 1:44 pm

flushmynutz wrote:

It would appear to me that WU has little or no interest in deterring fraud even though their product(s) seem to facilitate a large percentage of what we are fighting.

WU has numerous signs posted all over there stores and on every pamphlet that they have (that I have seen). They put in plain English- Don't send money to someone that you do not know. If people choose to ignore warnings, that is their choice. No one forces anyone to send money to scammers. These victims do it of their own free will. It is not the job of WU to hold the hand of everyone who sends money. They create an awareness. Maybe they could do more, but they are really not obligated to do so.

Let's make sure that we put the blame on the scammers and not the WU workers. There is bound to be some group of people who abuse every system.

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 2:13 pm

Quote:

The agent informed me that WU requires the receiver to be in the same country as what the sender has specified.

That may be what the agent said, but WU sure doesn't seem to practice it. Several times, various levels of WU customer service have been asked the question by baiters. When pressed, they usually admitted that you can pretty much pick up a transfer anywhere in the world, especially if you can show ID in the receiver's name. That's kind of the point of the service. That I can get my emergency money anywhere in the world with little proof of identity, even if I get mugged or lose my wallet. In some countries, it's just as easy to get a fake ID as it is to get a real one, maybe easier. Their online FAQ used to pretty much intimate the same thing. If you have ID, you can pick up your transfer anywhere in the world, screw the receiver address.

And as already pointed out, contrary to our perception, the majority of people sending money to the African continent are probably immigrants sending money to family members. Restrictions on transfers would be more likely to punish the honest than to deter the criminals. Remember the flap in the news when WU and MG held up held up a transfer going to a man in need of medical treatment because his name had a certain potential "terrorist" flavor to it? Imagine the flap if these transfer services paint every African recipient as a potential scammer...

I've said it before when the topic has been discussed. WU and MG do put disclaimers and warnings out there to varying degrees, and in the end, it's not their job to babysit me and what I do with my money. Just like my bank is not obligated to make sure my check is not made out to a snake oil salesman and Visa is not required to call me and tell me I'm an idiot for ordering misspelled painkillers online from "Canada". MG and WU are money transfer services. Their job is to take the money you give them and move it from point A to point B, and take a few precautions to confirm it goes to the person you indicate.

Why should WU and MG have a higher burden of responsibility than my bank or my credit card company? Those businesses move currency for me. Why are they not expected to make sure I don't fall for a bad infomercial product or to make sure I'm not loaning money to a deadbeat friend who will never pay me back? Banks probably make just as much profit off of hitting fake check victims up with overdraft fees and penalties when they find out the check they received is counterfeit.

MG, in particular, is used by a lot of Canadian lottery scammers. Right on the back of the form you are required to READ and SIGN, there is a plain, simple, easy to understand warning that says, more or less, "Do not use MG to pay foreign lottery fees." Couldn't be any clearer. That still doesn't deter a lot of scam victims, because they don't READ it. They just sign it and go right ahead.

And keep in mind that most WU agents in the U.S. are not standalone agents. There are not vast armies of WU agents who do that full time. They're usually a terminal in a small grocery store, probably staffed by the same person who bags your canned goods and stocks the shelves. How do you train these people to reliably spot scams? I suspect they don't go off to four weeks of boot camp to learn how to be WU agents.

And, believe it or not, WU does stop transfers sometimes. I've heard of a few instances where a would-be-victim received a call from the WU fraud department and were told that their transfer was going to a recipient name that had been reported for fraud. They received back everything but the transfer fees. The problem? Real victims don't tend to call up WU and report that they were scammed in huge numbers, because they're embarrassed and often don't know they can, and a new fake ID and fake name is all a scammer needs to be "undetectable" again for several transfers, even if all those victims report him/her.

I'm not wild about MG and WU making money off of scam victims, but, at the same time, I think it's much more practical and efficient to concentrate on educating potential victims before the scammer ever makes contact. It's often a bit late by the time they reach the terminal. By that time, they've bought into the story and are likely thinking of the scammer as their buddy and the dollar signs of the potential profit. Many dedicated victims can't even be swayed by family members at that point.

I figure efforts like fakechecks.org will probably do more for scam prevention than even requiring money transfer services to prop the customer's eyes open and make them watch an hour-long educational video on 419 before each transfer. People will mostly treat them like software agreements. An annoyance to be endured and promptly ignored.

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:08 am

I still maintain, as I did the last time this debate rolled around, that WU can hardly be held responsible for the fact that their services are used by scammers.

It's like making telecommunication providers responsible for allowing scammers to use their phone lines.

It's entirely wrong to interfere in someone's transaction, no matter how dodgy it may seem. It is a breach of privacy and would derogate WU's attractiveness to its customers.

As we all know there are thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of WU transactions made every day all over the world. Of those probably less than 0.01% are scam related.

They provide an excellent service and if people wish to send money to scammers it is, again, not WU's responsibility to stop them. Moreover, it would be beyond their scope to even warn them that their money may be going into the hands of scammers. My understanding is that WU has plenty of warnings for people about potential scams involving their services but at the end of the day they are an independent company operating a very reliable and well respected service.

The warnings they have are, in my opinion, adequate. Such as this: http://www.westernunion.com/info/faqSecurity.asp?country=NG

Thousands of people actually depend on WU and similar services and I for one would not want anyone interfering with who I send my money to and what it is for. It is none of their business, and that is protected by law.

It comes back to the simple principle of people trying to attack the messenger. Should we shut down the internet or make Yahoo! legally responsible for scam mail sent via their boxes?

If we did that it would ruin the service for everyone else.

My opinion remains, take a sensible approach to this and realise that the honest companies should not be held responsible for the actions of a few criminals. It is beyond their scope and well outside their duties.

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:42 am

MG, in particular, is used by a lot of Canadian lottery scammers. Right on the back of the form you are required to READ and SIGN, there is a plain, simple, easy to understand warning that says, more or less, "Do not use MG to pay foreign lottery fees." Couldn't be any clearer. That still doesn't deter a lot of scam victims, because they don't READ it. They just sign it and go right ahead

That's what I want on the Western Union Forms here in the US!!! Oh and something about Nigeria.....

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 5:12 am

I'd like to interrupt this discussion and commit the heinous crime of threadjacking for just a brief moment, simply to say how glad I am to see mrsbean back on the forum and offering her usual richly articulate and well-reasoned commentary. I'm a huge mrsbean fan and I've been wondering where she's been for so long! Very Happy

Oh yeah, and I agree with her 100%.

Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 2:43 pm

I've been around for the most part, (Except for some busy times last week when trying to help organize and cook for a rehearsal dinner for a friend's wedding... for thirty. Except for me nearly severing the end of my finger and soaking two paper towels with the efforts to get it to stop when a package of fancy cheese and a knife colluded to get stroppy with me, it went spectacularly. For one thing, I can still count to ten and I did not bleed on the fancy cheese. Just the floor.) I just usually keep my peace if I don't have something at least kind of semi-useful to say.

Been a while since I looked at a WU form in the... er... pulp... but aren't the warnings right there on a little flap/sheet that you even have to move before you start writing? Or are they still on the back? In either case, you're still asked to sign and acknowledge that you read and accept them. They probably vary from country to country, but many of the online listings seem to include a variation on the theme:

Quote:

You are cautioned against sending money to any person you do not know.

It seems to be pretty prominent, sometimes even bolded on the sites, like Ireland and New Zealand. It's not blaring fraud education, but WU does make it pretty plain they're intended to send money to friends and family, not strangers.

The 2005 lawsuit by some states resulted in an agreement to place prominent warnings on transfer forms, among other precautions.

Quote:

Prominent warnings to consumers of the dangers of fraud-induced wire transfers must appear in English and Spanish on a new front page of Western Union�s Send Form, and comparable warnings are required for telephone and Web transfers.

http://www.state.sd.us/attorney/applications/documents/oneDocument.asp?DocumentID=911

I'm going to have to grab one next time I pass the service desk at the Kroger and see what they look like these days. I'm curious to see if these changes have trickled down in agents that probably don't get huge volumes of business. We do have a lot of Mexican immigrants who probably send money home, but I'm guessing they might frequent the grocery store/terminal run by a Mexican family rather than Kroger.