Some questions about Alan, account-killer extraordinaire

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419Eater is my life Joined: 04 Jul 2009 Posts: 277

1. What kind of success rate in actually closing down bank accounts have baiters generally noticed from reporting them to Alan?

2. How the heck does Alan keep up with all the reports he gets? Is he superhuman? Is he secretly an organization of many different people going by the codename Alan?

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 5:37 am

I can't answer the first question, I'm afraid.

As far as the second one is concerned, I've long believed that "Alan" is not one man. Not even just because of the logistics, but also because I can't for the life of me think of how one person can have such easy contacts with banks across the world AND seem to be able to have them take out accounts within days of reporting them.

Them's my two cents.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 6:02 am

My understanding is that some countries/banks are better than others at closing lad accounts. Somewhat embarrassingly the UK is one of the worst offenders in this respect. Embarassed

Alan can only pass on those accounts we, and other scambaiters, send to him. Its down to the individual banks to decide whether the evidence is sufficient for them to take action. in some cases the account may remain open but with increased monitoring. In some cases the institution may report the account under the SAR's regime.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:22 am

I've wondered about the answer to number 1 too, Mega Bandit, in the sense that I've wondered whether Alan gets any feedback from the Banks generally. Had the thought that confidentiality laws might come into play as to whether they actually report back to him on actions taken regarding specific accounts. It would be interesting to know a ballpark percentage rate of how many accounts get zapped etc.

I'm amazed to read that the UK is one of the worst offenders at taking action, I don't doubt the statement, but find it surprising considering that during my ten plus years working for the UK banking industry, the importance of reporting any suspected criminal activity/money laundering etc by bank customers was regularly drummed into us.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 9:46 am

Asena wrote:

I'm amazed to read that the UK is one of the worst offenders at taking action, I don't doubt the statement, but find it surprising considering that during my ten plus years working for the UK banking industry, the importance of reporting any suspected criminal activity/money laundering etc by bank customers was regularly drummed into us.

Perhaps what you observed is the difference between policy and practice.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:15 am

Possibly, Raga Man Smile

They always stressed that if we didn't report anything suspicious, we could be considered to be facilitating it and could be looking at upto 7 years in prison (as was the law then, don't know what it is now, haven't kept up to date on it) if found guility of not reporting activity that we should have realised was suspicious. We were also made very aware of the penalties we could face if we alerted any customer to the fact that they were under suspicion/investigation. I do know of quite a few occasions where suspicions were reported and action was taken - maybe the difference comes from the UK Banks wanting to be seen as squeaky clean with the Authorities with regards to in house reporting procedures etc.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 11:37 am

Through a few contacts I have and some technical expertise, I've discovered that Alan is in fact a highly complex revolutionary AI supercomputer called: "A.L.A.N. - Autonomous Logical Account Neutraliser".
His processing power is easily capable of nuking several hundred scammer accounts into oblivion at the same time with impassive mechanical efficiency...

(yeah ok, I'm a sci-fi writer and I was bored, lol)

Master Baiter Joined: 02 Mar 2010 Posts: 122 Location: OZ

I guess you can never really know if accounts are shut down unless you get one of these emails.

Quote:

Dear Loretta Liquell,

Kindly note that our Account has a Technical Problem please proceed with the Western Union Money Transfer Outlet and deduct the fee from the Donation Sum since you said that the fees is 70USD and please email me when you have made the Transfer Donation ASAP.

God Bless,

Mrs. xxxxx xxxxxx.

Makes you realise that whatever he is and where ever he is, he works.
R.S.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:37 pm

What do we know of 'Alan'? Well I gather from fragments here or there that he has used the data we all send him to work with people in the fraud departments of banks worldwide, and every account properly submitted gets sanitised of your submitting details and is then databased and distributed. This means that even where a bank is reluctant to freeze an account initially, a few reports for the same account make it a lot harder to ignore, so REPORT EVERY ACCOUNT!

Sometimes it may take a while to take effect, but the more we can send to Alan, the more credibility his tips carry with the host banks, and the smoother things get for everyone. Remember, follow the instructions and always include the headers and email scam format so Alan can build the dossiers and build those deeper relationships with the other banks.

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:35 pm

Alan is superman

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 4:01 pm

Don't ask, don't tell Wink

Posted: Wed Apr 21, 2010 5:08 pm

Technomancer wrote:

Through a few contacts I have and some technical expertise, I've discovered that Alan is in fact a highly complex revolutionary AI supercomputer called: "A.L.A.N. - Autonomous Logical Account Neutraliser".
His processing power is easily capable of nuking several hundred scammer accounts into oblivion at the same time with impassive mechanical efficiency...

(yeah ok, I'm a sci-fi writer and I was bored, lol)

It's no AI. It's kickass robot. Kickin ass.
Anti Lad Automatic Neutraliser. Wink

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 10:26 am

Wow! I am flattered!! Embarassed

You are partly right in that Alan is one person, but he represents a group of people including active and retired law enforcement, so whilst only I see the e-mails you send me, I clean them up and pass them on to others for action. We also receive similar information from many other sites including Japan, Germany, France and Spain so we get between 100 and 200 e-mails every day.

Some organisations take our input very seriously, but others try to ignore us on the basis that provided they do not know about it, there is no problem. Our role is to convince them that they are wrong.

Over the years we have had some success, but do not forget that the banks themselves run sophisticated anti-fraud programmes and if an account appears on their radar, they will shut it down without input from us, so those accounts closed within 24 hours of notification to me, will have been closed by the bank's own operations. What we do is notify the banks via our database of all accounts sent to us where we are confident that they are being made available by their owners for the receipt of the proceeds of fraud. It is then up to the banks to decide what to do with the information.

At the present time, our database contains details of over 10,250 accounts spread over more than 90 countries.

The most popular countries are:-

We run rolling statistics of 3 month periods since a single month is not particularly helpful. We record the date we enter a new account and we also note whether it has been reported before. We allow two months for the bank to act on the account and if it is still being offered after this time, we consider it a long standing account (it may be being monitored, but most likely we are being ignored).

These statistics demonstrate why the US, UK and China are so popular.

So our aim is to persuade the authorities to act quickly on any account being offered for the receipt of the proceeds of these scams. What we do is very boring but after 4 years we have the largest database of such accounts world-wide and we are now able to monitor the effectiveness of the anti-fraud operations in different countries. Sadly, for whatever reason, the UK and the USA in spite of their aggressive talk about combatting terrorism and money laundering seem to be failing badly in the fight against this form or criminal activity.

And yes there is evidence linking some of these accounts to terrorist activity. Wish us luck!!

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:47 pm

Alan!?!

Thanks for a very interesting read! You are doing a superb job, keep up the good work! Thumbs up

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:11 pm

Once a week I drink a toast to Alan.
Who ever you are, wherever you work - you are my hero.

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 5:56 pm

Thank you, Alan, for taking the time to update us! And a million thanks for your and your fellow warriors' tremendous efforts! happy crowd

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:48 pm

Well, that was unexpected.

Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 7:55 pm

Whoah... Wow. Awesome Alan. 10,520 accounts... Thats goddamn big piggy farm, isnt it? Twisted Evil

Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 12:18 am

Thanks Alan!

419Eater is my life Joined: 04 Jul 2009 Posts: 277

A response from Alan Himself? What an honor! I really appreciate you taking the time to provide all that information!

I am not worthy. bow_down

Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 2:35 am

You are awesome, alan!

Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 9:38 am

That was a really interesting and informative read and I echo all that other posters have said in response. Many thanks, Alan, for all that you and your team of helpers do and good luck! May you have even greater success in the future for all your efforts Smile

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 10 Jan 2010 Posts: 503

Great job Alan. I know it takes a lot of dedication to keep doing what your doing.

Let's hope we keep you busy!

Posted: Fri Apr 23, 2010 5:09 pm

A very nice read, Alan. Thanks.

Meanwhile, I think I have another bank account to send to you... Laughing

Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2010 12:39 pm

</fanboy> The U.S. banking system in general is retarded. A 20 year old native born citizen has to provide so much info to get an account that I don't see how scammers from outside the country could possibly get one.

C'est la vie... hopefully our banks start taking you guys a little more seriously, Alan.

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