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Posted
Hey guys and gals I know this has nothing to do with Mooneys or aviation but I was almost scammed today.
 
It was quite scary the amount of money was not much but the scenario played very much on your emotions.
 
The short story is I received a phone call from a Maryland phone number mostly likely a disposable cell phone and the caller told me they had my son because he backed into the callers brother's (a drug dealer) and they would kill him unless I wired them $1,000.  Supposedly the caller was visiting his brother here.  In my mind I knew it had scam written all over it but until I was able to verify the whereabouts of my son I had to treat it as real.  I stalled as much as I could and I went to where my son worked and when I spoke with his boss I learned the had left work like a bat of of hell about 20 to 30 minutes prior to my arrival about the same time I received a call.  At that time I had attention of deputies and I managed to establish communication with them.  It still took us about an hour and half to finally establish communication with my son who was in the next parish (County for the rest of you).  The were playing each of us against each other telling him they had me and me they had him.  The milked him for other phone numbers expanding the circle of confusion.
 
One of their tactics is to keep both parties on the line at the same time and either conference them together or hold one phone to another so you can hear the other person.
 
The end of the day they did convince my son to use all cash he had and buy a prepaid credit card and give them the information.  I was saved from losing any money to this scheme not by my intelligence but by luck and ignorance.  Their method of payment is Western union.
 
 
Several things that should have clued me in earlier were:
1. they had his middle name wrong
2. inconstancies in their story while talking with them
3. The amount of money they were asking for
4. I knew in the back of my head it was a scam
 
However, until I knew the whereabouts of my son it was not a scam to me.
 
I am posting this to alert other that if they get tangled up in this they can be aware of it and know it is a scam.

 

Posted

Scary stuff a similar thing happened to my cousins family.  They got a call saying their son was in a Mexican prison and they demanded money wired to get him free, etc.  I forget all the details but it is very similar sounding.

 

As if the government financial scam that happens every April 15 is not bad enough we have to deal with our own citizens trying to scam us out of our money!

Posted

wow...I did not know that this started to happen in the US too. Happy to hear that you manage the situation well.

 

Another thing you have to be careful is what kind of bumper stickers you have on your car. By watching them they can call your wife and tell her that they have kidnapped you and as a proof they can tell her that you are a pilot, own a Mooney... and Iike flying... etc. etc. 

 

As soon as I got to Guatemala, the UN provided my family and myself with a training to avoid this kind of scams... be careful...

Posted

...and this, ladies and gents, is why my profile here, and on any other boards I may or may not participate in, will NEVER have significant identifying information in them.

 

Manage your online presence. Don't use your real name, no details, nothing. When this topic comes up, some people have the attitude "I have nothing to hide", which sounds great and noble until you start to think it through and realize your "nothing to hide" mantra makes you a soft target.

 

(I'm not saying this is what caused this to happen to 1964-M20E. But they got both his and his son's phone number's somehow (how'd they even know he had a son?). Information leaks. A half hour with google and you can build up a surprisingly detailed picture of people who "have nothing to hide". Be careful out there.)

  • Like 3
Posted

I'm not sure how they got my son's number but they contacted him first and told him they had me.  I think it was random or they somehow go a list of active numbers form the cell provider. They used the reverse story on me about him.  They milked my number form him within the first minutes of the call after they had him sufficiently upset.  Then within the first 10 minutes had both of us on the phone.  They then milked other numbers from my son through the course of 2 hours.

 

Every now and then do a serch on your name on the intenet and you will see many things that will surprise you as to what is out there.

I still fear the gov't more than 2 bit con artists.

 

However, where is the NSA snooping on millions of phone calls and emails when you really need them.

Posted

However, where is the NSA snooping on millions of phone calls and emails when you really need them.

 

No kidding. I wonder how many distress calls, lost hikers, etc. are ignored by NSA because notifying someone would reveal capability.

Posted

I've received two almost identical emails "from" friends that said they were in London (Madrid) and their wallet was stolen, with all their credit cards, and they could not reach their families as they were on separate vacations, and would I wire them $1000 immediately to some hotel desk with the following number. My immediate thought was this is an obvious scam, but I knew my friend was in London on business. I tried calling his home, and there was no answer. Fortunately, i called a mutual friend, and he too, had received an identical email. I ended up calling my friend, in London, on his cell phone, and he was shocked to hear about these emails . Turns out that quite a few people on his email contact list were receiving that same email. Fairly sophisticated scam to wait until he was in London to send out the emails, making the story sound plausible. Because he was a good friend, and the fact that I knew he was in London, I would have wired the money. The second time I received a similar letter it was again from a friend who I knew was in Madrid. I just sent that one to Junk, and called him on his cell phone. Again, he had no idea that emails were going to his contact list. All I can say is use firewalls, and use virus filters to scan your computers as often as you can stand. Last week, my personal business computer (but not the LAN) had been infected by a nasty virus that three different anti-virus programs could not detect, let alone remove. I had to call in professional (read expensive) help to rid the computer of this virus.

Posted

Good advice from Cyberwatch:

 

Avoid accessing e-mail from strange places. Most kiosks, cybercafes and other public access terminals are riddled with viruses and spyware, monitoring all your keystrokes and sending them to their masters. If you still had to use such services, change your password at the earliest from your home computer.

 

It would not surprise me that both my fiends in London and Madrid used their laptops is a public place using a local wi-fi internet connection. Interesting that this scam is called: The London Stolen Wallet Scam.

 

In hotels in the US I use my (unlimited) LTE connections in preference to the hotel wi-fi connections (which can be costly), and I never (almost never) use airport or public access wi-fi.  Just as paranoid as many of our Mooney folk.

Posted

I' ve heard of the I'm stuck in a foreign country scam but that one is easier since you have time to investigate.  Unfortunaly people still fall for it.  The one I experienced they are pressuring you to do the transaction as quickly as possible.  I stalled them to verify the location of my son.

Posted

I am  currently reverse scamming one of the "got beat up in a foreign country" scammers.   The goal is to make up fake Western union numbers and see how many times you can get them to go to Western Union for bogus pick ups.   Scammers suck as they got one of my mom's friends for alot of money.   She was gotten via the phone and most of it was an offshore lottery scam.   Just scary how easy they can talk their way in.  The FBI could do nothing other than say "Stop sending Money"    The NSA should be using their special powers to track down email scammers and virus producers.  It has been said one million government employees looking for a couple thousand jihadist 

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