MySwag.org The Off-road Camper Trailer Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Burnsy on September 27, 2011, 11:47:48 PM
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Got home in a rush this afternoon and started getting everyone ready to head out for a big evening of dropping off a solar panel, buying a new kids picnic table and picking up a cargo barrier I had grabbed from gumtree. Opened the emails as a last minute thing to grab the address of the guy I was dropping the solar panel to and I see this email from my parents with a please print note on it. Without even reading it my heart started racing and I started to panic, cut down this is what I glanced at:
Dear Burnsy’s mum and dad,
Congratulations! You are now purchasing the item: 2006 Coromal Princeton 701 - through the eBay Motors Autos Purchase Protection Program
Item Title Quantity Purchase date Amount
2006 Coromal Princeton 701 1
27/09/11 AU $13,700.00
Deposit: AU $9,000.00
Postage and handling via Regular: AU $0.00
Total AU $13,700.00
I immediately got on the phone begging for my parents to please tell me they had not transferred $9000 to some scammer via Western Union. To late, “did it the morning, he’s no scammer, he’s been lovely with emails promptly replied to all day”. Seriously how can you not know about this!!!
After several more phone conversations with them over the next hour because they did not believe me and I could not drop it I finally got them to contact Western Union Australia. Transaction halted as it had not been received at the other end due to the difference in business hours.
I have never heard of this happening before (someone getting their money back from Western Union) and can’t believe how close my parents came to loosing $9000. My parents are not dumb people and it goes to show how given the right circumstances those who do not do a lot of internet reading can be easily conned. Timely reminder really for us all to have a little chat to our parents about how people are not as honest as they once believed them all to be.
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it was the same as a mate of mine selling a car on ebay
cheers
gXL4X4
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I'm really glad you managed to sort that out mate! Its a shame you can't accept people at face value anymore, I got stung with a similar thing once and I've learnt to never buy/sell without an escrow type service or paypal with protection!
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I still can't believe they managed to have the money transfer reversed. I found out about this at 4pm and it was 6pm before they contacted Western Union. They must have only just scraped through in time as they had four emails from the scammer by 10pm asking them to contact western union as something was wrong as he could not access the money ;D
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SCAM ,,,, Some Creep After Money >:D
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A frightening story..... glad you managed to stop it...phew!!!
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Good catch. You have to be so careful these days.
I audit the credit cards evey couple of days for dodgy transactuons as they are used so much
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Well done Burnsy. Wow, that was close.
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on an unrelated scam, i awoke this moring to find a text on my phone from 0011bla bla advising me i had been chosen to recieve the Nokia birthday cash prize. all i had to do was email them my card details.
wow it was that simple and i was on my way to recieving my $40000 cash prize.
How nice are they!
Pity i dont own a nokia...........
Cheers
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on an unrelated scam, i awoke this moring to find a text on my phone from 0011bla bla advising me i had been chosen to recieve the Nokia birthday cash prize. all i had to do was email them my card details.
wow it was that simple and i was on my way to recieving my $40000 cash prize.
How nice are they!
Pity i dont own a nokia...........
Cheers
generous people those Nokia people - I got the same text. It was their 40th birthday.... didn't know Mobiles had been around that long :) I dont own one either!
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And the only reason you stopped it in time is because your folks don't own a $100 printer. Best bet you keep it that way. ;)
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One of the biggest scams going around is fake microsoft calling asking u to turn your pc on so they can fix it I believe this Is catching older people with limited computer experience if u haven't heard of it pls pass it on
Congrats burnsy on catching this one out I think mum and dad owe u a nice dinner ?. Nice work
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Great stuff / good detective work.
So glad your folks weren't ripped off.
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Parents are livig in a van at the moment while they have a new place built, so that is why no printer :D
Stopped in to see them this morning on the way to work to find out a bit more about this, it was actually one I have not heard of before.
The van was advertised in the WA Sunday Times with a local residential phone number and email address. They called the phone number three times and it rang out each time, never emailed. Next they got a text from the seller that was from a computer not a mobile phone saying if they were interested in the van they need to email him urgently. They emailed him and it went from there, he generated false ebay motors emails to arrange all the payment and it was this with all the buyer safety blurb on it that sucked them in.
It worries me that a local person is involved and because of this it s likely that more people are being phished at the same time so I have ensured that they ring the WA Police Fraud Squad and hand over all the details first thing this morning.
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One of the biggest scams going around is fake microsoft calling asking u to turn your pc on so they can fix it I believe this Is catching older people with limited computer experience if u haven't heard of it pls pass it on
Yep, I had that one.
My reply was: I don't switch on my computer for you!
Burnsy, good timing mate.
Aweful to see something like this happening. You hear about it happening to someone else, but now it came close.
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on an unrelated scam, i awoke this moring to find a text on my phone from 0011bla bla advising me i had been chosen to recieve the Nokia birthday cash prize. all i had to do was email them my card details.
Yeah I also got a text this morning re nokia's 40 years, said I had won £900,000 pounds !!! gave a claim code emajn and email address nokiax1@blumail.org
"wankers"
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These sites are worth a look :police:
http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/693900
http://www.moneysmart.gov.au/?referrer=fido.gov.au
http://www.protectfinancialid.org.au/
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One of the biggest scams going around is fake microsoft calling asking u to turn your pc on so they can fix it
its piss funny me and a mate who is a support bloke for an ISP were discussing this one yesterday after 4 of their clients got owned.
Low and behold, as I hit the eastlink he called me saying he had copped the call himself!!! LMAO
after nearly runnin off the road laughing, he said he didnt even play long with them, just said 'ok, Im now infront of the PC with control panel open, and admin tools, and event viewer open, now which error message are you going to tell me is a virus".... then the phone went dead... I'd have played longer!
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On the PC one, just ask the person on the phone "what is the name of my computer?"
Every time I've done that, they just hang up. If they push on, tell them that you run MacOS or Linux.
Cheers
whitedg
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On the PC one, just ask the person on the phone "what is the name of my computer?"
Every time I've done that, they just hang up. If they push on, tell them that you run MacOS or Linux.
Cheers
whitedg
I do run MacOS and I've been waiting for one of those phone calls so I can play with them >:D The missus instead received the microsoft call and hung up on them ;D
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Have had the Microsoft call several times. They don't seem to get the hint. My BIL played along with them for the longest of time, stretching out every command that they asked him to do by complaining that his computer kept freezing up and getting them to explain every command 2 or 3 times. Feels good to waste some of there time for a change.
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Great stuff Burnsy.
I cannot believe that Western Union actually reversed it, well done.
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Great stuff Burnsy.
I cannot believe that Western Union actually reversed it, well done.
Apparently when they rang the Australian office and said what had happened Western Union were very good and said it definitely sounds like a scam and as the money had not yet been collected they could cancel it imediately. If the money had already been collected at the other end it would have definitely been a case of "how sad to bad".
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We had had computer problems last year..came home one evening ...adult daughter meet me at door, worried....dads on the computer cos some rang and said they can fix it for him !!!!!! I did all the face things and actions that said " what on earth are you doing ..........how would any one know we were having problems and ring us !!!! The penny dropped ..........he was very embarrassed. Had not got to the stage of money talk.They rang back and wanted to talk to him ....".he must restart his computer."..sorry but no thanks . They had been directing him and moving things remotely in our computer too . We got worried and changed all our passwords,and mind you he's usually not that silly !!!
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Along the lines with scams, some people should be removed from the gene pool
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/fraud-victims-just-dont-listen-police-20110927-1kv5t.html
Three in four victims of email investment scams continue to send money after police warn them they're being deceived, Queensland's top fraud cop says.
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Change all the passwords ,,, do you reckon the scamers could tell me what they are then I could remember & change them ??? ??? ??? :cheers:
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Well done to stop this.
On the news tonight there was a self funded retiree who lost $500000 and now has to apply for the pension.
He invested in a coal mine in China with a 100% ROI.
Cheers
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poor bugger, if China had plenty of Coal they wouldn't be paying top dollar for ours!~
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They had been directing him and moving things remotely in our computer too .
This is a worry. Did they get him to install any programmes they supplied or sent a link for him to download? If they did I would have started from scratch as they could include data or keystroke loggers.
Burnsy - damn lucky to get that western union stopped. Was the money being sent off shore or to someone in Australia?
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Burnsy - damn lucky to get that western union stopped. Was the money being sent off shore or to someone in Australia?
It was sent off shore to the UK which is the only reason they were able to get it, no business was open at the time in the UK for it to be collected.
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On the news tonight there was a self funded retiree who lost $500000 and now has to apply for the pension.
He invested in a coal mine in China with a 100% ROI.
Cheers
No sympathy.
They got him because he was driven by greed, & he got bitten...that's if not a media "gap filler" - stories the media make up to fill in blank space
Hard to believe someone with that much money sitting 'round being lazy, could be fooled
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Nice save Burnsy, Looks like a good christmas present coming your way ;D
Cheers
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Every time microsoft ring me telling me i have a problem with my computer i tell them i don,t own a computer and they hang up lol
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It was sent off shore to the UK which is the only reason they were able to get it, no business was open at the time in the UK for it to be collected.
The seller wasn't a marine engineer by any chance ?
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The seller wasn't a marine engineer by any chance ?
No details about the seller, the van had mandurah number plates and I am not sure which suburb the phone number was listed at but I suspect that they may have already had fraud squad knocking at their door as it is not often they find a solid link to these overseas scammers here in WA that they can actually follow up on and possibly prosecute.
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In all likelihood the phone number will be a skype number, which will not be listed to an actual address, with a false name.
Very easy to do, apparently.
The actual advertisement will be some poor bugger who was actually selling it legitimately that the crooks have just cut and pasted.
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Very lucky there, Burnsy
I have had the phone calls about the computer, I say I have toretts, and tend to give them lots of abuse,
the email's that i have saying i have won money etc are a daily event via my gmail account my biggest concern is my self managed super fund that I have opened up with a company over east, the prefilled forms that have been sent to my email, that is a good con, umm thats with the local police to investigate
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When they tell me to go to "the" computer with the problem I ask which one since I have a few. And then when they say turn the Windows computers on I say I only have Apple Macs... they are usually quite persistent though... but I imagine they could appear to be quite convincing to someone who isn't so savvy...
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A nice save there Burnsy, bet your glad your parents don't have a printer! Unfortunately I don't think the Police will be able to do much, the van will have been taken off the net and the number will likley be a Skype one as mentioned before. There are so many of these scams around its really sad.
My dad nearly got taken by a microsoft scam. As I will occasionally remotely control his PC when he has issues, he thought it was legit when he was rung up and coincidently had a problem. But when they asked him to download some stuff, he finally twigged onto it.
Cheers
Captain