Western UnionThe oldest, and possibly still the best method of making scammers humiliate themselves. Western Union is a real method of transferring money around the globe and is very popular with 419 scammers, as it enables them to collect large amounts of money without having to give details of a bank account to their victims. All the scammer has to do to collect money that is transferred to them via Western Union is to visit their local Western Union agent, give them the ten-digit money transfer control number (MTCN) of the transfer and answer a test question, which is information they will have been given by their victim. They may also have to provide some form of identification when they collect the money.
Gilbert has used Western Union more often than any other method to “send money” to 419 scammers. When he first started scambusting, all the scammers would ask for was the MTCN of the transfer and the answer to the test question, and they would happily trot off to their local Western Union agent with any old ten-digit number and a made-up question and answer. However, the scammers seem to be getting wise to scambusters tricking them over fake Western Union payments, because they now always ask for a scanned copy of the receipt before they will trot off to the agent.
In order to counter this, Gilbert has taken to forging Western Union receipts and sending them to scammers. You can find examples of Gilbert’s forged Western Union receipts throughout the scambusts in this website, and an example appears below:
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(Click to enlarge)
One disadvantage of “sending money” to scammers via Western Union is that the scammer can use the
Western Union website to check whether a transfer has actually been made, simply by typing in the MTCN of the transfer. If this doesn’t exist, the scammer immediately becomes suspicious. To get around this problem, you may notice that whenever Gilbert tells a scammer that he has made a transfer via Western Union there is always some sort of technical problem with the Western Union computer system. That’s usually enough to persuade the scammer to head off to the Western Union agent with their forged receipt to face the usual humiliation.
Interestingly, some Western Union agents recognise Gilbert’s receipts as forgeries immediately (resulting in an angry email from the scammer demanding to know why they have been sent a forged receipt), whereas others don’t seem to realise that the receipts are forged.
Scammers seem to be slightly less keen to use Western Union nowadays, partly because Western Union has started to take steps to reduce the amount of advance fee fraud that is carried out using its network. There are now warnings about the dangers of 419 fraud in most, if not all, Western Union agents, and Western Union have reduced the amount of money that can be sent to individuals in certain countries in which 419 fraud is rife. However, if every other method of money transfer fails, scammers will always resort to using Western Union, even if it means asking their victims to transfer the money in four or five separate lots. And all other methods inevitably do fail whenever Gilbert’s involved.
It is worth remembering that the Western Union money transfer system is used for thousands of completely legitimate transactions every day, and Western Union does not condone advance fee fraud in any way. It is unfortunate that the nature of Western Union transactions make them attractive to 419 scammers. However, Western Union does take commission on each transfer that goes through their system, whether legitimate or not, so they do profit from advance fee fraud. Some have argued that Western Union could do more to warn individuals about the dangers of advance fee fraud at the point at which they make transfers, and that doing so would make life even harder for the 419 scammers that abuse the Western Union system.
Click
here to access a blank Western Union receipt that you can use yourself.