Asking on behalf of relative

Thinking purely of your mother and keeping her out of harm, I'd close the bank account.

At this moment I'd delay telling the scammers in Malaysia, after all she owes them no duty to do anything, and there's a chance they'll remain interested as long as they think she has something they want - the account.

I'm following a long shot to see if I can locate the scammer. It isn't rocket science, but if it pays off it could be very helpful. I won't discuss it openly, for passing scammers to see, as we like scammers to make the same mistakes, and we don't like to teach them how to do it better. If I get anything useful I'll let you know.

There are several sets of people involved - some dealing with the foreign bank accounts, others the web sites and li'l' old me chasing the Malaysian end as well as another co-ordinating and collating the information.

It's late night in Malaysia now, so I won't expect anything unil tmorrow, then it'll be a matter of waiting.

Fingers crossed.

God I love you guys. I've been refreshing the page every ten minutes or so. I think I can sleep now. Got to be lucid for later today when I make sure that bank account is closed.

Just a quick question lily. Are you using your real name here at scamwarners? Considering the sensitive and personal nature of the information you posted here it would be a good idea to regain some anonymity. If your username is your real name please ask a forum moderator or administrator to change it.

Also just confirming with you. Your mother is aware that Mark Vin Brown is also a part of this scam. He's probably playing more than one role in this fraud. Your earlier posts seemed to indicate that perhaps she may have believed "Mark's" poor excuses regading the goings on in Malaysia.

"lilysantoni" or even "lily" isn't my real name.

Up till I insisted upon her closing the bank account, she believed he's the real deal. Well mostly anyway, I'm sure she had her suspicions. She finally closed it today but seemed irritated by it because she thinks she has the right to at least part of the supposed 700000 USD that she's suppose to receive since she lost close to 6000 USD.

I've gone through her Skype history, not a pleasant experience since she divulged lots of personal information.

The stuff that stood out for me:

- the fact that he was so insistent that she send him the bank account number of the account she had just created.
- this guy writes the sappiest shit I've ever seen.
- he constructs his sentences in a strange manner. like he's not a native speaker. "I don't know i just get you name the i click you name So old are you now how"
- he's very interested in my brother for some reason
- he's got at least 2 picture of my brother and me
- He recommends a sappy book "A Perfect Woman" by James Hardly Chase
- whenever he mentions his company, he types it in the upper case eg: AS A REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT IN CUBA
- claims to want to open up a company in Caracas, Venezuela. Then says he will come down to Singapore to open a business here.
- claims he will let her work as a GM at his company
- the strange thing is he doesn't understand what 'Malay' is and confuses it with 'Malaysia'. possibly a foreigner operating in Malaysia but just got there?
- keeps confirming with her if the address to her office is 'good'
- he asks for more pictures of me and wants more information about me
- he wants to see her on webcam but doesn't have one himself
- He asks her for a "LLEOYD BANK ACCOUNT"
- says he is a "concoction" cos his dad is a Brit and his mum is from Barbados
- he does that "I'm sick" routine to illicit sympathy but he doesn't ask for money.
- says he will be detained by the police for sending a parcel full of cash. also says "honey i will be humiliated what about my political ambition and my dignity"
- he tries very hard to get her to go to Caracas
- he says "Banda Richard" is trying to extort money from him. Same guy who threatened mum.
- after mum insists that she can't fly down to Caracas, he claims he's going to sell everything and come down to Singapore
- says he needs new pictures of her


I'm assuming that he's going to use the pictures she sent for his next scam.

Oh yeah I managed to get only 2 of the pictures he sent. I asked her if that was it but she says there are at least 3 more but she deleted them from her computer.




I've been going through her computer and it looks like she's sent at least 4 pictures of me alone with recognisable Cambodian landmarks. Fortunately, there aren't any individual pictures of my brother that she's sent that could be used by them for future scams. She sent him quite a number of herself.

Is it possible that the pictures he's sent have been collected in a similar manner?

Lily you could try this neat little image investigation website http://tineye.com/ which can, at times locate the origin of images on the web. No guarantees though as I usually only have about a 10 % success rate there. Use the original images, not the altered images that you've posted here.

Oh yeah I did that once I got the pictures but nothing turned up..

If your mother needed further convincing this is from the UK

http://www.middevonstar.co.uk/news/devo ... s/?ref=rss

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/8156936.stm

Police said the scam involved fraudsters befriending people on social networking sites and asking for money.

They are urging people not to send cash to anyone they have only met online.

"For instance, helping their poorly children who were in America who couldn't afford to have health care and then moving on to shares in a company so that they could provide income when they eventually moved to the UK with their new partners."

After an online relationship, which lasted almost a year, one woman was persuaded to open a bank account in Plymouth.

Over the course of several months more than £70,000 was deposited into her account from other victims. The money was then sent to Nigeria.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said people needed to be aware of the fraudsters' subtle techniques.

"I'm not a stupid person, I hold a very good job," she said.

"These people out there are so clever, they gain your trust.

"You want to be speaking to them because it is a nice feeling to be needed.

"Hundreds of women are affected like this and it's absolutely cruel but you don't realise it's happening. It just seems like its normal."

These scammers know that they can become very rich just by spending some time on the internet and the phone. You may feel it makes you lose faith in people, but you just have to be careful that you don't allow the anonymity provided by the internet to be how you allow a scammer to take advantage of you.

As soon as money is involved - it isn't romance.

There are good reasons many of these things stood out. Just picking a few from your list...

- the fact that he was so insistent that she send him the bank account number of the account she had just created.

See link from gomerpyle above.

- this guy writes the sappiest shit I've ever seen.

Google the sappy junk and you will find it is stolen from romance/romantic poetry websites.

- he constructs his sentences in a strange manner. like he's not a native speaker. "I don't know i just get you name the i click you name So old are you now how"

Of course he isn't a native speaker. The lower case "i" in the middle of the sentence is an extremely common African mistake.

- he's very interested in my brother for some reason
- he's got at least 2 picture of my brother and me

Two things here--first, he wants to know who she is close to, who is likely to get in the way of his scam. Scammers, like cults, typically do everything possible to isolate their victims from anyone who cares enough to intervene. Second, he probably is looking for the opportunity to scam using your brother's pictures. Though it is possible, he is less likely to try to scam using your pictures -for female characters, the scammers tend to use porn or swimsuit models.(though if he has an older character, he may use your photos as his "daughter")

- keeps confirming with her if the address to her office is 'good'

He's looking out for opportunities to use her as a reshipper and/or check mule.

- he wants to see her on webcam but doesn't have one himself

He can't show himself as he is not the man in the photos. If she gets on webcam and does anything he can record to use against her later, all the better for him. Scammers have been known to blackmail former vics with photo or video.

- he does that "I'm sick" routine to illicit sympathy but he doesn't ask for money.

It's better for him if she offers to send him the money, because then later when she is questioning whether it is a scam, she will have to say that he didn't actually ask her for money.

- says he will be detained by the police for sending a parcel full of cash. also says "honey i will be humiliated what about my political ambition and my dignity"

(Of course this is all lies--he did not try to send her money.) He wants her to feel guilty because "helping her" caused him so much harm, and maybe she'll cough up more money out of guilt.

- he says "Banda Richard" is trying to extort money from him. Same guy who threatened mum.

By making himself out to be a victim of this man, he is making himself appear to be more innocent and forming a connection point.

Thanks for the update, will relay it to Mum. It seems like 'Mark Vin Brown' has stopped trying to contact her after Saturday, ditto for the other bunch. No further emails, calls or Skype.

Scammers often take weekends off and sometimes they disappear for days to weeks while they are giving all of their attention to more promising victims, only to turn up again later so be aware he may return.

But if he has disappeared because he is aware she is convinced he is a scammer, he may initiate a recovery scam. In this case, she will be contacted by someone who from the FBI/EFCC/police etc. or a private investigator who can get her scammer prosecuted and/or her money back. This is also a scam--eventually there will be fees and/or attempts to obtain more personal information in order to proceed.

Hi Lily

I see it has dawned on 'Mr Vin Brown' that your Mother is no longer a paying victim. Evidently, you can now see that he was nothing more than a callous bastard who had no intention of getting into a relationship with your Mother. As Dotti stated, advise your Mother that there is every chance that she will be contacted in the near future by sources claiming to know all about the scam and which aim to compensate her .... for a fee. If this is the case, please feel free to post back here the details so we can verify its fakeness for you.

I do have some positive news for you.

On proper investigation, the website http://www.gocfinance.com uncovered 2 similar sites being used for the same scam, http://www.gcfsgroup.com and http://www.crfinancesecurities.com : all of which had domain email addresses to add to their credibility. I have been able to have all 3 websites and their email facilities closed down.

This is a small victory against the scammers, as the websites cost money to host, and they have lost their money as they violated the hosters terms of service, so no refunds will be forthcoming. Now, if they want them hosted somewhere else, they will have to pay out again. If that ever happened, I would take great pleasure in killing them again.

Thats the monetary side of the backlash, but the major plus point is that they have lost a valuable tool in their scam which will prevent further innocent and good honest people like your Mother falling for their scam. The difficulties you are both going through both emotionally and financially is awful, but with the sites gone, maybe we could have saved the same happening to another vulnerable person. I hope this provides a small degree of comfort to your Mother.

There are other things going on behind closed doors to see if we can do anything more to get back at them. It may come to nothing, but we are only volunteers, not law enforcement. Our resources may not allow us to follow up our findings but rest assured that myself and each member who has posted in this thread have been talking out of earshot to see if it is possible to do something more.

The main thing is that your Mother has now broken free of the scam. The fallout is hard to accept, but gets easier in time with support. If we can do no more to bring these scammers to account for their actions, we will always be here for you and your Mother.

SM

Hello everyone,

I'm back again and annoyingly, it appears to me that my mother has picked up another scammer via Skype. She is also in correspondence with the previous guy "Mark Vin Brown" again though sporadically and not with invested interest. She just told me about that two days ago and just a few moments ago, I stupidly engaged in a conversation with said guy. He claims that he has been jailed because of the debacle along with losing much of his money. I was angry so I sassed him by saying that his command of the language is terrible for an Englishman. In reply he says that he knows "what kind of woman you are" and that she will pay for what happened to him. I quit the chat immediately. He hasn't tried to contact mum via the phone again, at least not yet.

As for this new scammer, he hasn't asked for money yet but he says he's coming down to my country. Tomorrow. This is because mum asked that he 'proved' that he's real by coming down personally to meet her. I've looked at the chat logs and again, it's atrocious English and dude seems pretty creepy. I'm escorting her to the airport tomorrow and she wouldn't take no for an answer. I'm hoping nobody would turn up but if he turns up (by he I mean someone bad), and if it gets ugly, I hope the soldiers are still making their rounds in that area.

I didn't have time to write this out until now so I hope replies come in time soon. Thank you all.

Hi. Lily.
It's highly unlikely he will turn up.
What will almost certainly happen, is that he will contact your mother with some story that something went wrong that caused him to miss the flight. Possibly a car accident, or sudden illness of a family member. With a request for financial assistance via Western Union of course. Or a fake doctor might tell your mother about the accident or whatever and ask for payment for his medical treatment.
Would your mother be impressed by a prediction of what will happen next?

Hi Arnold,

Spot on. That's exactly what happened. Claimed he was held up in Malaysia and needed money, MYR 20,000 to be exact. These are the pictures he used and his facebook link also. Name is Mark Rammell. You'd think they would be more creative with the first names. Malaysia cropped up again, I guess they have a base there. Also on Skype.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Ram ... 0292955352