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I got my money back from a scammer by contacting his mom on Facebook (2016)

508 points by geek_at 7y ago

atlasunshrugged 7y ago
Ha, this is awesome. I'm glad that the author got his money back. But use this as a reminder, whether you're doing nefarious activities or not, you can probably be found online with a few hours of research unless you're being incredibly careful.
- simion314 7y ago
  A better lesson, think what your mother will say/feel about the thing your about to do (with the exception if you are not close to your family)
  - atlasunshrugged 7y ago
    Yes, true, although I hope most people already have internalized that they shouldn't commit fraud whether or not their mother would approve
    - ackbar03 7y ago
      This is a good test though. I forgot where I read it from but there was this saying if your doing something you would be ashamed to tell your freidns or family about than you probably shouldn't be doing it
      - TallGuyShort 7y ago
        You might have heard it when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was brushing off concerns about online privacy.
  - technothrasher 7y ago
    Unless your mother is Ma Barker ;)
- CapacitorSet 7y ago
  If you share usernames, that is. I could very well make up a unique username like "Nikatoa" that I never even thought of before, and there's no way you could link that to any other account of mine - short of database leaks containing my email or linking/commenting from one account to another.
oftenwrong 7y ago
"I will never do anything like this again." I doubt that.
- toxik 7y ago
  He just got a lesson in how to scam properly. Impressively stupid though.
- mysterydip 7y ago
  Spoken with the same sincerity of a politician who is truly sorry for their momentary lapse in judgement. That being said, back in the early 90s I was playing around with virus generators (total script kiddie stuff) and ended up infecting my own system. That was enough to keep me out of nefarious activities from then on.
- hinkley 7y ago
  "It's time for some all new tricks."
vaba 7y ago
Fully Joke!!
zuck9 7y ago
Reminds me of the time this lady contacted the mother of a man who sent her violent threats and got him to apologize: https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/1188128030268575744 https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/1188128030268575744
- awinder 7y ago
  “Thanks for letting us know about our stupid son” omg this was parenting thing is the wildest game on earth
- Moru 7y ago
  Or the masseur [0] that got fed up with "do you have happy endings?" and started contacting the wifes of her customers. [0] https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1377985 https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1377985 (in swedish though...)
Judson 7y ago
One method I use for fighting “friendly fraud” in our b2b business (smb customers) is to message their Facebook page after sufficiently attempting to contact someone more official. It has always worked. I hypothesize it’s easy to rationalize things away, but the FB channel typically requires a non-owner employee to ask the owner/purchasing manager why the company isn’t paying their suppliers.
umvi 7y ago
So wait, the guy just sent the Apple cards and trusted he would be paid on the honor system? Doesn't eBay make the other party pay first before you ship? I thought that was the whole point of eBay.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  They weren’t using ebay, the scammer just used it to prove he’s trustworthy.
whalesalad 7y ago
I was selling PHP based software around 2009. It wasn’t pirate proof in any way. I was charitable with it too... if anyone was disadvantaged or a student or similar I’d send them a free license. Some kid posed as a journalist for a review copy and then once he had it, started to aggressively distribute it to every leak/piracy site he possibly could. Attempts to discuss it with him were futile. I was pissed. At the time I was a freelancer and so this was a huge portion of my income. I basically lived off the dopamine hits from each sale, not to mention the actual sale revenue via a PayPal debit card. The OG ones that were that weird blueish silver sparkle. Funds basically went directly from sales to paying bills and feeding myself. So I used his personal info to track his location. Ended up finding his poor old grandmother who was his caretaker and barely spoke English. I tried to explain the situation to her and explain how unreasonable he was acting. She didn’t understand anything I said but I think the mere act of getting her involved scared him enough to undo everything he did. He was not happy I had figured that out. Check mate kiddo.
- usaphp 7y ago
  How did you lock a php based software with a license? Could not they just dig into code and remove the license restrictions, since you provided them with the code?
  - krn 7y ago
    Zend Guard[1] was often used for licensing PHP code in mid-2000s. [1] https://www.zend.com/products/zend-guard https://www.zend.com/products/zend-guard
    - amenod 7y ago
      And IonCube PHP Encoder [0] (not affiliated, had positive experience with them as a customer). These apps solve real-world problem - sometimes it makes sense from business perspective to make copying the software more difficult. [0] https://www.ioncube.com/ https://www.ioncube.com/
  - wongarsu 7y ago
fortran77 7y ago
He should have gone to the Police. He's just going to do it again.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  The US justice system isn't known for reforming people, if anything it turns small-time criminals into hardened criminals. The parents probably have a better shot at doing something good.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  > He's just going to do it again And after he graduates criminal university, he's probably going to do far worse.
peteretep 7y ago
I had a similar story from eBay back in the day, where someone had sold me faulty goods. Was worried I’d have to do a whole fraud process thing, but managed to find his Dad’s contact details, threatened to contact him, and suddenly the guy/kid couldn’t do enough to fix it
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
This is awesome. I once had an asshole of a roommate. When I had had enough and moved out, they wouldn't return my security deposit. But I had leverage. They had been getting school tuition money from their parents, but not going to school. I tracked down their parents. & politely asked for my security deposit back in exchange for not outing them to their folks. I got my money back the next day.
- willis936 7y ago
  You probably should have outed them afterwards anyway. Scamming your own parents is a shitty thing to do.
  - graeme 7y ago
    Then you still have an asshole, sociopathic roommate, and you no longer have any leverage on them. A dangerous game. They literally live with you, and are supremely immoral.
    - shakna 7y ago
      > When I had had enough and moved out, they wouldn't return my security deposit. None of it would have been safe to do if they were still living with them.
    - gmjosack 7y ago
      The anecdote was about getting back the security deposit after moving out.
      - graeme 7y ago
        Oops, I misread it. Though I think my general argument still stands: the ex roommate knew a lot about OP, and was immoral. As long as OP knew his secret the ex roommate couldn't retaliate. If OP had outed them, they would have further angered the ex roommate and freed the roommate from consequences it they wanted to get revenge on OP.
    - deleted 7y ago
DonHopkins 7y ago
Did he say he was sorry he took the money? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw
- geek_at 7y ago
  no he was just sorry he was caught
Scapeghost 7y ago
> I think the mere act of getting her involved scared him enough to undo everything he did. He was not happy I had figured that out. Most people only act evil under anonymity, thinking they can get away with it, and can't withstand the risk of public shaming. This applies not only to the internet, but government officials, entertainment industry execs, etc, anyone who thinks themselves safe from scrutiny.
- yowlingcat 7y ago
  Amazing how much this applies inside of standard corporate situations that are technically within the letter of the law. The savvier managers and executives, if they want to act in such a manner, tend to do it outside the watchful gaze of anyone else and browbeat peers and subordinates into silence.
- eloff 7y ago
  I think you can formalize this statement with game theory around how reputations work among social organisms. This applies even to dolphins and chimpanzees. It doesn't mean you can't be evil in public, but it does mean it's a suboptimal strategy for your own best interest. Scarily if the public moral compass gets warped enough, then you can be evil in public and get away with it because according to the public you're not doing evil. Like Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. The definition of evil itself changes.
  - Scapeghost 7y ago
    > Scarily if the public moral compass gets warped enough, then you can be evil in public and get away with it because according to the public you're not doing evil. The definition of evil itself changes. Luckily their social superset, the rest of the world, saw them as evil. Makes you wonder, what are we currently doing that is evil but the entire world supports it? China's treatment of Hong Kong and minorities comes to mind. And all the wars and massacres going on that have the full support of the first world and its media.
    - eloff 7y ago
graeme 7y ago
Had a similar thing happen after a guy left me a false review. The guy was an employee of a local company. He cold called me. I was busy so I just hung up, but I did hear the company name. Then I saw a bad review left by someone pretending to have been a customer of mine. He used his real name as it was a google review. I googled, found out he worked for the company that had called me. Spoke to the owner, gave the owner the info. He said he'd look into it. Called back 30 min later, apologized for his employee's actions, said he disciplined him and got him to admit his action was petty and wrong, and he made him take down the review. Real life leverage is a powerful thing.
- kerng 7y ago
  Not understanding this story entirely. You just hung up on someone and then they left a bad review. That's what reviews are for, no?
  - nosuchuser2 7y ago
    The person called them trying to sell something (a "cold call"), but then left a bad review claiming to be a customer.
    - kerng 7y ago
      Ah, got it. Thanks for explaining.
  - yesplorer 7y ago
    He cold called op. So probably wanted to sell them a service/product. By the caller turned around to leave a fake review as though he was a customer of OP. At least that's how I interpreted it.
    - graeme 7y ago
      Yup, exactly that
anonu 7y ago
Great point from the end of the article: Your privacy settings on facebook are only as good as your friends. This is one of the pervasive dark patterns of social media. Even if you're not on social media, you cant stop people from posting an image of you or tagging your name. That feels wrong to me.
- paul7986 7y ago
  Well do no one wrong.. always do right and you won't have any issues.
  - macintux 7y ago
    "Do nothing anyone could ever disagree with" is what you really mean, and that's a terrible way to live.
    - paul7986 7y ago
      Live a moral life is what I'm saying! Not Stealing, cheating and telling lies that causes other harm is how I happily live my life. What I was taught..were u not taught the same?
      - macintux 7y ago
        My point is that there are plenty of activities outside "stealing, cheating, and telling lies" that people you care about may disapprove of. Or, for that matter, that governments may disapprove of.
  - anonu 7y ago
    What if you are just a private person? If I go out with a friend who tags me on social media, I get innocuous questions from other friends like "Oh, you were here or there last week with this person"... I don't need people knowing where I was or who I was with. I am not robbing banks in my free time. I just care about my privacy.
clashmeifyoucan 7y ago
Wait I'm confused, wouldn't it have been a better strategy to go half and half if you have two cards? You send them one card, they receive it and know they can trust you. They send you the money so you trust them, then you send the final card. Worst case you only lose $250.
- terandle 7y ago
  His final line of the post was "Lessons Learned:" "Use an escrow service like Transpact if you want to make trades via bitcoin"
  - clashmeifyoucan 7y ago
    That's fair, I was quite surprised that he gave both his cards away like that.
alainchabat 7y ago
I lived 2 years in a "hutong" (old residential area) in Beijing. Rented an apartment via a middle man that could only get those apartments. After signing the lease, a friend warned me this middle man will certainly find every excuses to not give back the deposit (many stories about it in the foreigners circle). The week I was leaving, she didn't want to give me the deposit .I warned her I'll public shame her if she didn't gave me back the money, and use "internet magic" to collect other poeople stories so it will stop people renting from her. Nothing happened until 3 months later she sent me a wechat transfer. I've closed the website. But then learned again she was keep doing the same thing with an other business name. I've reopened the website with adding her new business name. She didn't contacted me yet. She get away since foreigners just don't want to to deal with that when they are about to leave the country or deal with that. You can Google/Baidu/Bing "courtyard007" or "homeudream"
- DayDollar 7y ago
  The usual traditional farewell as a foreigner is to not pay the last rents and she uses up your deposit for that.
  - alainchabat 7y ago
    In China, you usually pay the rent for the next 3 months so it's tricky to do
lukejduncan 7y ago
I once had a landlord in Detroit who stopped paying his HOA dues In a large complex. I had a court order to pay my rent to the HOA and he was not happy about that. He threatened to evict me (not legal), but then his ex girlfriend got involved. His ex girlfriend was a well known real estate agent with a popular house flipping tv show on national television. She threatened to blacklist me with every major landlord in the city and then only got more aggressive. I looked up the realtors code of conduct, wrote a 10 page complaint to the licensing board with cited evidence, and emailed them a draft with the note “all I want to do is continue to pay my rent and legally occupy this unit. I don’t want to fight, but if we can’t resolve this I will submit it tomorrow.” His girlfriend went away and suddenly I had no problems (and apparently he paid his over due HOA dues). I never mailed the complaint, but I did move out within a few months.
- sneak 7y ago
  You should have sent the complaint anyway; all this does is enable them to continue abusing others. Make a paper trail, tarnish their perfect record, let others know the truth.
  - zuppy 7y ago
    not only that, but that may actually be considered blackmail.
yellow_lead 7y ago
I feel that the lesson at the end of the article should be something more like "don't scam people on the Internet" but otherwise great post.
behnamoh 7y ago
Any more blogs like this? I'd be happy to know more about such incidents.
- geek_at 7y ago
  something similar from the same blog about a malicious raspberry pi in a network closet and in the end the person who put it there was found out because their wifi credentials were still in the Pi https://blog.haschek.at/2019/the-curious-case-of-the-RasPi-in-our-network.html https://blog.haschek.at/2019/the-curious-case-of-the-RasPi-i...
  - steve_taylor 7y ago
    Reminds me of the time I was found out for changing my colleague’s desktop wallpaper to My Little Pony, which is standard punishment for leaving your machine unlocked. Disk not ejected properly Eject "STEVE" before disconnecting or turning it off.
- mtlynch 7y ago
  I wrote a blog post about an Upwork contractor trying to scam me. I found her Facebook but never contacted her family: https://mtlynch.io/upwork-scammer/ https://mtlynch.io/upwork-scammer/
- spyder 7y ago
  Not exactly this kind of scam but, there is the classic scambaiting community at 419eater.com Wiki about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419eater.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419eater.com Also live scambaiting on Twitch from Kitboga: https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga He is trying to waste the time of scammers while having fun and providing entertainment for his viewers.
tyingq 7y ago
I had a b2b company with a aggressively rude sales guy calling me over and over. Called his supervisor, and basically got "tough shit, it's a free world" as an answer. So I looked into what I could do and found that the email contact for their domain wasn't working. Reported to ICANN[1], and their domain was shut down for several days. Then called the supervisor and let him know I was the one that reported it. The sales calls stopped. [1] https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/whois/inaccuracy-form https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/w...
- james_in_the_uk 7y ago
  Had a similar thing with an illegal robocall advertising a domain name. Whois record revealed personal mobile phone number of the director. She was quite surprised when I called her at 9pm to discuss the legality of out of hours robocalls.
zupa-hu 7y ago
I wonder if this would work with patent trolls.
paulpauper 7y ago
dont mess with this guy
packetslave 7y ago
Reminds me of gaming journalist Alanah Pearce, who would report her online abusers to their mothers. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2014/nov/28/alanah-pearce-tells-on-her-internet-trolls-to-their-mothers https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2...
CDSlice 7y ago
Maybe I'm just cynical, but I really think Christian should have gone to the police about this. This scammer was NOT a kid, he was a 22 year old adult who needs to take responsibility for his actions. His "apology" isn't sincere at all and just makes excuses for his behavior and tries to elicit pity with stories of panic attacks and being a broke college student. At this point all that the scammer has learned is to have better op-sec and research his victims better.
- Falling3 7y ago
  Assuming this all took place in the US, the American justice system is pretty horrific. I wouldn't want to call the cops on anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. It's not an action to take lightly.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    Or you want a state sponsored hit squad
  - CDSlice 7y ago
    On the other hand, what if the scammer just keeps scamming? 99% of the population won't be able to do the investigative work Christian did and will just lose their money for good. I wouldn't be able to accept letting a definitely not innocent scammer off free to go scam other innocent people who can't fight back. That is not justice.
  - rootusrootus 7y ago
    I think that if someone wants to avoid interacting with the police, step 1 is not to scam people. Also, while the police do deserve much of their reputation, it's worth remembering that citizens and police interact frequently, all day every day, across the country, and mostly nothing newsworthy happens.
    - arthurdenture 7y ago
      Interactions can be extremely negative without making the news.
changdizzle 7y ago
This is crazy, for some reason this rang a bell and I checked my email and sure enough, I ended up buying those gift codes from you! Funny how things come full circle :)
jdnenej 7y ago
Selling unwanted gift cards online is a huge scammer magnet. I tried to sell a $50 card for $40 recently and wasted a bunch of time with people sending me fake PayPal confirmation messages. Thankfully all of the scammers were pretty stupid and it was easy to tell when they were scamming. It's just super risky on both sides so very few legitimate buyers want to do it since as a seller you could be giving them fake or used codes.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  Good startup idea then to build an escrow service for this? I.e. buy discount cards for 80% of face value, sell them for 90% of face value, and then act as the trusted middle man to verify that the card is good and that payment was made. Not sure if any KYC/AML or other banking regulations would make this less economically viable.
  - jdnenej 7y ago
    How do you verify the card is good before redeeming it?
  - sgerenser 7y ago
    There’s already several sites like this, or at least there was a few years ago. I think some of them went under due to (big surprise) getting scammed. It’s too easy to just keep the numbers, sell the physical gift card to the company, then use them online after a month or two.
pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
I got my money back from a craigslist scam selling faulty electronics. I called everyone in his family. I was finally offered full refund after contacting his current employer. I told his grandma he was a thief.
thelittleone 7y ago
I once bought a set of Bose quiet comfort noise cancelling headphones on EBay. The seller was in the USA and shipping was to Australia. The guy didn’t ship and stopped answering messages. But I had emails from him with IP address. A reverse lookup gave me his company. I called the company and the automated switch asked me to enter name of person I wanted to speak with. I entered his name and it validated he worked there. I have him an email giving him one more chance to do the right thing. He didn’t respond so I sent an email to the CEO, legal counsel and HR with subject “Company X employeeName conducting fraudulent eBay auctions from company X network” with accompanying evidence. He emailed me a few hours later with an express tracking number. I kind of felt bad for him but doing he did from his office is extra stupid.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  > I kind of felt bad for him While I understand the sentiment, we sure are softies when we sympathize with the guy who got in trouble for trying to scam us. He earned that consequence 100%.
  - txdv 7y ago
    no sympathy, he had the chance to send the stuff when he was contacted directly
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- henvic 7y ago
  Don't feel bad. Someone from college bought my QuietComfort 15 pretty cheap when I got the 35. I found it odd that he'd buy it as it's pricey there (Brazil), and tried to convince him not to (as he wasn't rich or even working regularly). He told me not to worry and asked to pay in installments. I made the mistake of accepting his offer, and he practically vanished after paying about 50 USD for it (I sold it for about 130 USD). I am someone who he could ask a referral. Instead, now he has a recommendation against him.
wespiser_2018 7y ago
Ha! This is a good write up, I had a run in with a "scammer" that was made a fake facebook profile of my friends father, using profile pics my friends father had set to public. Long story short, this really bothered by friends father, so I decided to contact the fake account. What I did, was set up a basic website with http request level logging, friend the fake account, waited until the scammer contacted me over FB messenger, and ask him to check out my "website". He did, I kept the conversation going for a little bit, he got to the ask, and I said, "hey, you are a scammer, you live in X town in Y country, I know more about you, and if you don't stop using this account there will be problems!" Anyway, this was about 3 years ago, and there has been no activity on the fake account since!
simplyinfinity 7y ago
Eons ago when I was on a shared hosting account on bluehost, I had my site compromised few times, and got my account temporarily frozen with the warning that if I didn't stop getting hacked they would suspend my account permanently. So I started digging into the php files and found some sort of irc bot and noticed the channel it logged on an the admin username that was allowed to issue commands. Logged on the server and channel and hanged out for a bit but no trace of the username. Started asking around for the person, and someone messeged me and asked what's this about, I explained that I just want the hacking to stop so I don't get kicked out of the hosting I was barely paying for. I was met with understanding and the person said they would pass along the message. The hacking stopped. And I was a happy kid 16 year old.
MaupitiBlue 7y ago
This is pathetic. A grown man whining to somebody’s mom because he was dumb enough to mail something of value to a random person on the internet.
- HocusLocus 7y ago
  I'd rather live in his world, than yours. Besides, I've met few moms/brothers who weren't curious what their kids/siblings were up to. Perhaps Christian helped him to become closer to his family in the end.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
EGreg 7y ago
I had a client that ran a startup who owed me $30K, after months of leading me on and telling me I had to do XYZ, the sky was falling etc. Meanwhile they paid others. I had put the website up at Amazon and could take it down, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for “unauthorized access” stuff. I considered doing a DMCA takedown since they had never signed any copyright assignment. Would have probably succeeded. Another thing I could have done was introduce a “bug” that happened to hit at a certain day and demand being paid before I do any more work. But in the end I didn’t do anything. That $30K out of my pocket really set me back for a long time. Lots of people were pissed at this startup, it was a shitshow. Story 2 A friend of mine was quite mistreated by a girl who went out w him. She liked me so I contemplated inviting her out to an expensive restaurant, ordering a large meal and then skipping out on the check. Never did it. I even thought of doing something worse. Saying we should get matching tattoos, except mine would be a fake one. Story 3 Also I had met a girl and texted back and forth, she seemed excited to meet, we made plans, I drove an hour to meet her and then she totally stood me up and stopped answering. I was pretty upset at her and I contemplated putting up an ad on Craiglist in the “hookers” section (they had one back then) with her phone number and a fake name that would make her realize I did it (“EGreg’s XYZ”). Suffice it to say I never did that one either. Conclusion: I know how to be an asshole but seem to never choose to follow through lol
- digitalsushi 7y ago
  It can be valuable for us to find an outlet to experience control, to avoid escalating the fantasy of taking control over other human beings. We're all humans and all terrible to each other, but in short bursts sometimes we can anonymously improve the network by not contributing a negative action to experience control. Good on you for not abusing your female acquaintances with trick tattoos or besmirching someone as a prostitute, but it might feel even better to find a way to avoid needing the fantasy altogether. I enjoy pruning wild bushes. It gives me the pause to re-balance whatever is getting to me. I wander through the woods looking for lopsided wild cherry bushes and give them symmetry. It's still sort of a form of chaos but better a wild bush than a person. It's my dumb thing, but there's millions of activities that might be a good fit for anyone. Thanks for your post! Cheers.

508 points by geek_at 7y ago

Ha, this is awesome. I'm glad that the author got his money back. But use this as a reminder, whether you're doing nefarious activities or not, you can probably be found online with a few hours of research unless you're being incredibly careful.

simion314 7y ago
A better lesson, think what your mother will say/feel about the thing your about to do (with the exception if you are not close to your family)
- atlasunshrugged 7y ago
  Yes, true, although I hope most people already have internalized that they shouldn't commit fraud whether or not their mother would approve
  - ackbar03 7y ago
    This is a good test though. I forgot where I read it from but there was this saying if your doing something you would be ashamed to tell your freidns or family about than you probably shouldn't be doing it
    - TallGuyShort 7y ago
      You might have heard it when former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was brushing off concerns about online privacy.
- technothrasher 7y ago
  Unless your mother is Ma Barker ;)
CapacitorSet 7y ago
If you share usernames, that is. I could very well make up a unique username like "Nikatoa" that I never even thought of before, and there's no way you could link that to any other account of mine - short of database leaks containing my email or linking/commenting from one account to another.

oftenwrong 7y ago

"I will never do anything like this again." I doubt that.

toxik 7y ago
He just got a lesson in how to scam properly. Impressively stupid though.
mysterydip 7y ago
Spoken with the same sincerity of a politician who is truly sorry for their momentary lapse in judgement. That being said, back in the early 90s I was playing around with virus generators (total script kiddie stuff) and ended up infecting my own system. That was enough to keep me out of nefarious activities from then on.
hinkley 7y ago
"It's time for some all new tricks."

vaba 7y ago

Fully Joke!!

zuck9 7y ago

Reminds me of the time this lady contacted the mother of a man who sent her violent threats and got him to apologize: https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/1188128030268575744 https://twitter.com/AGlasgowGirl/status/1188128030268575744

awinder 7y ago
“Thanks for letting us know about our stupid son” omg this was parenting thing is the wildest game on earth
Moru 7y ago
Or the masseur [0] that got fed up with "do you have happy endings?" and started contacting the wifes of her customers. [0] https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1377985 https://sverigesradio.se/avsnitt/1377985 (in swedish though...)

Judson 7y ago

One method I use for fighting “friendly fraud” in our b2b business (smb customers) is to message their Facebook page after sufficiently attempting to contact someone more official. It has always worked. I hypothesize it’s easy to rationalize things away, but the FB channel typically requires a non-owner employee to ask the owner/purchasing manager why the company isn’t paying their suppliers.

umvi 7y ago

So wait, the guy just sent the Apple cards and trusted he would be paid on the honor system? Doesn't eBay make the other party pay first before you ship? I thought that was the whole point of eBay.

Semaphor 7y ago
They weren’t using ebay, the scammer just used it to prove he’s trustworthy.

whalesalad 7y ago

I was selling PHP based software around 2009. It wasn’t pirate proof in any way. I was charitable with it too... if anyone was disadvantaged or a student or similar I’d send them a free license. Some kid posed as a journalist for a review copy and then once he had it, started to aggressively distribute it to every leak/piracy site he possibly could. Attempts to discuss it with him were futile. I was pissed. At the time I was a freelancer and so this was a huge portion of my income. I basically lived off the dopamine hits from each sale, not to mention the actual sale revenue via a PayPal debit card. The OG ones that were that weird blueish silver sparkle. Funds basically went directly from sales to paying bills and feeding myself. So I used his personal info to track his location. Ended up finding his poor old grandmother who was his caretaker and barely spoke English. I tried to explain the situation to her and explain how unreasonable he was acting. She didn’t understand anything I said but I think the mere act of getting her involved scared him enough to undo everything he did. He was not happy I had figured that out. Check mate kiddo.

usaphp 7y ago
How did you lock a php based software with a license? Could not they just dig into code and remove the license restrictions, since you provided them with the code?
- krn 7y ago
  Zend Guard[1] was often used for licensing PHP code in mid-2000s. [1] https://www.zend.com/products/zend-guard https://www.zend.com/products/zend-guard
  - amenod 7y ago
    And IonCube PHP Encoder [0] (not affiliated, had positive experience with them as a customer). These apps solve real-world problem - sometimes it makes sense from business perspective to make copying the software more difficult. [0] https://www.ioncube.com/ https://www.ioncube.com/
- wongarsu 7y ago

fortran77 7y ago

He should have gone to the Police. He's just going to do it again.

wongarsu 7y ago
The US justice system isn't known for reforming people, if anything it turns small-time criminals into hardened criminals. The parents probably have a better shot at doing something good.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
> He's just going to do it again And after he graduates criminal university, he's probably going to do far worse.

peteretep 7y ago

I had a similar story from eBay back in the day, where someone had sold me faulty goods. Was worried I’d have to do a whole fraud process thing, but managed to find his Dad’s contact details, threatened to contact him, and suddenly the guy/kid couldn’t do enough to fix it

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

This is awesome. I once had an asshole of a roommate. When I had had enough and moved out, they wouldn't return my security deposit. But I had leverage. They had been getting school tuition money from their parents, but not going to school. I tracked down their parents. & politely asked for my security deposit back in exchange for not outing them to their folks. I got my money back the next day.

willis936 7y ago
You probably should have outed them afterwards anyway. Scamming your own parents is a shitty thing to do.
- graeme 7y ago
  Then you still have an asshole, sociopathic roommate, and you no longer have any leverage on them. A dangerous game. They literally live with you, and are supremely immoral.
  - shakna 7y ago
    > When I had had enough and moved out, they wouldn't return my security deposit. None of it would have been safe to do if they were still living with them.
  - gmjosack 7y ago
    The anecdote was about getting back the security deposit after moving out.
    - graeme 7y ago
      Oops, I misread it. Though I think my general argument still stands: the ex roommate knew a lot about OP, and was immoral. As long as OP knew his secret the ex roommate couldn't retaliate. If OP had outed them, they would have further angered the ex roommate and freed the roommate from consequences it they wanted to get revenge on OP.
  - deleted 7y ago

DonHopkins 7y ago

Did he say he was sorry he took the money? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF_sahvR4mw

geek_at 7y ago
no he was just sorry he was caught

Scapeghost 7y ago

> I think the mere act of getting her involved scared him enough to undo everything he did. He was not happy I had figured that out. Most people only act evil under anonymity, thinking they can get away with it, and can't withstand the risk of public shaming. This applies not only to the internet, but government officials, entertainment industry execs, etc, anyone who thinks themselves safe from scrutiny.

yowlingcat 7y ago
Amazing how much this applies inside of standard corporate situations that are technically within the letter of the law. The savvier managers and executives, if they want to act in such a manner, tend to do it outside the watchful gaze of anyone else and browbeat peers and subordinates into silence.
eloff 7y ago
I think you can formalize this statement with game theory around how reputations work among social organisms. This applies even to dolphins and chimpanzees. It doesn't mean you can't be evil in public, but it does mean it's a suboptimal strategy for your own best interest. Scarily if the public moral compass gets warped enough, then you can be evil in public and get away with it because according to the public you're not doing evil. Like Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany. The definition of evil itself changes.
- Scapeghost 7y ago
  > Scarily if the public moral compass gets warped enough, then you can be evil in public and get away with it because according to the public you're not doing evil. The definition of evil itself changes. Luckily their social superset, the rest of the world, saw them as evil. Makes you wonder, what are we currently doing that is evil but the entire world supports it? China's treatment of Hong Kong and minorities comes to mind. And all the wars and massacres going on that have the full support of the first world and its media.
  - eloff 7y ago

graeme 7y ago

Had a similar thing happen after a guy left me a false review. The guy was an employee of a local company. He cold called me. I was busy so I just hung up, but I did hear the company name. Then I saw a bad review left by someone pretending to have been a customer of mine. He used his real name as it was a google review. I googled, found out he worked for the company that had called me. Spoke to the owner, gave the owner the info. He said he'd look into it. Called back 30 min later, apologized for his employee's actions, said he disciplined him and got him to admit his action was petty and wrong, and he made him take down the review. Real life leverage is a powerful thing.

kerng 7y ago
Not understanding this story entirely. You just hung up on someone and then they left a bad review. That's what reviews are for, no?
- nosuchuser2 7y ago
  The person called them trying to sell something (a "cold call"), but then left a bad review claiming to be a customer.
  - kerng 7y ago
    Ah, got it. Thanks for explaining.
- yesplorer 7y ago
  He cold called op. So probably wanted to sell them a service/product. By the caller turned around to leave a fake review as though he was a customer of OP. At least that's how I interpreted it.
  - graeme 7y ago
    Yup, exactly that

anonu 7y ago

Great point from the end of the article: Your privacy settings on facebook are only as good as your friends. This is one of the pervasive dark patterns of social media. Even if you're not on social media, you cant stop people from posting an image of you or tagging your name. That feels wrong to me.

paul7986 7y ago
Well do no one wrong.. always do right and you won't have any issues.
- macintux 7y ago
  "Do nothing anyone could ever disagree with" is what you really mean, and that's a terrible way to live.
  - paul7986 7y ago
    Live a moral life is what I'm saying! Not Stealing, cheating and telling lies that causes other harm is how I happily live my life. What I was taught..were u not taught the same?
    - macintux 7y ago
      My point is that there are plenty of activities outside "stealing, cheating, and telling lies" that people you care about may disapprove of. Or, for that matter, that governments may disapprove of.
- anonu 7y ago
  What if you are just a private person? If I go out with a friend who tags me on social media, I get innocuous questions from other friends like "Oh, you were here or there last week with this person"... I don't need people knowing where I was or who I was with. I am not robbing banks in my free time. I just care about my privacy.

clashmeifyoucan 7y ago

Wait I'm confused, wouldn't it have been a better strategy to go half and half if you have two cards? You send them one card, they receive it and know they can trust you. They send you the money so you trust them, then you send the final card. Worst case you only lose $250.

terandle 7y ago
His final line of the post was "Lessons Learned:" "Use an escrow service like Transpact if you want to make trades via bitcoin"
- clashmeifyoucan 7y ago
  That's fair, I was quite surprised that he gave both his cards away like that.

alainchabat 7y ago

I lived 2 years in a "hutong" (old residential area) in Beijing. Rented an apartment via a middle man that could only get those apartments. After signing the lease, a friend warned me this middle man will certainly find every excuses to not give back the deposit (many stories about it in the foreigners circle). The week I was leaving, she didn't want to give me the deposit .I warned her I'll public shame her if she didn't gave me back the money, and use "internet magic" to collect other poeople stories so it will stop people renting from her. Nothing happened until 3 months later she sent me a wechat transfer. I've closed the website. But then learned again she was keep doing the same thing with an other business name. I've reopened the website with adding her new business name. She didn't contacted me yet. She get away since foreigners just don't want to to deal with that when they are about to leave the country or deal with that. You can Google/Baidu/Bing "courtyard007" or "homeudream"

DayDollar 7y ago
The usual traditional farewell as a foreigner is to not pay the last rents and she uses up your deposit for that.
- alainchabat 7y ago
  In China, you usually pay the rent for the next 3 months so it's tricky to do

lukejduncan 7y ago

I once had a landlord in Detroit who stopped paying his HOA dues In a large complex. I had a court order to pay my rent to the HOA and he was not happy about that. He threatened to evict me (not legal), but then his ex girlfriend got involved. His ex girlfriend was a well known real estate agent with a popular house flipping tv show on national television. She threatened to blacklist me with every major landlord in the city and then only got more aggressive. I looked up the realtors code of conduct, wrote a 10 page complaint to the licensing board with cited evidence, and emailed them a draft with the note “all I want to do is continue to pay my rent and legally occupy this unit. I don’t want to fight, but if we can’t resolve this I will submit it tomorrow.” His girlfriend went away and suddenly I had no problems (and apparently he paid his over due HOA dues). I never mailed the complaint, but I did move out within a few months.

sneak 7y ago
You should have sent the complaint anyway; all this does is enable them to continue abusing others. Make a paper trail, tarnish their perfect record, let others know the truth.
- zuppy 7y ago
  not only that, but that may actually be considered blackmail.

yellow_lead 7y ago

I feel that the lesson at the end of the article should be something more like "don't scam people on the Internet" but otherwise great post.

behnamoh 7y ago

Any more blogs like this? I'd be happy to know more about such incidents.

geek_at 7y ago
something similar from the same blog about a malicious raspberry pi in a network closet and in the end the person who put it there was found out because their wifi credentials were still in the Pi https://blog.haschek.at/2019/the-curious-case-of-the-RasPi-in-our-network.html https://blog.haschek.at/2019/the-curious-case-of-the-RasPi-i...
- steve_taylor 7y ago
  Reminds me of the time I was found out for changing my colleague’s desktop wallpaper to My Little Pony, which is standard punishment for leaving your machine unlocked. Disk not ejected properly Eject "STEVE" before disconnecting or turning it off.
mtlynch 7y ago
I wrote a blog post about an Upwork contractor trying to scam me. I found her Facebook but never contacted her family: https://mtlynch.io/upwork-scammer/ https://mtlynch.io/upwork-scammer/
spyder 7y ago
Not exactly this kind of scam but, there is the classic scambaiting community at 419eater.com Wiki about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419eater.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/419eater.com Also live scambaiting on Twitch from Kitboga: https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga https://www.twitch.tv/kitboga He is trying to waste the time of scammers while having fun and providing entertainment for his viewers.

tyingq 7y ago

I had a b2b company with a aggressively rude sales guy calling me over and over. Called his supervisor, and basically got "tough shit, it's a free world" as an answer. So I looked into what I could do and found that the email contact for their domain wasn't working. Reported to ICANN[1], and their domain was shut down for several days. Then called the supervisor and let him know I was the one that reported it. The sales calls stopped. [1] https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/whois/inaccuracy-form https://forms.icann.org/en/resources/compliance/complaints/w...

james_in_the_uk 7y ago
Had a similar thing with an illegal robocall advertising a domain name. Whois record revealed personal mobile phone number of the director. She was quite surprised when I called her at 9pm to discuss the legality of out of hours robocalls.

zupa-hu 7y ago

I wonder if this would work with patent trolls.

paulpauper 7y ago

dont mess with this guy

packetslave 7y ago

Reminds me of gaming journalist Alanah Pearce, who would report her online abusers to their mothers. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2014/nov/28/alanah-pearce-tells-on-her-internet-trolls-to-their-mothers https://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2...

CDSlice 7y ago

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I really think Christian should have gone to the police about this. This scammer was NOT a kid, he was a 22 year old adult who needs to take responsibility for his actions. His "apology" isn't sincere at all and just makes excuses for his behavior and tries to elicit pity with stories of panic attacks and being a broke college student. At this point all that the scammer has learned is to have better op-sec and research his victims better.

Falling3 7y ago
Assuming this all took place in the US, the American justice system is pretty horrific. I wouldn't want to call the cops on anyone unless it was absolutely necessary. It's not an action to take lightly.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  Or you want a state sponsored hit squad
- CDSlice 7y ago
  On the other hand, what if the scammer just keeps scamming? 99% of the population won't be able to do the investigative work Christian did and will just lose their money for good. I wouldn't be able to accept letting a definitely not innocent scammer off free to go scam other innocent people who can't fight back. That is not justice.
- rootusrootus 7y ago
  I think that if someone wants to avoid interacting with the police, step 1 is not to scam people. Also, while the police do deserve much of their reputation, it's worth remembering that citizens and police interact frequently, all day every day, across the country, and mostly nothing newsworthy happens.
  - arthurdenture 7y ago
    Interactions can be extremely negative without making the news.

changdizzle 7y ago

This is crazy, for some reason this rang a bell and I checked my email and sure enough, I ended up buying those gift codes from you! Funny how things come full circle :)

jdnenej 7y ago

Selling unwanted gift cards online is a huge scammer magnet. I tried to sell a $50 card for $40 recently and wasted a bunch of time with people sending me fake PayPal confirmation messages. Thankfully all of the scammers were pretty stupid and it was easy to tell when they were scamming. It's just super risky on both sides so very few legitimate buyers want to do it since as a seller you could be giving them fake or used codes.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Good startup idea then to build an escrow service for this? I.e. buy discount cards for 80% of face value, sell them for 90% of face value, and then act as the trusted middle man to verify that the card is good and that payment was made. Not sure if any KYC/AML or other banking regulations would make this less economically viable.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  How do you verify the card is good before redeeming it?
- sgerenser 7y ago
  There’s already several sites like this, or at least there was a few years ago. I think some of them went under due to (big surprise) getting scammed. It’s too easy to just keep the numbers, sell the physical gift card to the company, then use them online after a month or two.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago

I got my money back from a craigslist scam selling faulty electronics. I called everyone in his family. I was finally offered full refund after contacting his current employer. I told his grandma he was a thief.

thelittleone 7y ago

I once bought a set of Bose quiet comfort noise cancelling headphones on EBay. The seller was in the USA and shipping was to Australia. The guy didn’t ship and stopped answering messages. But I had emails from him with IP address. A reverse lookup gave me his company. I called the company and the automated switch asked me to enter name of person I wanted to speak with. I entered his name and it validated he worked there. I have him an email giving him one more chance to do the right thing. He didn’t respond so I sent an email to the CEO, legal counsel and HR with subject “Company X employeeName conducting fraudulent eBay auctions from company X network” with accompanying evidence. He emailed me a few hours later with an express tracking number. I kind of felt bad for him but doing he did from his office is extra stupid.

rootusrootus 7y ago
> I kind of felt bad for him While I understand the sentiment, we sure are softies when we sympathize with the guy who got in trouble for trying to scam us. He earned that consequence 100%.
- txdv 7y ago
  no sympathy, he had the chance to send the stuff when he was contacted directly
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
henvic 7y ago
Don't feel bad. Someone from college bought my QuietComfort 15 pretty cheap when I got the 35. I found it odd that he'd buy it as it's pricey there (Brazil), and tried to convince him not to (as he wasn't rich or even working regularly). He told me not to worry and asked to pay in installments. I made the mistake of accepting his offer, and he practically vanished after paying about 50 USD for it (I sold it for about 130 USD). I am someone who he could ask a referral. Instead, now he has a recommendation against him.

wespiser_2018 7y ago

Ha! This is a good write up, I had a run in with a "scammer" that was made a fake facebook profile of my friends father, using profile pics my friends father had set to public. Long story short, this really bothered by friends father, so I decided to contact the fake account. What I did, was set up a basic website with http request level logging, friend the fake account, waited until the scammer contacted me over FB messenger, and ask him to check out my "website". He did, I kept the conversation going for a little bit, he got to the ask, and I said, "hey, you are a scammer, you live in X town in Y country, I know more about you, and if you don't stop using this account there will be problems!" Anyway, this was about 3 years ago, and there has been no activity on the fake account since!

simplyinfinity 7y ago

Eons ago when I was on a shared hosting account on bluehost, I had my site compromised few times, and got my account temporarily frozen with the warning that if I didn't stop getting hacked they would suspend my account permanently. So I started digging into the php files and found some sort of irc bot and noticed the channel it logged on an the admin username that was allowed to issue commands. Logged on the server and channel and hanged out for a bit but no trace of the username. Started asking around for the person, and someone messeged me and asked what's this about, I explained that I just want the hacking to stop so I don't get kicked out of the hosting I was barely paying for. I was met with understanding and the person said they would pass along the message. The hacking stopped. And I was a happy kid 16 year old.

MaupitiBlue 7y ago

This is pathetic. A grown man whining to somebody’s mom because he was dumb enough to mail something of value to a random person on the internet.

HocusLocus 7y ago
I'd rather live in his world, than yours. Besides, I've met few moms/brothers who weren't curious what their kids/siblings were up to. Perhaps Christian helped him to become closer to his family in the end.

deleted 7y ago

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EGreg 7y ago

I had a client that ran a startup who owed me $30K, after months of leading me on and telling me I had to do XYZ, the sky was falling etc. Meanwhile they paid others. I had put the website up at Amazon and could take it down, but I didn’t want to get in trouble for “unauthorized access” stuff. I considered doing a DMCA takedown since they had never signed any copyright assignment. Would have probably succeeded. Another thing I could have done was introduce a “bug” that happened to hit at a certain day and demand being paid before I do any more work. But in the end I didn’t do anything. That $30K out of my pocket really set me back for a long time. Lots of people were pissed at this startup, it was a shitshow. Story 2 A friend of mine was quite mistreated by a girl who went out w him. She liked me so I contemplated inviting her out to an expensive restaurant, ordering a large meal and then skipping out on the check. Never did it. I even thought of doing something worse. Saying we should get matching tattoos, except mine would be a fake one. Story 3 Also I had met a girl and texted back and forth, she seemed excited to meet, we made plans, I drove an hour to meet her and then she totally stood me up and stopped answering. I was pretty upset at her and I contemplated putting up an ad on Craiglist in the “hookers” section (they had one back then) with her phone number and a fake name that would make her realize I did it (“EGreg’s XYZ”). Suffice it to say I never did that one either. Conclusion: I know how to be an asshole but seem to never choose to follow through lol

digitalsushi 7y ago
It can be valuable for us to find an outlet to experience control, to avoid escalating the fantasy of taking control over other human beings. We're all humans and all terrible to each other, but in short bursts sometimes we can anonymously improve the network by not contributing a negative action to experience control. Good on you for not abusing your female acquaintances with trick tattoos or besmirching someone as a prostitute, but it might feel even better to find a way to avoid needing the fantasy altogether. I enjoy pruning wild bushes. It gives me the pause to re-balance whatever is getting to me. I wander through the woods looking for lopsided wild cherry bushes and give them symmetry. It's still sort of a form of chaos but better a wild bush than a person. It's my dumb thing, but there's millions of activities that might be a good fit for anyone. Thanks for your post! Cheers.