Scammer steals identity of professor & fills ancient MG form

Scammer steals identity of professor & fills ancient MG form Mar 11, 2023 0:05:44 GMT Admin, Birlic, and 6 more like this

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Post by Al Kaseltzer on Mar 11, 2023 0:05:44 GMT

Thomas is a RL friend of mine. We are members of the same little miniature wargaming club, but more importantly, he was incidently my supervisor when I wrote my master thesis about 419 back in 2015 (it was about the geography of 419, most of you would probably find it boring). So he knows a bit about what we do.

In 2020 he contacted me about a lad, who had hacked the mail account of one of his professor colleagues in South Africa, and mailed his contacts posing as him and asking for money. Thomas immediately smelled a rat, warned the real preofessor and contacted me. We baited him a bit, but after a few days he mailed us that the transaction was no longer relevant, much to our surprise. Apparently he was too much in a hurry, or whatnot. Anyway, we both kind of forgot about him.

Yesterday, however, Thomas sent me a message that the lad was back, asking for money. Thomas forwarded him to the university's financial officer, Anna Chlamydia (my character), and so the fun began.

Subject: IGU

Hello Thomas,

How are you? Please are you available to help the board with something today? Let me know so I can explain better.

Regards
Michael E Meadows

Thomas replied:

Hi Michael

I am always happy to help you. What can I do?

/t

Dear Thomas,

Thank you for your swift response. Please would you be able to process a wire transfer or make an online bank transfer to a Vendor on behalf of the board today and get reimbursed on Tuesday? Please let me know so I can send you the instructions/details to complete this request.

Thanks

Well, I cannot do it myself, but I will be happy to transfer you to the financial officer at the university. All economic issues go through central accounting so I will include Anna in this mail. She will take you through the process. Anna is an excellent financial officer, and I am sure you can arrange it with her.

anna Please help Michael out. He is the president of the international geographers union and based in South Africa

Best regards

Thomas

I heeded Thomas' call.

Hello Thomas.

But of course. I will be happy to serve mr. Meadows.
michael Meadows, how may I help you?

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

The lad replied with the same request for a wire transfer as he sent to Thomas. My response:

Dear Mr. Meadows,

I can do something along those lines, yes. Can you provide me with further details, please?

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

Dear Anna,

Please I will appreciate it if you can get the transfer done now and if possible, they get the funds today or tomorrow and also indicate (IGU BOARD) as the purpose of the transfer and if there are any charges that come with the transfer let me know.

[Piggy info redacted and account reported]
Amount : €‎2,500

Once you are done with the transfer kindly email me the copy of the transfer so I can forward to the vendor as confirmation. I will be checking my email for your reply.

Regards
Michael E Meadows

Anna was eager to help, but alas, there was a problem

Dear Mr. Meadows,

I am ready to proceed with the transfer, but due to Danish anti money laundry legislation, I will have to ask you to fill the attached form.
It is necessary to enclose a properly filled form in order make a bank transfer to the Netherlands, where your vendor is located. As soon as I get the form back, the transfer can proceed.
I am working late tonight, so if you can send the filled form back swiftly, I will be able to complete the transfer tonight.
I stand ready to serve you, and will await your response.

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

I attached this old form.

Dear Anna,

I can understand all you said and I want you to know I am very busy at this moment to fill out the form attached to me, so I ask my treasurer to prepare this invoice attachment. So I am imploring you with the trust you have in our organisation to please make the payment of 2500 Euros today so as to ensure swift reimbursement by Tuesday. Please immediately you are done with the transfer kindly email me the copy of the transfer so I can forward it to the vendor as confirmation. I will be checking my email for your reply

Thanks in anticipation

Unfortunately, Anna is just a pawn in the game of life, so who is she to bypass local legislation?

Dear Mr. Meadows,

As much as I would like to help you, I am afraid it is not possible to proceed unless you fill the form. I am supposed to upload the form to the netbank system as I order the transfer. My country has tightened the laws regarding international money transfers the later years, much to the frustration to us, who work internationally on a daily basis.
So without the form, it wouldn't be possible to make a bank transfer. The only alternative would be to send cash through a courier post service, but that wouyld take a few days. So, although I do realize that you have a busy schedule, I suggest that you take the time to fill the form and return it to me tonight, so your vendor can have the money by tomorrow morning.

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

This option seemed to please the professor.

Dear Anna,

Thanks for the response and for the willingness to help, well I have talk to the vendor and he said if you can mail out the cash to him with Express courier, that it will be in 24hrs or less and it will get to him and after he confirm he will get back to me, so what information do you need to get the cash mail to him so I can ask him to provide it. I will be waiting to read from you soon again.

Thanks
Best Regard

But alas...

Dear Mr. Meadows,

I am afraid that Express Courier doesn't cater my country, but I will use [redacted] service, whom I happen to know cater the Netherlands, as I sent some calcium shippings to the University of Kloutsack on several occasions.
I will need the name, phone number and email address of the vendor. If you can mail this information to me before noon, the money should be ready for pickup at the PITH office in Amstedam early evening today.

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

And I went to bed.
This morning I got this:

Dear Anna,

Good morning and how was your night! sorry I've to send you a message very early, actually I got a message from the vendor with a better option, Instead of mailing the cash you can easily make use of Western Union or MoneyGram, it will be much easier and fast for him, so kindly let me know if that's ok so I can send you the information to send it to.

Thanks

Dear Mr. Meadows,

I am afraid that the same anti money laundering legislation applies to Western Union and MoneyGram. I have attached the forms for both
services for your convenience.
Kindly let me know your decision, whether to use Western Union, MoneyGram or the courier service.

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

I attached a couple of Nurse Nasty's good, old forms. And the professor made his choice.

The vendor said MoneyGram

Dear Mr. Meadows,

Thanks for your swift reply. I stand ready to proceed with the transaction as soon as I receive the paperwork.

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

So I went back to do some real work, and after that I went to a pub with an old colleague, had a few pints, and went home. I work as a consultant for a large Danish labour union these days, so my weekend starts Friday at 1:30 PM

Took a short nap when I came home.

When I woke up, this wonderful mail was in my inbox.

Dear Anna,

Below is the attached form for the MoneyGram, Kindly Email the copy of the transfer.

Thanks

[To the mods: I totally forgot how to resize the image previews - my apologies, I've obviously gotten rusty.]

Score!

But unfortunately, the professor did a bit of a sloppy job, so I took another nap, and when I woke up a few hours later, I sent him this mild slap.

Mr. Meadows,

I spent several hours finding a MoneyGram office and waiting in line, only to have the transaction dismissed because there was two pages of the form that you hadn't filled.
Two blank pages. I am surprised that a professor like yourself could miss that. So kindly return the form properly filled this time, so we can complete this transaction without more fooling around.

Sincerely,
Anna Chlamydia
Financial Officer

To be continued? I certainly hope so - the plan is to get him on the MG chatbot, but all in good time.