My opinion...if you fall for it once, you basically "paid for a lesson you needed to learn". If it happens again, your computer license should be revoked.

@theblackdog: I like the idea. Might I suggest an enhancement: Give them a "good to transfer" AND a "Do not Transfer" code word/phrase. That way if you're forced against your will to contact them you can give them the bad code and your contacts will know you're in deep doo-doo and will contact the appropriate authorities.
May you not have any problems on your trip. Send us all some postcards (maybe via the Friday Flickr updates?).

Oh, I LOVE YOU KATE!!! Laughing my butt off..WELL DONE!

That was so funny Liz! Good job!

Thank you for the milk on my laptop now :)

/kidding

They told her that too many women of a certain age were getting scammed, so the owner of the place decided to violate the agreement he had with the money transfer people.

Turns out, it was a scam. She would have lost $2500.

The problem is many of those people are in Nigeria, which poses a slight jurisdiction problem. It ends up that pursuing it is not worth the effort.

Really, I think the government should force them to tighten their standards on receiving the money. For instance, no more being able to receive the money anywhere. The money must be received within a certain distance of the location it was sent. ID should be required, and employees must be trained to spot fake IDs.

It's not really a fatal flaw at all. If there is a known scammer with traceable e-mails/chat logs/whatevers, then that particular case gets sent to the FBI division created to specifically scam the scammers into getting arrested. The FBI does an investigation, and then works with WU to set the scammer up. The FBI get the scammer, and WU gets some sort of reward for helping. All the employee has to do is take as much time as it usually takes to get the damn money anyway; there's not even a stall tactic needed while the cops are called. Seems like a simple system to me that takes the control/responsibility away from WU and gives it all to the FBI.

@acarr260: Umm... phishing is a form of social engineering.

It's not in Western Union's (financial) best interest to do such a thing. Status quo, they collect a fee on all money wired to scammers. Less scamming = less profit.

Also, imagine the consumerist article if Western Union implemented what you're suggesting and misued it. "My uncle was stranded in Nigeria after falling for a 419 scam, I wired him $3000 so he could get home, and Western Union had him arrested. He's now being held in a Nigerian jail awaiting extradition. Western Union gave my uncle AIDS" etc etc.

Note that the address is useless. Funds can be picked up in any Western Union, any place in the world showing an ID. Frequently, there is a secret question and answer.

Interesting question: - If she lost all her ID's, how can she prove to Western Union who she is.

Ebay recommends in large print never to send money by Western Union.

There is no way to track it; no way to find out who picked it up; no way to get it back.

However, if you do insist on using Western Union, I have this uncle who works in a bank in Nigeria . . .

@Bearded Rapper:

Thats on 419eater.com

Awesome sight if you have some time to kill.

You rock!

Bravo to you both.

Yeah, so I was quite a bit skeptical when I got this run-around. Though I did not get as far as the request to send money via Western Union. I began being skeptical a bit too early...

@tape: Rule 1: don't loan money to parallel-universe copies of your friends. They are most likely bastards and will scam you. Unless of course your real friends are scamming bastards, in which case you have a better chance of getting your money back by loaning it to their parallel selves...

...isn't fake science fun?

So I'm the Liz that posted this story. I am glad you are all amused!

I did email both my friend Kate and also Facebook abuse about the situation. They have a report button specifically for 419 scams.

My husband was the one looking up the numbers for the embassy and the FBI for me while I was stringing the scammer along, so he should get some of the credit.

Also, the scammer "unfriended" me from Kate's account as soon as they realized what was going on. That wasn't very nice of that scammer!

The problem is setting up accounts on the FBI side and waiting to be hijacked. There is no way to bait someone to hijack your account, unlike baiting pedophiles, which is incredibly easy.

Besides, like you said, they're making money with the things being the way they are, so why change it if it works? If it ain't broke, (and as far as WU is concerned, it ain't), don't fix it.

And then they are arrested.

Too easy?

I personally would send an image of a spider. You can print it out and it's Better than money. Or promise to send some US $20 coins and perhaps a few $200 bills. Or tell them you will send them a check for $1800.00, and they can keep 900, and they give you the extra 900. That way you each owe each other 900, so it's a wash.

But seriously, the false concern and "helpfullness", were just all flavors of awesome.

A hack would be more like brute-forcing a specific account or a specific set of accounts.

It's a nitpick, but it always bothers me.

Brute Force: Trying a very large number of username/password combination until one hits. This is usually prevented by the website, as it's easy to notice. But it's useful for other purposes.

Personal: The hacker is targeting a person he or she know, allowing them to guess at security questions. By using this method, one usually attempts to gain access to email accounts first, then to others.

Social Engineering: Quite a few things can fall into this category, and it's usually the most effective. In the context of this particular scam, someone could have made a fake Facebook site and convinced someone to enter their credentials within it. It is also a very common method used to obtain online banking and credit card information. That's why you should always check the URL before typing in your sensitive information.

love it!! @crutnacker:

Of course, I happened to know that she had a certain set of plans for Saturday night which pretty much excluded the possibility of her being in London at that time, barring parallel universes or some such silliness.

I strung them along for as long as I could bear it, which was not quite as long as our hero of the post.