Lets go on…

I really hope they catch them

So she can only use the computer at hotel reception, which is handy. I still hold out hope for the London Police Departments skills.

Needing a phone these days is important

Yes of course you need a phone these days, but asking me for a Sprint or Verizon account (which I don’t have anyway)… wonder what that’s about? I’m sure that if I didn’t just avoid the question it’d be asking for access to that account, or gift cards, or something. See how helpful I’m trying to be as well? Man I’m a nice guy.

She can only use an iPhone X

So she needs a phone to communicate while she’s in London, but can only use a $1000 iPhone X. Let’s call her out on this a bit.

Trauma doesn’t stop the desire for a high end smartphone

So I didn’t have a Sprint or Verizon account, but maybe I could just send her money right?

Also her bank can’t get her funds (from her very full bank account I’m sure), for 10 days. Note the date at this point in the story is May 3rd.

Reeling Her In

Reeling her in

So at this point I had two different directions I could have gone:

Tell her I couldn’t and have her (probably) beg for money and hope I would break down

Offer to help to give her hope and then just mess with her for as long as possible

I chose the latter.

Hmm..

Now I’ve honestly never sent money through Western Union before, but it seems odd to both send it to an address, and who, per chance, is Felix Obeng, and why should I send money to him instead of her?

For reference and easy copy and paste, here’s that address:

Felix obeng

69 ipsden building

windmill walk

se1 8it,UK

Lets see if she wants more

I did a bit of looking quickly on Facebook and this was the list of Felix Obengs I found.

None of these guys seem to work in London

Now I’m not saying that none of these guys work as a receptionist at a hotel in London, but …

Trying to get the straight story

So she needs a phone, it has to be an iPhone X, and wants $400 from me, her friend of a couple of weeks. What a nice coincidence that $400 is a relatively low number that someone who is feeling generous could send, as opposed to the $1000+ USD that would be needed for a new iPhone. But it seems there are more issues than just a phone as well.

Food is important

These days there are few, if any, hotels in a major city that wouldn’t have a credit card on file, right? So extending your stay, or getting room service and billing it to your room would be logical, right? Even if your room was booked afterwards, I’m sure you could convince them after such a traumatic incident.

Also notice how she completely barrels through my helpful suggestion and goes back to asking for money, until I insist of course. I thought at this point not giving softball questions all the time and asking a few harder hitting ones would be fun.

Also she re-establishes the hardship of not having a place to stay, a phone, and not being able to feed herself.

Just a quick walk across the bridge

So for fun I looked for the address I had been given before. Through google maps to see if I could find the hotel that she was at. Looks like it wasn’t at that address (hmm..).

I looked for the Ipsden Building on Windmill Walk.

This is where Windmill Walk is

Only references for that address on google search

So looks like this is an apartment building, not a hotel.

Remember how I said there was an Apple Store close by she could use a computer at? Less than a 20 minute walk.

Just a quick walk across the bridge

But she doesn’t care about that.

Helping me out

Obviously she wasn’t going to let me put cash in an envelope and mail it to her, but luckily there was Western Union to help out.

Can you send the funds, can you send the funds, can you send the funds, can you…

I’m very worried that this Felix guy will get it, but “it’s safe,” phew!

Another offer for more

London is pretty expensive, and $400 isn’t going to last long for hotels, food, and an iPhone. I’m impressed she didn’t take me up on my offer for more, though she did let me send her more if I wanted. Sadly I’m not that well off so I’m glad she promised I’d get it back!

I’m a good friend

For someone asking for a favor she’s very insistent that I send the money. I sent her hugs and kisses and love instead for tonight.

I’m worried for her

I wonder what she’s doing, but she deflects (and continues to) about anything from now till the end about doing anything other than wanting my money.

Food is important

Another couple of hard hitting photos about eating. Hotel won’t help her which is sad (though honestly, if I was a hotel manager and someone came to me with a story about a car robbery and wanted food, I might think it’s BS too. But she is getting breakfast so someone must be getting her food.

Personally I think I’m being really nice here again too, offering to call the hotel on her behalf as her good friend, but just asking when I can “help” (ie: send her money). I don’t remember what my “great idea” was, it might have actually been an idea or just a tease.

*poke*poke*poke*poke*give me money

I have been generally going offline for long periods just giving “at work” or “driving” excuses.

This upcoming exchange is totally my fault though.

Hmm..

For some reason I asked Siri “what time is it in London?” and was told “12:50am”. Thinking I had finally caught her in a lie I went in guns a-blazing.

“Good news” = sent me money

I blame Siri for this completely. For some reason it decided that London, Ontario was what I meant by “London.” Oops. Though she did seem to be an hour off somehow, but lets just ignore that.

My great idea

So I did have an idea. Apparently having a credit card on file is the same as having a credit card so if you lose one you lose the other. Though I guess it kinda does make sense to block the credit card if it’s been stolen. Seems like an airtight story I guess.

Scammers are dangerous

Figured I’d prime her to the fact that there might be forms to fill out because of the scammers out there. Let’s make sure I got the address properly.

Name confusion

In our very first conversation I said she had a fake sounding name of “Moss Elizabeth” and now it’s “Elizabeth Moss”. Interesting. She just ignores this and reiterates that Felix is very safe.

With 20/20 hindsight here what I should have done is said I wanted to call the hotel to confirm that this “Felix” guy was safe.

Just ignore her for an hour

Just a blood test, everything’s cool though

So sad she ignored my “meow” reference :(

MEOW!

Maybe I’ll start ignoring her questions

Push some more

Lets push a bit more about the credit cards and money. This is now two days later than her last day. I’m glad the hotel made an arrangement with the embassy though!

More asking for money as of course she has no money for food. Other than breakfast of course, and the embassy has arranged for her to stay at the hotel but not a few dollars for food until her bank can get her squared up.

I’d hate to disappoint her

At this point I think she’s starting to doubt I’m the sucker she thinks I am, so I do my best to keep her on the line and tell her I’m going to get on the money transfer first thing in the morning. And then head off for a few seconds….

Or longer

My “sec, be right back” lasted over 12 hours this time.

Delay, delay, delay…

She’s starting to get annoyed at me again, so sad.

4am? Seriously?

More delaying, but maybe it’s time to make her think a bit of progress has been made.

2 steps forward and 1 step back…

I made a habit of never comitting.

Another great idea

I’m not sure how this isn’t a good idea. If she’s where she says she is and I have someone who can hand her an envelope of money, if she is as desperate as she seems, why not accept?

And I honestly have no idea what “Those that really sound well to you” means. I’ve gotten fairly good at reading definitely-not-from-Cleverland-Moss, but this escapes me completely.

Don’t feel sorry for her

She’s getting a bit angry again and thinking that maybe her mark isn’t going to give her money. Not enough to stop though. And even my assertion that my friend is within walking distance prevents her from just insisting I got to Western Union for her.

I hope I sounded authentic.

I feel so bad I beat myself up :(

When she says “trust me […] I will get it” I do believe her.

Back to “good news”

“Good news” is the phrase of the week. I guess it’s easier than saying “have I duped you out of money yet?”.

My story is I went to the Western Union office, but the lineup was too long, so I went to the other one (across town of course). Also texting and driving, tsk, tsk, tsk…

Bit rude today

I know she’s waiting anxiously but I have to call her out on her rudeness. Of course if I had someone I wanted to dupe out of money and they kept delaying I’d be a bit frustrated as well.

I did give her a bit of good news, bad news though. My story is that I gave them the money, they kept it in escrow but insisted that there were forms that needed to be filled out before the money could be released to her.

Her? A scammer? LOL!

These anti terrorist forms that had to be filled out were found at the excellent (though not updated and slight broken now) site http://www.scambaitingtools.com/. Their forms section has a great selection of fake forms for Western Union, Money Gram, and a selection of others. They also have images for identity fraud scams (blurry passport photos, tiny images too small to read, corrupted jpegs, etc) and other types of forms that are full of BS but look just real enough.

The site

Here’s a page from the form that I sent. Page one is pretty vanilla, name address phone number last employer, etc. Second page gets a bit weird. though…

I love the word cloud

The forms need to be filled out by everyone (nothing I can do about it) so I have no choice but to get her to fill them out.

Hangouts sucks for sending files

First thing I did here was create a fake gmail (obviously) and then tried to send the form.

This was actually a bit frustrating. I legitimately was trying to send the file through hangouts, but hangouts won’t let you send a PDF. I renamed the PDF to a JPG and that seemed to work, but she didn’t seem to get them on the other end (or was just completely clueless about the relatively simple act of downloading a file and renaming it). It did let me delay a bit more though.

So now I had her email as well, or at least an email created just for this scam. And of course her name followed by “666” is the sort of email address a 54 year old would create…

Having a printer seems obvious

So she seemed confused as to why she’d need a printer. Not sure if she just didn’t get the concept of sending a form, filling it out, scanning it and sending it back or not. She was getting a bit pushy wasn’t she!

File transfer fun

I don’t remember if I actually sent the file or not, but let her wait. The file I did send was the result of this:

Unix is fun

For those of you who don’t know, this is creating a file with the same name of the form I was sending (the pdf renamed to a jpeg) with 30 megabytes of random garbage.

No thanks

I almost would have done this, but just in case she was smart enough to look at any metadata, location information, etc, I’d rather not.

“dear”

I think I sent the garbage file three more times. Gmail won’t let you send more than a 20mb file as an attachment (it goes through as an attachment to google drive), so I had to try to get the file size just right. But the failures with more than 20mb I figured I’d send anyway.

Several times.

I should have taken her up on the offer

So in her mind this is almost done. Her mark has money and just needs to have some forms filled out.

I should have taken her up on her offer and slowly sent her each question on the form and let her tell me what the answers were. I may have gotten some good information about her (or Felix) before typing out the word cloud and she got frustrated. That could have been fun. Next time.

Ugh, windows is hard

Felt like I was doing tech support again, but she didn’t seem to have the patience to do what I was telling her to do.

I have no choice you see?

When she says “it’s never like that” I assume that means “none of the other people I’ve scammed have had so much trouble giving me their money”.

At the end I finally sent the PDF legitimately, hoping she’d fill it out.

She’s sooooo close

So she thinks the money is on the way, confirms the amount and the address (I should have typo’d it a couple of times, because I’m so bad at typing you see, but again, 20/20 hindsight). She’s so close! This is the afternoon of May 7th.

German?

So this was legitimately weird. Randomly speaking German to me. I like my “typo” in my response as well. The german translates (according to google) to:

I woke up one day thinking something was missing. So I got up from my bed, picked up my cell phone and sent you a morning greeting. Good Morning

Maybe another person she’s scamming?

No more delays!

See, I’m ready on my side, I’m just waiting for her to complete her forms.

Hello?

I legitimately though I’d lost her and the bullshit forms had gotten her to leave. A full day with no contact. Odd especially when you’re stuck and can’t go anywhere, right?

Stickers are the new flavor of the day

A day later she’s back (yay!), and now she’s getting really pissed, enough to swear for the first time in our conversation.

Since I’m having so much trouble with Western Union she suggests Money Gram, which apparently will be that much easier to scam me with. I let her sweat a little.

4am again

She gets anxious early in the morning, or doesn’t know what time zone I’m in, or doesn’t care. I promised I’d go to Money Gram (luckily http://www.scambaitingtools.com/ has forms for them as well). She really does get fixated on my money and just rudely ignores my questions about her language use until really pressed on it.

$800 out of pocket — can’t be done

This is literally a few minutes after my first response. In the real world that had gotten me from just getting out of bed to brushing my teeth.

I tried again to get her to fill out the form from Western Union with the story that these she has to fill out, but she insists on Money Gram.

Sadly my money is in escrow with Western Union so I have to get there (at some point) to get the money back from them before I can give her the $400 through Money Gram.

Aside: if she has no money how is she getting her laundry done?

More delays

Figured I’d find out what she’s doing at her hotel. This is now six days after her armed robbery so she must have found something to do since then. Good thing the hotel’s allowed her to stay, right?

And I’m being truthful here, I would like to see what it looks like where she is.

My interest was piqued so much that I tried to look it up on google maps, but, as we know from before, there’s no hotel at that address. She obviously can’t send me any photos (no phone you know, she needs her iPhone), but she should have thought ahead enough to send me the hotel website.

Hmm…

This doesn’t sound like the address she gave me. In fact, Cambridgeshire is a county in England, not a hotel name.

Looks lovely

Bit of a drive

It also seems to be between one and a half and two hours away from London.

Now technically she never did say the hotel was at the address, but she certainly said she was staying in London.

Lets push a bit more on the hotel shall we?

Pulling teeth

What a struggle to get a name out, especially for someone cooped up there for a week. Also why isn’t it at the address she gave me? Maybe she’s not used to people asking so many questions.

It really does

The Bull Hotel really does look like it’s in a wonderful area. I may have to visit some day.

Back to money money money

A few more pointed questions about Felix and his home address compared to his work address.

A week cooped up in a hotel I guess

Seriously, at least pretend to have walked around the town a little. I figured I’d divert over to her home in the states, mistaking “Cleverland” for Cloverdale (which is ok, but not as nice I’m sure).

I hope she can hat with me later

A vibrant description of her hometown.

A lot of tall buildings and play grounds and also big companies

Two hours later it’s back to money talk. Also stickers.

‘sup

And two hours after this maybe I’ll be in line.

The Western Union must be far from both work and home

Waiting in line again, I’m sure nothing will go wrong now, right?

‘sup ‘sup

A darn shame, when I finally got to the front of the line I couldn’t get my money back because there was a manager needed, and they had left already. I’m sure I can get her her money to scam me out of tomorrow though.

Next morning

Still I’m impressed she hasn’t asked for more money.

She does look like who she says she is

So (mostly) unprompted I suddenly got a flood of photos of “Moss” her house back in the states. The photos of the house look (if I may say so as a photographer) very professional. High end real estate professional. I did do a reverse image search on each of them but surprisingly none of them showed up. I assumed she had just pulled them off of google, but maybe an un-indexed site, or maybe from Facebook or similar. No metadata embedded either, shame.

If you’re starting to think “oh this really is who she says she is, this isn’t funny now, it’s mean, this looks real suddenly” — remember what I said above, remember this person gave a crazy story about an armed robbery in London and asked a near total stranger for money for, among other things, an iPhone.

Lets continue.

A stretch

I thought that if I tried to get my wife to let me send her more money I would maybe get in a fight with her, or have to get several forms to send the money in small chunks. But she seems to be ok with $400, so maybe not.

Not a lie

I was actually meditating at that time, it was a thing for work. She was nice to let me continue and not break through my shakras…

Tell me the good news brother!

I thought this might work… if I offered an alternative to filling out forms and get the money right away, maybe she’d give up a bit of information.

Simple right?

If I were desperate for a bit of money and were not able to eat or stay in a hotel it’d be pretty easy for me to find a random person on the street to take a photo of me with a bit of paper and email it to someone.

She, however, is fairly good at knowing how Western Union works and it turned into a bit of a game of telephone, with me wanting information from here and she wanting the control number from me so she could get my money. Since I’ve never sent money before, and they have all these news terrorism rules dontchaknow, I can’t help what they ask for.

Regardless she ignores me until 6am again.

Fucking stickers are starting to piss me off

This is true

She seems to really want to set my schedule for the day, but sadly Internet problems (which is true — there was a payment snafu with my ISP and I had my service off for 24 hours) will delay me again.

Let’s see what she’s been up to.

That’d be crazy!

So stressed she is. She did refer to herself as “friendly, outgoing and sociable,” and a person like that would go out and explore a little, right?

I started using stickers too

So:

Hard questions hurt her head

She can’t eat without cash

She gets something now and then

The hotel is letting her put things on her account

Gotcha.

More stickers

Brushing past that question about the bank. This is now close to a week after the ordeal, and the bank would be able to get her funds in 10 days. But we won’t talk about that.

I did want to put it in her head that there would be more forms from Money Gram, regardless of her experiences using it to scam people using it before.

Also, more swearing. I must be really annoying her now.

Stickers are awesome

(I sent the in bed sticker three more times but I won’t include it as this is far too long already).

She’s so sweet

Maybe I’ll make her sweat a bit.

If the story is that I’m offline, I obviously can’t talk.

Grrrr…

I figured I’d spew a bit of frustration back on her. This is a bit of the sentiment that I’d have if this were a real situation. She’s bugging me daily to send her money and I’m having to run around and deal with trying to email forms and then she wants me to go to a different place… A bit of frustration on my end is legitimate I think.

Also having to pay my ISP may be another delay in sending her the money.

Still offline. So sad.

This is now 8 dSays after the “armed robbery”

Tried to explain to her my problems, but she just ignored them. A bit like talking to a dog to explain that he didn’t get human food and he just keeps on jumping up to try to eat a slice of your pizza.

Sadly, all good things must end…