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FIRST PERSON: How I used Daimos, Voltes V, Carmen Sandiego trivia to troll a scammer

David Dizon, ABS-CBN News

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Legendary scam artist and FBI informant Frank Abagnale, the real life inspiration for the movie "Catch Me If You Can," once said the Internet has made fraud so much easier.

Last week, an Internet scammer who was able to gain control of a friend's Facebook account tried to con me into buying hundreds of dollars worth of iTunes cards on the web. Luckily, some Voltes V, Daimos and Carmen Sandiego trivia helped tip me off about the scam.

Here's what happened: veteran radio reporter Noel Alamar, a former president of the Philippine National Police Press Corps, sent me a Facebook private message while I was in Bangkok for a workshop.

In the message, "Alamar" asked me how I was doing and said he was on vacation with his family in Tokyo.

He then asked for a favor - buy $150 worth of iTunes cards and send the numbers to him.

I knew immediately it was a scam. First off, while Alamar is a stand-up guy who has always helped the ABS-CBN News website, he would never ask for money out of the blue like that.

But I had to make sure. So I joked with him a bit, saying I needed to find a sari-sari store near the hotel and that I wanted to keep my money for my "inaanaks."

I also baited him about withdrawing money so I can get the right number of gift cards. He then upped his offer and asked for $300 worth of cards.

When I asked him when he would pay me, he said he would need at least a week. That's a long time to pay someone back for a $300 loan.

So I decided to pry further, asking him if he knew Richard Hartford and his wife Erika.

This was supposed to be a dead giveaway for '70 to '80s kids who grew up on Japanese cartoons. Richard Hartford is the pilot of the robot Daimos who is fighting a war against evil winged aliens called the Baam.

Richard looks like this.

Richard's love interest is Erika, the winged princess of the evil aliens. Daimos was a very popular cartoon in the Philippines during the '80s. I thought surely the scammer would see that he had been caught.

Instead, the scammer said he knew both Erika and Richard and even asked for a phone number. So I made one up.

And then to drive the absurdity home, I asked if he knew Steve Armstrong. Steve is the fictional pilot of another giant robot, the Voltes V.

The Voltes V looks like this, by the way.

For good measure, I even put in a good word for other Japanese mechas such as Grendizer and Mazinger and dropped in a reference to Camp Big Falcon, which is the fictional military base of the Voltes V team.

I also tried to cut off the conversation by saying I knew it was a scam.

I asked him why he was not writing in Tagalog when all DZMM reporters in Manila are fluent Tagalog speakers.

And then the scammer dropped a bombshell, producing not one but two legit IDs -- a scan of Alamar's passport and a senior citizen's card. This was alarming.

At this point, I had already confirmed with an officemate in radio DZMM that Alamar's Facebook account had been hacked. The real Noel Alamar had also gone on-air with DZMM anchor Noli de Castro about his hacked FB account.

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But I was still unwilling to let go.

So I trolled the scammer one last time, asking him if he was in trouble and that the "boss" was angry with him.

I then asked him to contact Coach Brunt or Shadowsan and if he knew Finn Wolfhard -- all of whom are characters in the Netflix cartoon "Carmen Sandiego." And then I broke contact.

In his DZMM interview, Alamar said he had already changed his password after being alerted by Facebook that someone was trying to access his account.

He then learned that several relatives had received emails and FB messages, purportedly from him, asking for iTunes cards or cash. He said he believed that the scammer was a foreigner because he couldn't speak Tagalog.

This week, however, he said the scammer was now answering messages in Tagalog. I said Google Translate was one way this could be done.

He urged friends and relatives to unfriend or block his previous account. "If you receive a message allegedly from me asking for money, that is not me," he said.

If only Voltes V, Daimos and Carmen Sandiego could handle scammers, the Internet would be a safer place.