Anti-Scammer Alert

Help To Stop Scammers, Help For Victims

Helping people take charge of their lives

Who are the scammers? Where are they from? How do they operate? How did this happen?

Scammers today are a special breed of criminal. They are violent criminal psychopaths organized into gangs or even large enterprises employing hundreds of people, who spend their days and nights planning and carrying out various schemes to fool people into giving them money or obtaining access to their bank accounts. It is estimated that there are about 500,000 scammers in the world today. They operate in many countries - including the United States and Europe - but they primarily operate in poor countries that have inadequate law enforcement and a local population that has little money to steal. They operate 24 hours per day, year round. 

Phones - especially cell phones - and computers and the Internet have created new opportunities for criminals worldwide to use these channels and devices to steal from people. Previous to these modern conveniences criminals could only steal from people in their own communities. Now these thieves can operate anywhere and steal from people around the world.

The scammer gangs operate with a focus - the kind of scam they use, whether it is financial (fake investments or employment) or romance or a combination. They find victims by sending friendly phone or social media texts, or emails or phone calls, introducing themselves as credit card company representatives, or agents for Social Security or Medicare, or financial advisors, or investment counselors, or computer service technicians, or lonely men or women looking for friends or romance. They are experts. They will use every known method to convince their victims that they are genuine. They take advantage of our normal human vulnerabilities.

They use internet sources and data breaches to find potential victims, and maintain extensive computer databases containing information about each victim or potential victim, assigning one or more gang members to be responsible for each victim. The most recent data breach in the US - the MOVEit data transfer software hack and the data breach at LinkedIn - has provided the scammers with millions of potential victims.

1. Romance scammers use romance novels as their guides to how to approach victims to create a fraudulent relationship, the victim then believing that at the other end there is a person who really cares about them. They provide fake names for themselves along with handsome or pretty pictures stolen from Facebook, or even entire hijacked or duplicated Facebook profiles.

At first it is just what the victim thinks is a chance encounter, a wrong telephone number, or simple message "Hi, how are you?" If the victim is vulnerable, the scammer then seeks to establish an online friendship. Then using language that draws upon the victim's level of vulnerability and social situation, the scammer accelerates the friendship, making it more intense, infused with the language and alleged feelings of love for the victim. In just a few weeks or even just days the victim believes he or she is truly in love with the scammer. But this is not enough; the scammer continues to intensify the relationship further, spending hour after hour pouring on the language of love, suggesting or waiting for the victim to suggest online intimacy. This creates an even stronger love bond, a kind of love trance that usually only exists between marriage partners - in the honeymoon phase. Ultimately their goal is to create an intimate long-term intense love relationship with the victim, sometimes lasting for months or even years, maintaining enough intensity to guarantee loyalty. Multiple members of the scam gang are assigned to each victim, so as to make the victim think that they're love is never-ending. In many cases, the victim becomes obsessed with or possessed by his or her fraudulent lover, and will do anything the scammer wants.

This then becomes the basis of the scammer asking for money, at first just a small amount, but eventually larger amounts and numerous times for some fake "emergency" or financial difficulties, or to help with some financial investment that will be allegedly shared with the victim. Often the scammer will ask for money in the form of an electronic gift card, such as Amazon or Apple, allegedly to buy food. These are quickly turned into cash. A US-based agent of the scammer gang uses the gift card amount to purchase or refill a non-bank prepaid debit card, referred to by scammers as "Green Dot," the name of a popular non-bank debit card, which is then used to wire transfer the funds to the scammer gang bank account. Or the scammer will ask the victim to convert the gift card to cash themselves and transmit the money to the scammer's Bitcoin account.

Romance scammers will, because they establish fake long term relationships with their victims, often ask for favors besides money: establishing google accounts and bank accounts. Google accounts are used for obtaining a scarce commodity: google voice phone numbers to use in case they get caught. Bank accounts - referred to as "mule" accounts - are used to accept money from victims and transferring it back to the gang bank account. The latter are a dangerous trap for victims. It is a felony in the US to set up a bank account to used by someone else unless it is a dependent relative or by court order. Some victims of romance scams have received personalized sextortion/blackmail threats as well (see below), being threatened with the scammer posting details of the romance or explicit photos of the victim.

Combined romance/extortion/community scams enlist an entire scam to be a "community" involved in the scam, from fake lovers and friends to fake lawyers and judges to fake police or FBI agents. After a "love" relationship is established, the victim is enticed into creating a bank account for use in money laundering by the gang. The victim is then falsely accused of money laundering and then a fake "deal" is arranged, extorting large sums of money, to prevent the victim from going to prison.

These romance scammers have infested virtually every social media, internet dating sites, and casual online dating sites like Snapchat, with stolen pictures and even entire profiles. Behind the handsome or pretty pictures are vicious gangsters preying on lonely people.

2. Financial scammers create the illusion that they have a special investment or have some expensive commodity like gold or diamonds that they need help selling or trading. For fake investments, they may provide fake documentation of the investment, and they may even operate on legitimate (but uninsured) trading platforms. There is no actual investment; the money just goes into the scammer gang bank account, while the scammer describes to the victim how well the investment is doing, until he disappears. Sometimes to lure a large sum of money, the scammer will start by asking for a small "investment" and after a short time send back a "return" that is significantly larger than the initial sum, convincing the victim to send a much larger "investment" that just disappears.

3. Job training and "side hustle" scams charge the victim for special "training" of some fake task with an "investment" into the "company," and then when the victim cannot "perform" the task adequately the victim is asked to pay for more "training." Or after the initial "work" is "completed" they will actually send back a modest "return" a couple of times to convince the victim that the business is legitimate. Then the victim is asked to send a much larger amount, and this "investment" money is gone.

4. Commodity scammers claim they need money for taxes or transport of the gold or silver or diamonds they claim to have, and that they will share the wealth with the victim. There is no commodity, it is just a way of luring the victim to send money to the scammer.

5. Check cashing scammers ask a victim to obtain some sort of merchandise on their behalf (often vaguely illicit, like marijuana), and send a check for payment. Either the check is fraudulent or the scammer quickly posts a Stop Payment once the check is deposited.

6. Sextortion/blackmail scammers attempt to lure the victim into short term "sexting" (online sex) relationships including allegedly exchanging compromising self-photos (the scammer using stolen pictures) or just claiming that he has personal videos of the victim. The scammer then attempts to blackmail the victim, saying that he will publicize the photos or videos to the victim's friends and relatives or publicly online. Teen children are now often the victims of these scams, and the perpetrators in these cases are often pedophile predators. Some teens have committed suicide as a result.

7. Lottery scammers send notices to people that they are either eligible or have already won a lottery or sweepstake, and all they need to do is send some money to get their prize. There is no lottery, your money just goes into the scammer's bank account.

8. Government agency scammers are ID theft scammers who pretend to be employees of those agencies, such as Social Security, Medicare, IRS, and even the FBI. Their intent is to fool the victim into revealing their Social Security number and steal the victim's government benefits, as well as enable them to use that ID to raid bank accounts or set up US-based money transfer accounts. These agencies have stated publicly that they NEVER call people.

9. Computer Repair scammers call or send emails or texts with frightening messages that the victim's computer is malfunctioning in some way or has been infected with a horrible virus, and in some cases will even direct the victim to display data that "proves" it - in a system application that normally has many irrelevant error messages. The scammer then does nothing and charges the victim some outrageous amount of money, but in some cases then convinces the victim to allow them to use a remote access application that they then use to steal the victim's data.

10. Corporate masquerading scammers pretend to be established companies, sending fraudulent emails or calling victims claiming to be agents of Amazon or your credit card bank, and even creating fraudulent look-alike websites. The calls or emails "inform" a victim that they have purchased something, or say they are calling the victim regarding their account. Their intention is to get the victim to reveal their Amazon or credit card data and then use that account to buy gift cards on Amazon or other online stores, that can easily be converted to cash.

11. Tax Rebate scammers are ID theft scammers pretending to be from the IRS or other government tax agency, claiming that you are owed a tax refund. Their intention is to fool the victim into revealing their Social Security number.

12. Scam Refund or Money Recovery scammers. Once victims realize they have been scammed, they become desperate and vulnerable to the follow-up or re-victimization scams, which are fake offers of funds recovery, either in victim support groups or in individual emails or texts. These re-victimization scams have become very prominent. Some of them are extremely elaborate, such as offering "hacking" skills to find your scammer, or pretending to be working with the FBI to help you, or providing you with software that would allow you to find them, which is, of course, impossible. It is the same scammer gangs making the fake offers. Actual fund recovery is impossible. The FBI unit responsible for fraud reporting - IC3.gov - is the only reputable reporting agency. It is under-funded and completely overwhelmed, with hundreds of thousands of people reporting scams each year. Local police agencies usually have no capability to help.

13. Crypto-currency scammers attempt to convince you that they have some unique trading schemes (such as Bitcoin futures) that can earn huge profits, and invite you to join their "investment groups" (often actually listed on unregulated crypto exchanges) and then send you regular reports on how well your "investment" is doing, but its all fake.

14. Email impersonation scammers find usernames and passwords to people's email accounts, hijack them and use access to them to send messages to their friends and relatives, requesting money for a fraudulent emergency, asking them to send money to the scammer (presented as a friend) while re-routing the responses so that the victim doesn't realize the scam is occurring.

The problem is that our government and the social media companies are not taking this wholesale criminal activity seriously. The vendors of electronic gift cards such as Amazon and Apple inadvertently provide the mechanism for anonymous transfer of stolen money to the scammer gangs. The scammers and their expert computer hackers have recently breached banks and other large financial institutions, obtaining identification records of millions of people, which will be used to scam them.

If you need more help than this website provides, our anti-scammer team can provide it at low cost. Please see our anti-scammer services website, at https://www.anti-scammer.net.

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Important Note: If you have been scammed and you need help with recovery, reporting, or personal protection, or if you know or suspect that you or a friend are being scammed and need help, we urge you to go to our information, reporting, and consulting website: https://www.anti-scammer.net.

Copyright 2023-2024 Anti-Scammer Alliance, Boston, MA.

This website was created by Anti-Scammer Alliance in fall, 2023, We wish to remain anonymous at this time for reasons of personal safety. We are victims of scammers, and we made a commitment to spread this concise information so that others may avoid the emotional trauma that we have endured, and/or to help other victims in their recovery, to understand what has happened to them. We make no claims to know everything about scammers or all aspects of their criminal activity.

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