Some MG line fun

[SomethingFishy]

Padme asked for some more of Butch the eccentric antiquities dealer, and I think he's delivered a pretty long MG line call. Along with a little moral quandary I will come to.

Ahemed Emeka contacted Butch to ask if a Mr. Kehoe was authorized to claim his fund. (Format at scamwarners). Confusion ensues:

I still do not know what fund you are referring to. It's entirely possible that it is Mr. Kehoe's fund. Please do not cancel his request. Let us put the matter on hold for now until we can get to the bottom of this.

Dear beneficiary.

Your email is received.

This is an urgent financial matters that the funds totaling $5.5 million dollars is fully approved for immediate wire transfer and the matters of conflicting interest must be addressed now, please kindly forward by scan attachment passport copy of your identification, your direct telephone number to enable the central bank Governor speak with you for necessary verifications to authenticate the true beneficiary in order to execute the sure transfer as the wire execution transfer is fully ready for sure execution.

Remember in that other thread what I said about not outright refusing requests?

I'm not sending you my identification. Why don't you start from the beginning and explain where this fund came from?

Is this a customer trying to pay an outstanding balance?

Sometimes it's fine.

The funds $5.5 million dollars is coming from Cambodia bank, your details are urgently required in order to execute the wire transfer to you once the wire is made the scan copy of the wire will be attached via email to you for necessary confirmation with your receiving bank.

So provide your details as required to enable the wire transfer of the funds to you.

We're not expecting any payments from Cambodia. Probably we cannot even accept payments from there due to the embargo. Is this payment for an invoice?

Dear Butch,
Your email is received.

Your payment transfer will now paid through the united states, bank of America since you cannot receive payment transfer from the Cambodia bank.

You are required to forward your receiving bank account where you want the $5.5 million dollars to be transferred and handling charges of $1,200 must be paid by you through western Union or money gram to:

[MG INFO FOR A RECEIVER IN IDAHO]

Once you make the payment, send immediately the mtcn number to enable our receiving agent pick up the money.

We don't have any accounts with that amount outstanding. Who is sending this transfer and what is the reason for it? Also, we only send outgoing payments to bank accounts, we do not use money transfer services.

No reply so I figured we'd give the MG line a whirl, it had been a while.

I did not hear back from you today. Although your request was highly irregular we were able to accommodate you. My secretary was able to visit a local outlet and since we were able to obtain the enhanced security, I decided to make an exception to the no-money-transfer-services rule we have here at TCG.

I am not sure how familiar Mr. or Ms. <Recipient> is with this service but please note the instructions on the receipt and follow them carefully. The agent told my secretary that this is very important. I await confirmation from you that he or she has received the payment.

The MG receipt was attached, click for a full-size at imgur:


It was met with the usual resistance:

The receiver agent could not be able to pick up the money you sent, you have to collect the money back and pay through the PayPal, once you make the payment snap the screen shot of the receipt and send me the confirmation of the payment for the $1,200 once the money is received the wire transfer of your $5.5 million dollars will be credited to you through bank of Amwrica.

Use these PayPal account details to make the payment.

<snipped link to what might have been a paypal phishing site, or at least a very dodgy payment page

The money is stuck in the MG payment system, unfortunately:

My secretary cannot pick up the money for about 3 weeks it is locked in the MoneyGram system. Your agent just needs to follow the instructions on the receipt. The trust does not use paypal. I already made an exception to accommodate your request for MoneyGram. How can you tell me you cannot receive it when it was you that made the request. You have 15 business days to figure this out. The payment will then be cancelled and my secretary can pick it up.

I have tried to be accommodating and you immediately come back with complaints. I have had enough of dealing with your constantly shifting requests and I will waste no further time with you. Contact MoneyGram for the information to pick up your funds.

The funds you sent does not have mtcn number info which I could not understand? Buti have reached the receiver agent to see how he can pick up the funds. I will let you know if he was able to pick up the funds.

That brings us to tonight (Google Drive links, log out of personal accounts). The very end of the second call is slightly nsfw:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gfkbzy ... 3Dd2l/view (39 minutes)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mhwj6N ... nBuT2/view (14 minutes)

Obviously it's not the lad. He does play to the script very well, as the receiver's name is generally a female name. The "it's important if you are woman you sound like a woman" line played perfectly. I assume this is a mule, willing or otherwise? I would have thought the second round of Toxic would have been a dead giveaway to someone from the US, but it seems not. It seems odd that an ITP would provide such obviously false answers to the security questions, but I am still not sure how to proceed.

Would arranging for a call from "moneygram" to the receiver to clear up the problem with the payment, and then passing that number along to mods or scamwarners be a good idea? I don't know if the lad would go for it.

Somebody else has some goodies from their lad on the MG line tonight as well.

Edited to hide name. I swear I posted this in HHT, but I've had a couple glasses of wine...

[DerekTrotter1981]

Who's the voice answering the questions?

[SomethingFishy]

That's the voice of the lad's mule, probably located in the US. He may be a willing participant, knowing exactly what he is doing: receiving payments on behalf of a scammer, keeping a cut and forwarding along the rest to the lad. On the other hand, he may be a victim who has been hired as an "accounts receivable clerk" in an employment scam. He may also be a victim of this same scam the lad is trying on my character. In which case, he thinks that he is receiving the first chunk of his promised millions.

The lad came back this morning UK time:

am just in communication with the receiver agent he has called the number in the receipt of the payment of the money gram you sent but couldn't get the last three numbers from the operator? This repeated for three times? I don't understand what this is? Is late he has to call them back tomorrow, once he is through and got the right information I will revert back to you to keep you informed.

I have put him in a holding pattern for now:

This is very disappointing to hear, I am sorry that your agent is having trouble. The man at the outlet promised the process was simple. Please let me know if the problems continue and I will ask my secretary to get in touch with the outlet and see if they can help.

He seems okay with that:

I shall let you know later today if my agent is able to pick up the money from Money gram.

Hopefully some of the experienced folks will weigh in on how to proceed. I'd like to find a way to warn the potential victim if possible. There is certainly a temptation to send him a payment denied form, but I think that carries too much risk of involving an ITP. If there isn't a good way for someone to get a message to the mule, then I will just try to pivot back to piggies and continue developing the bait.