Al in Asia. My latest

[Drstranglove]

Well I am at it again for personal reasons. Al is a friend of mine and whoever hacked his account either KNOWS him or spent a good deal of time learning to impersonate him.
My replies are in red


From: Alfred
Sent: Saturday, January 1, 2022 3:35:38 PM
To:
Subject: URGENT


Hi

Hallelujah...

Need favor from you right now. Its now 3.30 am here. I was planning for a short trip here but unfortunately I lost a small bag in the taxi which had all my banking cards and cash. I have made a formal complaint here but am sure I will never get that back. Please send $500 to my Bangkok bank account as follows and only by western union. Very Urgent. Hope you can do this. send money immediately to my bank account. and I can send you back with some extra in a week I promise. Send only by western union direct to my bank account please...

My details:

Alfred
Bank: Bangkok Bank
Account Number: XXXXXX
Bank address: XXXXX
Pattaya City, Chonburi Province, Thailand, Zip Code : 20150
Phone: XXXXXXX

Please do as soon as possible and only by western union and please let me know the western union number and the exact amount in that baht.


Rock and Roll
Al in Asia

From Mike
5:20 PM (1 hour ago)

to Al


Good day Al. Long time since we have talked. I got your email. So sorry to hear but as you know at our age I am not on the computer much anymore.

Are you ok?


Alfred

6:01 PM (1 hour ago)
to me



yes ... but please help me... shame of asking in my 82 years

am in quarantine for covid. But the second test came as negative But still this Thai authorities want me in quarantine for for further 5 days.... Lost my wallet 3 days ago in taxi will all my banking cards. need to pay for my rent and my expenditure here. send me $500 by westernunion to my account directly.... please

My details:

Alfred XXXXXX

XXXXXXX

Please do as soon as possible and only by western union and please let me know the western union number and the exact amount in that baht.


Call me at +XXXXXXX in whatsapp if you need any more details... will send you back $550 in 10 days.


Rock and Roll
Al in Asia


From: Me

Hello Al. Very sorry to hear. I will get to the back quickly to send you some money. $500 is easy now that pension has come in. But it may be hard as it is night here and I am still in the wheelchair and with my hearing now totally gone it makes talking to them hard. I and my nephew coming to Thailand soon so maybe even with all of my disabilities and the quarienteene we can meet and have a pint together. I would probably be in a better place to help you too once I am in country.

I will let you know as soon as I can.

Are you ok until I can get to the bank? Is $500 enough...?

Mike

The idea is of course to get this guy off any script he is using and start talking to me. Long range plans, send him on a 5 hour bus ride through the country to try to collect an ever increasing amount of cash

All IP's are coming back to Thailand.

[Drstranglove]

OK this is going faster than usual. Here is the latest batch. Sometimes this means I am the only one this guy is dealing with. Other times that I'm just getting lucky he is online the same time I am. My replies are in red:

Alfred
Sun, Jan 2, 9:03 PM (16 hours ago)
to me
Yes, $500 is enough now. can send you back in 10 days...
Thanks... Al from Asia

So... lets also try the old "free laptop" trick

Sure thing Al.
Oh, I also have a laptop here. Macbook Pro 2020 16 inch screen. Got it as a gift from my kids but with my eyesight these days I can not use it with such a small screen. Would you like it?

no thanks... enjoy yourself with that Macbook.
Al from Asia

Damn. Well, at lest he is off script. And we will file that away and maybe try again later.

I apologize but this took longer than I had thought. I blame my bad hearing. But I have sent you some money as you requested. Rest well Al, all of this trouble will soon be over!
I will give the laptop to one of the churches here. They can give it to some poor soul.
This remind me of the old days back in BKK!

ok. Thanks. What is the western union transfer number?
Al from Asia

So here we go...!

Hello Al. I thought the money would just go into your account? I had some trouble with my eyesight and all but here is a scan of the receipt from western union.
I am looking at the VA Hospital for some treatment for my eyes. I recall you had a broken leg once and used the doctors in BKK. Can you recommend a good one for when I get to Thailand?

So I used the clever code here to produce a 15mb .docx Word file with the title "WesterUnionrecipt" (yes, misspelled) and attached it to the email. Should take ages for him to download and will be impossible to open, of course. Once that does not work we will come up with some more pain and of course up the $$$ amount I am sending to "make up for my inability to use a computer due to my advanced age." Hopefully this will keep him on the hook.

[Kitty La Gore]

^^ this happened to a friend of mine as well, and she's in her 80s so she didn't know she was hacked until a friend & I tried to get her yahoo account back. Sadly, it was gone at that point, but I'm still getting messages from the hacker once in a while. Go get 'em!!

[bware419ers]

Other times that I'm just getting lucky he is online the same time I am.

Lads (and technology) have come a long way in the past few years. With the easy availability of mobile internet and initiatives to make access easy and cheap, the days of lads in cafes are pretty much non-existent. It is not unusual to have lads (or an associate) communicate just about 24/7.

So I used the clever code here to produce a 15mb .docx Word file with the title "WesterUnionrecipt" (yes, misspelled) and attached it to the email. Should take ages for him to download

I'm still a big fan of sending junk files, but it doesn't do quite the damage it once did, either. With cheaper internet (and faster download speeds), the lads job is so much easier for them than it used to be.

Here's a look at relative costs to download 1 GB from around the world:
https://www.atlasandboots.com/remote-wo ... ld-ranked/

Average mobile and broadband download speeds around the world (in some countries, mobile is faster than broadband):
https://www.speedtest.net/global-index

It's a whole new lad world. I'm excited to see how you can give them the runaround.