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Newest Scam: Fake Escrow Accounts
MImeKillEr writes "MSNBC is running an article warning about the latest auction site scam: Fake escrow accounts. The article claims scam artists are tricking Net users into wiring thousands of dollars to fraudulent bank accounts. The criminals do this by setting up a trap auction and when the winner asks how to make a payment, the criminal tells them to pay into an escrow account. One legit escrow account who had a criminal mimic their site said that as many as 50 users had lost and average of $10,000 with at least one being conned out of $30,000 in such a way. There are reportedly at least 150 fake escrow accounts. The FBI is currently investigating the matter."
Where's the article link? .. It must have been auctioned off...that'd odd.
Fake escrow site scam widens
the problem i see with alot of these online auctions is the level of trust needed. Sure there are checks in place to try make sure everyone and everything is legit...but still, out in the land of the 'net, where anonymity is king, its not to hard to fix these kinds of things (and the impetus to do it is also high, because of this feeling on anonymity) and lets face it, there are lots of people out there that will fall into these traps....i dont feel too sorry for stupid people (at least, until i become one) but still, would this happen in a real life (ie, non online) auction
all you are, is all you are, i'm so sorry for you.
Being that the editors didn't provide one... I don't know if this is the same article, as it's dated July 3, but it's from MSNBC and relevant.
Link
Escrow services suck, and nobody should use them; here's why.
I buy something at an auction. I pay the escrow, and the seller sends the item and I receive it. However, I tell the escrow that I haven't received the item. I get my money back, and the item for free!
Escrows still rely on the truthfulness of the buyer.
And there's this fake escrow thing, too.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Do they mean Accounts or Sites? I'm currently being "scammed" by a chap in france, who wants to buy 30 mobile phones off me. He insists we use www.golden-escrow.co.uk for "safety" and I'm playing along.
:)
;) )
I'm seeing if I can get him to wire me a £30 admin charge before we do business, after all, that's a drop in the ocean for him!
I'm actually quite impressed with the fake escrow site, the registration and setup process seems to work quite well. A few things give it away though, no real contact details, lack of SSL even though privacy policy mentions ecryption, and the fact the the scammer insists I use it of course.
I can see this as being so very dangerous for non-technical people. The scammers must be making thousands. The only thing we can do is to warn people.
A few tips:
* See if you can contact your trading partner on the phone or whatever BEFORE you do business
* DON'T send money outside your own country (especially not to Indonesia
* Only buy from people with positive feedback
* NEVER ship goods before you have Actual Money in your pocket
* Be suspicious of EVERYONE
I'll post a follow-up if I hear back from my scammer chap today!
Who saved the Slashdot editors time by not even posting a link to the article! Brilliant!
For those who actually want to RTFA:
Fake escrow site scam widens
Hint: Google News is our friend
It's a bank account associated with an escrow service, which is a service which holds a buyer's money in trust, until they have received the item from the seller, and then forwards the money on to the seller. This protects the buyer, but not the seller. The account is the one which the buyer pays in to.
I never understood why escrows weren't 2-way things - ie. the seller also sends the item to the escrow, and when the escrow has received both parties' payment, they forward them along. I guess it's just a bit harder/more expensive to do.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I'm sorry, if you wire 30,000 dollars to any account after an auction without making absolutly certain that you're actually going to recieve the service you're paying for; then well, you're stupid. Simple as that.
:).
If this person had any good sense they would have mode darn sure they're not being scammed. If a person parts with 30,000 dollars this way than they deserve it. Perhaps they'll be more carful when bidding 30,000 dollars on an online auction.
Then again, I suppose the world is full of idiots... want proof? read Slashdot at -1
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
How come it is so easy for a thug to make money, but a unemployed software engineer cant do it? Why is that? Does crime take a special function in the brain? is it like a complicated SQL database? If so I wanna program it so I can make money! it isnt fair!! Anyways thats my rant..
---
Heres some more info about this scan in case you're interested:
:)
Sos4auctions.com - Technical details about the scam.
Another Article - in case you DON'T want to support M$ by reading MSNBC.
The company supposedly running the scam - Hehehe... they use a Win2K server... lets see how fast it gets slashdotted
Thats all for now, good night everyone!
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
A smart escrow service designed to handle auction payments would: 1). Require the shipper to ship using a specific shipping service(such as UPS) that provides tracking information for the package. 2). Refuse to accept payment into the escrow account until the item has been shipped and a valid tracking # has been provided 3). Refuse to release the payment from escrow to either party until the package has arrived as per the sale agreement. Essentially, collaboration between the shipping service and the escrow service could provide more protection for the seller. This, of course, would rely upon the validity and consistancy of the shipping service's tracking data.
He can't get anyone to care. Not eBay for sure. Not the police, not FBI. He found out the scammers were working out of Romania and contacted their police, and hasn't gotten too far either. The scammers made it appear they were located in Minnesota. In the meantime he sees more auctions that look similar and contacted them with his same ID and addy, and they sent him details for payment, etc. They didn't even remember it was the same guy they scammed a few weeks earlier. They continue to operate and nail people over and over... (and since it wasn't a Mac laptop, he doesn't have that fanatical base of users to get help him either! :)
Let me take this opportunity to rant about the inequities law enforcement in this (U.S.) country. These are huge losses for individuals and when combined represent large sums of money overall, but law enforcement doesn't care. But you have some theoretical theft of a $18 CD and then we must throw the weight of the FBI after the P2P'ers. If a guy robs a 7-eleven of $20, he must spend 20 years in jail, but if a white collar criminal bilks several million bucks from a company, he gets a mild slap on the wrist, if that... If my house gets broken into and I lose everything, now the police don't even want to bother coming out to "investigate" the crime. They take a report over the phone and send you a police report for insurance purposes, but heaven forbid you don't come to a full stop at a stop sign or creep over the speed limit, because they are out there in full force ready to nail you with tickets.
Part of the article:
The criminals build elaborate fake escrow Web sites, with convincing names like Simple-Escrow.net and WhyEscrow.com.
Is it just me, or are simple-escrow.net and whyescrow.com still up? Were they using them as examples of legit or escrows or not? They're chock full of grammar and spelling errors ("simple-escrow.net, the most powerfull escrow service available on the net..." is their first claim, and whyescrow has a really bad flash intro...). Were these sites taken down? Did others take their place? Did some people read the article and decide to take those domains? So confusing...
Danish != nationality
I don't think that would solve the problem. I know of a scam where people would get a phonecall where somebody would claim to work for a bank, and ask them their PIN-code (4-digit auth. code for ATM-machines...), because some administrative error had occurred. A lot of people fell for it because the guy sounded sincere, or make up your own excuse here...
It's easy to trick people into doing stuff like this. If John Doe had recently transferred a large amount of money to a 'known good' escrow service, and he received a call from that escrow service, or his bank that something had gone wrong during the transaction, and please could he send the money again, how big do you think the chance is that he actually would?
It all comes down to the amount of trust you can generate with the person whose money you're trying to steal. Claiming to be calling on behalve of eBays Escrow service will probably give you a head start.
Hi, I'm Catalin Braescu, I'm from Romania. Maybe I can help - I dislike Romanian scammers twice: first for what they are doing and second because the reputation they build for my country prevents me to do as much business as I can.
My e-mail address is CATALIN at EDISON.RO
Best regards,
Catalin
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
They still don't seem to understand that poor spelling and grammar are a tip off, even aside from the lack of SSL etc. It is extremely difficult to find any sort of scam on the web that is completely sound, from an English standpoint. The first person singular pronoun "I" is always capitalized in English. The capitalization on this site is inconsistent even across the front page (look in the FAQ box, top right.) In their FAQ, they have used the non-word "acceptation". Oooh--so close to plausible, too. Bummer. I'm sure that with a little more effort they could develop a really first-rate scam. Why can't scammers ever hire a proofreader?
By the way--has anyone turned them in to Western Union? They're using WU's logo on the front page.
~Idarubicin
Any escrow worth its salt will accept the buyer's payment via credit card. Why is this safer? Because if you don't get the goods, you can call the credit card company for a charge-back. If the escrow is just a scam, they'll be charged-back so many times that Visa and Mastercard will stop working with them, rendering the site useless. Wiring to a bank account, especially an overseas bank account, opens you up to this kind of trouble. If the scammer is completely outside of the USA, there is nothing American law enforcement can do, and third-world countries usually have enough problems that enforcing laws about "don't scam Americans" are not high on their list.
Another version of this scam which got posted to the escrow boards on eBay scams the seller. It goes like this:
When the escrow site gets the buyers payment, they send an email to the seller saying it is okay to ship. However, we all know how easy it is to fake an email. One buyer faked an email that looked like it came from escrow.com and the seller shipped the item (out of the country). Good bye!
Never, ever, ever trust an email from eBay or escrow.com. They will be the first to tell you this. Both have links on most of their pages alerting you to this. Login into the site manually and confirm status before continuing the transaction.
This message is mostly for the net-clueless and not the typical slashdot reader.