Catching Money Mules ft. Mark Rober

one of the most cruel ways that scammers steal money from people is to convince them to place their cash into a box and post it to a money mule these money meals will pick up packages of cash delivered to houses all over the country they're usually carried overnight it's all designed to minimize the risk of someone tracking this money back to the scammer but with the help of an ex-nasa engineer the guy who's created the famous glitter bomb these scammers are going to get a very rude [Applause] [Music] awakening anyone who's watched my channel will be very familiar with how the refund scam works this particular email was sent to me by a scammer who called himself stephen as always i call the number on these emails and i attempt to get remote access to the scammers computer even though they think they're scamming me and i can see that almost each and every day these online hackers for trying to get inside your computer do you do any kind of financial activities on this computer like online banking or shopping so as steven was inquiring about those important things like my online banking activity i was reversing the connection and as i watched them scam other people a few things became very clear firstly the emails seemed to work albeit they changed the phone number down again and eventually victims would log into their online bank accounts to get the promised refund and after they manipulated the bank pages stephen and his pals were particularly keen to get their victims to put money into a box and send it through the mail so when i saw a scammer showing his victim where her nearest fedex print center was it meant only one thing she was just about to mail some cash when i got in touch with the victim whose name is tracy she explained to me what she saw happen they were supposed to give me a refund of 300 and when i put in the computer i i mistyped it as as thirteen thousand dollars so i had to send money back to them twelve thousand five hundred dollars and that's where i am i'm hoping you haven't sent that money i have said it it seems i may have been just too late she had already mailed more than twelve thousand dollars to another address in new york i said it early this morning was it early this morning was it i just thought it was just this minute no i said it i said it um uh um at um oh my god like around 11 o'clock so i got tracy to get in touch with fedex to try and stop this package from arriving to the money mule's address but this gave me a chance to put into operation something that mark ruber and i had discussed some time ago among other things mark is the inventor of the glitter bomb something which is a gps attached on cameras and we could even monitor who opens these packages i've always been keen to see how scammers who are typically based in india manage to recruit money mules who are in a different continent and by tracking packages and addresses we may be able to find out how hello tracy had contacted fedex and they promised to return her package to her we noticed that it was still being shipped and in fact it was just about to arrive at the scammer's house mark had some private investigators stake out the house where the cash was supposed to arrive the following day the address was an airbnb rental and this woman was acting very suspiciously on even stopping fedex fans and to everyone's horror despite the assurances from fedex tracy's money did end up going to that house but luckily the pi was on hand to intercept it tracy something yeah that's the one don't live with this one please okay this is the fraudulent one if that one's gone that's also going to 731 okay could i take a picture of that one too it was incredibly fortunate for tracy that we managed to stop this package being delivered but we also spotted a second package for the same address this time for a woman named phyllis we had managed to stop two victims from being scammed we were able to trace the second victim and she too has her money back now when the money was safely returned it was our chance to send a second package this time with a glitter bomb we still didn't have the satisfaction of having one of these money mules open something that was going to cover them in glitter and fart spray but things didn't quite go according to plan i've left a link here to show exactly what happened with the second package that arrived at that address but here's a little taster what you can see in mark's video hello you guys give up oh yeah thirsty for more but as the glitter bombs were finding their targets in the usa i was having a closer look at what was going on in india one thing i did know was where these scammers were located when i first encountered them in june 2020 they were in this area of golgotha but shortly after the pandemic kicked in they moved north of their original location they ended up in the maniktala area of the city i could tell all of this from the wi-fi information together with google's api on these highlighted mac addresses i was able to get their location accurate to about 150 meters so that was where they were but what about who they were i got a bit of a hint whenever i saw the scammer update a facebook page of a woman i could see that her husband was named rafi so this was likely to be stephen's real name but obviously i can't be 100 sure and what i also knew was that stephen didn't work alone he would regularly receive a spreadsheet of phone numbers of potential victims in the usa the data included full names and addresses and most importantly for the robocalls their phone numbers on a typical night there would be seven or eight agents fielding calls from potential victims either by email or from robocalls they would make thousands of phone calls here you can see over a hundred calls per second with just seven people manning the phones a close look at the audio files being used in their automated dialer showed that they were involved in multiple types of scams they would pretend to be amazon microsoft and make phone calls to the uk usa and australia this is telstra technical department dot we are here by to inform you that your internet line will be terminated from today onward to fix up the problem please press one to connect with telstra if you wish to disconnect your internet press 2. this is amazon this call is to authorize the payment of 799 for your recent order on amazon for apple iphone 11. if you did not place this order then please press one and speak to our representative thank you and it would take thousands of phone calls before they managed to get any victims and although i would warn anyone that i saw being scammed sometimes i couldn't see the scam happening because it was on a different computer that i couldn't see and one evening i spotted steven logging into a victim's computer using a remote access software called ultraviewer and any desk it turned out he was trying to find out what happened to some cash that he'd managed to get a victim to send through fedex he opened the victim's email so that he could read the correspondence at this point the victims were still unaware that the scammers had access to their computer but he still carefully locked the keyboard and mouse and blackened the screen so that he couldn't be seen reading their emails it was clear that the victims had shipped a package more than a month earlier but when i looked to see what happened to this package it seemed that it had been seized by the police it's illegal to ship cash this way and there are procedures to detect cash being sent by mail but the scammers would have already known that this money was seized what they really wanted to find out was how the investigation was going this is why they were looking at the emails but thanks to their nosiness i now knew the person leading the investigation through this investigating agent i was able to get in touch with the people whose computer was being accessed by the scammers i was also able to give them all the information that i knew about the people who'd scammed them i passed on not only the information about who they were but also details of other victims including tracy but this investigation was about much more than sending glitter bombs to money mules i really wanted to understand how they recruited people in the usa and if there were any weak points other than intercepting the money itself and two things were very clear firstly that they only rented an airbnb for a very short amount of time so it was a very limited opportunity for the money to get to the mule secondly they totally relied on a tracking number they needed this in the case of an emergency where they may have to divert the package somewhere else so when a different group this time ssa scammers decided to run the same sort of scam on me i put on my voice changer and attempted to play them at their own game give me the address anyway and i'll i can do i mean i don't know when i can go right let me give you the uh the address right okay okay so the address is john it's j-o-h-n it's the name of the person i mean yeah john john harry h-a-r-r-y okay all right and the address is the address is 3925. when i had the details i was deliberately vague about when i would mail the cash and i told them i would only be able to do it the following day i fully expected them to give me a different address the next day but when they called me back i broke the bad news that i'd already posted the cash but you told me yesterday that you won't be able to go so you cancelled it right you i told you we'll do it next day so without informing you why did you went i've just i've posted it you asked me to post it i i i got time and i went and posted it okay do you have the tracking number do you have the receipt i knew that without this receipt and tracking number they wouldn't be able to divert the package to some other address i have cancelled that address okay how can you cancel an address it's still going to that address i i i got a bit of time and i thought it's very close i'll nip out and i'll okay see i'm not getting angry on you but i'm not yelling at you anderson okay right i was trying to help you that's all i thought i thought you would get it today the mistake is that you have to inform me first before you do anything but you asked me to post it to that address so i thought it would help you no matt you told me that you will not be able to go today you will be able to go tomorrow so i cancelled that address now just now do anything messengers get the receipt okay i want to receive anyhow right that's the thing that's the thing i i i put the receipt into my my pocket and i think i think i may have thrown it out i but it should be there already you don't need the receipt it should be there the prospect of missing out on ten thousand dollars cash was beginning to dawn on our scammer so it doesn't matter okay what is the proof you have that it is already posted do you have any proof with you yes the parcel is there what is the proof the receipt is the proof so i need to prove that the money is said i'll forget about your money then i mean are you dumb are you dumb are you going out of your mind i'm telling you go to the ups get a new tracking id go to the ups why don't you go to the ups you're shouting because you're acting like them there is money in it why don't you understand there is worth ten thousand dollars in it not only your money is going over there okay there are plenty of money which is going over there after disconnecting the call you didn't vent and you did you did it without informing you you did it okay without informing me you didn't i i did but you only it's only only did you ask me to do and it's already there i asked you to stay home i didn't ask you to walk in the night go to the ups and ask not over there i asked you to be home and without informing me after telling me that you can't go in the dark you went and you did it that is your mistake you're an angry little elf he's an angry elf you understand i want the tracking id anyhow i do not know from where you're gonna get it but you have to get it search for the receipt go and bang your head at the ups give me the tracking id or forget about your money okay when are you going to return my money talk to my attorney must talk to my attorney but they were so easy to wind up that i thought i'd chance my arm and try and get some money out of the scammers i'd convinced them that it sent so much cash by this point that it was running so short and it would take me a while to get yet more money together so in the meantime i'd need something like more cash or a gift card to keep me going all right yes i've got the card numbers for you so you can just take it down it's a walmart gift card and you can also check the balance online okay and once you have the number i'm sure you would be good to go for at least at least a week okay yes go ahead all right uh so it starts with six one eight zero i felt sure that they would give me a fake gift card number but lo and behold when i put it into the walmart gift card balance checker it worked out to be 100 i had scammed them i put out a tweet to see what would be the best thing to do with this 100 gift card and the suggestions range from a giveaway in the youtube comments section or to a homeless charity i opted for the homeless charity let's see if you feel that this is something that uh you know well i've turned it off i've turned off the voice changer so what whereabouts in kolkata are you i was really interested to know if they'd ever been scammed before you finally figured out that i've been winding you up for the last all right so you were using voice danger were you using white horse i was using a voice changer what a [ __ ] hundred dollars you you took hundred dollars is it correct that's right i took your money that's right that's a real [ __ ] if you're the first person you have to watch down the scammer good job buddy well yeah it was good i was trying to get more money out of you but actually you guys are so boring that i didn't bother with it i've all i've already ordered a pizza for you i've also ordered pizza for you did you got the pizza how was the bean pizza a worth of pizza ever arrived because i give you a fake address as you must realize by now i i'm not even in the usa okay so you have been well scammed guys you're really good at what you do buddy you are really good at what you do seriously have you never been scammed before never never never in my life oh that's a shame isn't it never in my life never in my life but you are amazing i thought if he was impressed that i'd scammed him he might open up a bit more so i asked him a few more probing questions how much money you guys actually making these scams uh we've just started these things we have not made a lot of money it's just you know been few days or you can say a few months maybe a month or two since i started this yeah and i actually don't own this i'm working here so that's not a huge amount that i make whatever made for this month you've already taken it it's a good job buddy yeah so that's what i've made for a month hundred dollars when you're paying it uh well i mean i i'm sorry if if i like you could have taken hundred dollars you could have taken 150 but uh uh you know after this what you are going to do you know what i'll see this is what we're gonna do uh we're just gonna you know smoke up some weed and you know just get high because this is the first time we have been down buddy uh do you want to go on to youtube uh on youtube you're putting this on youtube do you want me to put it on youtube nobody no no don't do that yet don't don't do that well sure we don't know we don't know your name but i did keep probing for information i was hoping that would find out how they recruited the money mules but of course he claimed that he was too low down in the organization and that somebody else was responsible for doing that part of the business so this part is still a bit of a mystery and it might be that to find out the answer we may even have to travel to india maybe look out for a future video where mark and i might try to get to the bottom of the money mule scams and if you're wondering what happened to the lady who's just been arrested here please check out pierogi or scammer payback's video about the subject like me pierogi led these scammers on and eventually it ended up in what you can see in this picture there's a link to his video in the top corner if you would like to support me and my fight against scammers i have a patreon channel and the link is on screen and in the description i'm also on twitter at jim browning11 and again thank you for watching you

Channel: Jim Browning

Views: 3,169,870

Rating: 4.9784961 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Xvjjpzyiig4

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/dexter30]

Haha the call at 12 minutes in. Jim's starting to get kitboga level of reaction. Absolutely priceless.

[u/ce2c61254d48d38617e4]

Lol title should really specify glitter bomb for the uninitiated

[u/amoeba235]

Now THIS is a youtube colab.

Amazing work.

[u/NOTtigerking]

ARE YOU DUMB?! ARE YOU DUMB?!

[u/_Trump_Lost_LOL_]

We should subsidize this work. It’s doing so much good. We need as many of these folks as we can get.

Edit thanks for the link to Jim’s patreon. We need an army of Jim’s!

Edit why can't we have a call center of Jim's level working nonstop? $20 billion a year going to these crooks?

[u/HoldTheDoor]

It's about to be very scary time to be scammer

[u/VoidInsanity]

That Uno Reverse card, now that I was not expecting. Actually scamming a scammer, just a shame that it was unquestionably not their money in the first place.

[u/GanksOP]

God this + Mark + Scammer Payback was such a marvelous team up. I was hollering like a happy monkey in the wild every couple minutes with all the awesome shit they did.

[u/dexter30]

robers video

While I am worried about these pranks ruining ongoing investigations. I do think they're a requirement to ruin the potential gains for investors. If enough prank parcels and glitterbombs get taken to the supervisors then it fucks that end of the business up. Why take the risk for no rewards just because a bunch of kids found out a fucked up ethical way to pull a prank.