Let's Go Ambient Scambaiting

ok today we're going scam baiting again this time the scammer says his name is the Reverend Matthew Paul and he wants to reunite me with 2.8 million dollars that I was supposedly meant to have received three years ago before we get started just a couple of tiny bits of admin firstly this scam baiting session is gonna be a bit more relaxed and laid-back than the last one ambient scam baiting if you like I put in just enough effort to spin the scammer along for as long as I could secondly just to say this video isn't the only type of content I make so if you subscribe for this please don't be surprised when my other nonsense turns up in your feed you might just want to skip those other videos if they aren't what you like so anyway it's a pretty standard opener for an advance fee scam the promise of a large easy cash windfall a kindly patron who will help me claim it and a statement of urgency one of the more notable points here is the false claim that the scammer has contacted me once before in the past it's an interesting tactic that I've seen once or twice now I guess it's intended to trigger a false memory and by doing so reassure the victim I'm gonna play along with the scam but not to their rules the key objectives for this little episode will be firstly to penetrate the automation and occupy the attention of the scammer secondly to waste their time and effort and frustrate them and thirdly just to have a little fun along the way so here we go I replied innocently stating that I did not recall any previous conversation and I'm sure they must have made some sort of mistake in a previous episode my fake victim identity was an old man named Manuel this time I will be a younger man named Manfred the scammer replied to say that the transfer was going to be cancelled I wrote back to express my relief then I asked okay what do I need to do next Matthew wrote back half a dozen really grumpy and huffy sentences quite unusual for this stage of the game but it was the last sentence that really got me send your bank account you would not hmm but anyway god bless you too Matthew this made it really easy for me to act confused so I just asked Matthew again to explain what I had to do I guess Matthew was now hoping to turn it back around so he just complained again about me not sending my bank account details the strange thing about this is he'd never actually me for there in the first place but never mind I just asked him why he was being so rude he replied to say that he was finding it frustrating to deal with me which admission I consider an early win in this game along with some more moaning and whining I wasn't going to let it go so I complained about his rudeness again and then I said his behavior seemed intolerably rude for a minister then I asked him again what did he want me to do next he replied asking me to confirm my bank account details I simply asked why do you need that information I thought the transaction was not mandatory he said if I was not ready I should stop wasting his time not likely so I just repeated an earlier message why are you being so rude and what should I do next he didn't reply so I wrote again asking if you think I'm wasting your time why'd you keep contacting me also what you needed me to do next still no response so I wrote again asking why he'd stop messaging me and what should I do next this seemed to work and he sent me a fairly standard scam template asking for my personal and banking details I was going to write bank just asking why he needed that information as I thought he'd said the transfer had been cancelled but I reckon we can't go around that loop forever so let's move on I faked a company ID using a random photo I found not a photo of me I also provided some completely fake about plausible bank details and the phone number of my disposable pay-as-you-go sim plus an excuse why it would be switched off if he ever tried to call me I finished off by expressing once again my confusion as to why he needed this information what it was all about and could he please explain it nothing happened for a day or two so I emailed Mathieu to ask him what happens next then an email from a fake Bank arrived in my mailbox followed by another one that was nearly identical interestingly the only difference between the two was the subject line so now it looks like we know the name of one of the other victims or maybe the fake name of another scam beta if you think you know who this is let me know in the comments anyway I pretended I didn't see either of these emails which was partly true they did lend him my spam mailbox but anyway as we proceeded just remember I haven't seen this email yet meanwhile Mathieu contacted me off the back of both the right and the wrong email oddly he said the transfer was in process and they had already paid the fee which is pretty unusual for an advance fee scammer it may be wonder what his next play would be it didn't make me wonder whether the transfer was genuine in case you are wondering so I just decided to wait and see how it played out he emailed me 10 minutes later just to ask me to say when I received my fund so I just replied cordially thanking him for making it all happen so quickly promising him a little bonus and also asking does this mean the transaction is not cancelled as an afterthought I asked if he could say how long the transfer should take he said three days cool let's wait three days in less than three days in fact the same day I received this letter supposedly from the bank saying had been a complication and the united state financial crime enforcement network had stopped the transfer and I would need to pay one thousand two hundred and seventy dollars to release the fund the fake document accompany this email was a masterpiece let's just spend a few moments to appreciate its finer points it has an old version of the financial crimes enforcement network logo that they taken from Wikipedia and the aspect ratio was distorted it had very bad clipart of the United States Great Seal also with the aspect ratio distorted the US flag well that is the version that existed from 1912 to 1949 with 48 stars arranged in a grid also would distorted aspect ratio 12 more smaller copies of the financial crimes enforcement network logo which this time appear okay for aspect ratio but the top five are not aligned with the bottom 7 a stop stamp which still has the water marking from whichever clipart source they took it 8 distinct references to the United State of America or the United State singular and a deadline which states the maximum of three days to resolve the matter let's put that in the calendar anyway I decided to completely ignore this email document and continue as if nothing had happened so a few days later I emailed Matthew to tell him the fund had not yet arrived this seemed to trigger the bank to send another email similar to the previous one but not identical which again I ignored then Matthew contacted me to tell me the transfer had been held and how I had to pay twelve hundred and seventy dollars and he couldn't afford to help because he'd been so generous and paid the initial fee I replied to voice my concern about the involvement of the financial crime enforcement agency and asked if there was something illegal about this transaction I also tried the play of asking if the fee could be deducted from the fund of course it won't be because there is no and I thought I'd also throw him a curveball so I told him I had found the email Nikkei Bank in my junk folder and read the document from the financial crime enforcement agency but that it had promised the matter was all resolved and the transfer had been released so no need to worry about the additional fees Matthew insisted that the payment was still necessary and that I'd probably misunderstood the message he also answered my concern about the legal nature of the transaction spinning some story about the US government being in full charge of all transfers in West Africa and that this was to combat money laundering he suggested that I start looking for money for the fee but also was clearly getting a bit desperate as he claimed he would pay a little more than half of it himself requiring only 600 from me this is pretty common and as I understand it scammers will Whittle it right down until the victim finds it a reasonable amount to pay then they'll just invent another fee later anyway to answer his first email I just insisted that no I hadn't misread anything and the fund had been released and so now there was no problem at all - a second email I decided to ramp up the concern about fraud so I replied I had no idea financial fraud was so common that must be quite a distressing situation for you to endure what sort of illegal activity is most common are the government controls working to reduce it or is the problem out of control of course the irony of directly asking these questions of a scammer is not lost on me Matthew replied to say the government was working to reduce it that it was money laundering by corrupt politicians that gave me an idea which we will now explore he also replied to insist that the fee was still necessary to release the fund I just decided to ignore that for now and ask some more questions about the fraud so I wrote that sounds terrible isn't the government made up of politicians though how will they work to reduce it when they're also the cause of it that sounds both difficult and impossible what about the effect on ordinary persons such as yourself does any of this financial fraud intrude upon your daily life or otherwise affect you I can't imagine what it must be like please let me know your experiences Matthew tried to brush this off and tell me to focus on getting the fund released I could sense this was a point of annoyance so I decided to tickle it a little bit more I wrote and rather disturbing thought just occurred to me what if these financial crime investigation people are actually just some of the corrupt politicians you mentioned earlier could it actually be that this so-called clearance fee is nothing more than a scam being perpetrated by fraudulent persons in the government or elsewhere please let me know what you think Matthew wrote back to try to assure me that the people investigating the matter who he now called the financial crime Network were a government body and to remind me again about submitting the clearance I thought we'd just keep talking about scams and fraud to see if we could make him squirm so I asked him how he could be sure there were no fraudulent officials or scammers involved in the transaction as well as blaming all my worrying on him the scammer assured me that no fraud was involved the financial crime Network was just trying to make sure the transfers genuine he asked me again for the fee except he asked me for the wrong half he was supposed to be paying six hundred and seventy and I was supposed to find six hundred I replied to correct his mistake but I also told him I had not received any instructions from the bank of course the instructions were right there in my spam folder but I figured I would just pretend I had and receive them at all Matthew replied to provide the details of a bank account where I was to pay the $600 to a person by the name of junior or Walker I decided to express doubt and suspicion about the character of junior art Walker and to insinuate that maybe Matthew himself was being scammed by a fake government official Matthew assured me that junior was representative of financial crime Network I'm not really sure how that specific name is meant to reassure me he also asserted nobody is scamming anyone here go ahead and send the money I'm not finished laboring this point yet though so I just carried on throwing suspicion and shade on junior Walker I tried an oblique compliment maybe the Reverend Matthew was just too trusting of strangers I asked for some ID for junior Walker Matthew destroyed reasserting the junior Walker was an employee of the bank in reality I suspect this just indicates the scammer did not have already made fake ID for this character maybe nobody's asked before but he finished with a bit of a threat telling me to keep the money if I wasn't going to send it I pushed again trying to make it sound like I was being perfectly reasonable to ask for the idea of junior Walker and arguing that this was both my own protection and for the protection of Matthew no response for a couple of days so I chased up asking again for the ID documents for mr. junior Walker I also hinted that I was ready to make the transfer today if we just sorted out this detail I received a reminder from the fake echo bank which set a deadline of four days we'd better check back against the previous markings on the calendar hmm then Matthew Paul replied to my earlier email the one where I had suggested he was too trusting he seemed offended by this suggestion but repeated his earlier oblique threat about keeping my money if I was not serious he also replied to my chase up email stating it would be impossible to get junior Walker's ID and offering to handle the fee via Western Union in his this opens up a fresh opportunity for mischief so I welcome to suggestion to use Western Union he sent through the details meanwhile I asked eco bank for mr. jr. Walker's ID I now had enough information about the scammers to report them so I sent a couple of emails the first email to the real US Financial Crimes enforcement network to let them know that a scammer or group of scammers was impersonating them badly I also wrote to the Bank of America to report mr. jr. Walker's bank account for investigation in handling fraudulent fees I'm not sure anything ever comes of reporting these things like this but I did it anyway the fake eco Bank wrote to me to assert once more that jr. Walker was eco bank's legal representative in the United States of American good to know [Music] [Music] they asked again for the fee as well as just limply apologizing for their inability to provide any ID for junior Walker they set a deadline of three days so let's just update that calendar I was still hoping to push the scammer into creating some awful mspaint identity document for junior Walker so I expressed my disappointment and confusion about the inability to help meanwhile I sent some actual money to Reverend Matthew Paul the native currency of Burkina Faso is CFA francs and the exchange rate is pretty lopsided I was hoping to be able to send him 600 CFA francs instead of the requested 600 dollars but this is too small an amount for Western Union so I sent him 1,600 CFA francs an amount equivalent to about 2 pounds 26 about 3 dollars I emailed Mathieu to tell him I'd sent the money via Western Union but that I'd mistakenly sent a thousand too much he'd asked for 600 I'd sent 1,600 could he please return the surplus 1000 I made up a reason why this was really urgent I deliberately didn't give him the money transfer number just to be at ease he Kabang wrote back to me to tell me there was absolutely no need for me to see junior Walker's ID and that the deadline was three days let me make a note of that the fake financial crimes enforcement network wrote to me to try to hurry things along sounding very stern and setting the deadline at 7 days right 7 days got it Mathieu presumably now smelling the scent of money wrote to me asking how he should return the surplus 1000 dollars and asking me for the Western Union payment slip I reply for my smartphone giving me the excuse of not being able to attach the slip but quoting the money transfer number I gave him the wrong number I just messed up one digit and I asked him to send a surplus back to me via Western Union the detail didn't really matter because of course he wasn't going to send it back and also there was no surplus when Matthew replied he clearly had now wasted one trip to the western union office as he informed me the transfer number was wrong I knew that already I apologized and made excuses then I sent him a screenshot of the money transfer app carefully zooming in to crop out the real amount but showing the transfer number making the wrong number only one digit wrong in a previous email makes it more plausible when I correct it like this and more likely he'll waste another trip to the western union office in order to present a facade of innocence and compliance ie mad eco Bank to tell them I had already done my part and the Matthew Paul should now have paid the Phee but alas matthew paul was upset about something and that something was the incorrect amount I'd sent him he was upset enough to say essentially the same thing twice over in different words in this email and then he repeated it all again in a second email this time asking what kind of joke this was well I know the answer to that and so do you but I protested innocence and ignorance of currencies and I just asked him for further instructions Iko bank then emailed me out of nowhere with a generic chaser for the fee and threatening consequences but no deadline this time did this mean that the time was up or the deadline was indefinite I just replied saying they should be chasing Matthew Paul Matthew Paul wrote back again accusing me of lying when I said I'd sent $1,600 actually I never stated any denomination when I told him I'd sent 1,600 instead of 600 he told me to cancel the payment and resend the correct amount remember the rule respond to aggression not with compliance but with righteous indignation so that's what I did I told him he was being rude and it was probably an error at his end and reminding him to check his Bible of accusations of lying and so here we're coming close to the last few messages that the Reverend Matthew Paul was ever to send to me telling me to take my money back because I knowingly sent the wrong amount busted of course but there's an interesting little point here that I want to draw your attention to if anyone ever tells you that advance fee scammers are doing what they do because of grinding poverty well here's an example of one that turned down a free meal I don't believe poverty is actually the primary driver for these scammers I continue to protest my innocence telling him that a Western Union transfer can't be recalled that's actually true and that he should take the 1600 and complete the transaction I emailed Eko bank to accuse Matthew Paul of being unhelpful they wrote back to argue somewhat unsurprisingly in support of Matthew and stating they would cancel the transfer I replied suggesting Matthew Paul was just lying and may have gone rogue and made off with a payment Iko bank told me that Matthew Paul is an honest man and told me my transfer was on the process of being terminated and they set another deadline better make a note of that Matthew Paul emailed me sounding a little bit hurt and saying I should be ashamed after all he done for me calling me a liar again technically true and saying that he didn't want the money and I should take it back he wrote a second email saying pretty much the same thing again and ending with what to me sounds almost like a toddler tantrum telling me I'm a joke and then another email again to say that the amount I'd sent was not enough I only replied to one of the emails in that little flurry the one accusing me quite rightly of lying just to say that it should probably be him that should be ashamed of lying he replied with pretty much the same complaints as before but telling me he hates lives and oddly inviting me to send the right amount of money we could go around that loop for ages I guess but I decided to draw matters to a close by telling him to take the 1600 CFA francs buy himself a lunch and think about his career choices he never wrote back and he never collected the money so that I suppose is the end of that little game I hope you enjoyed this one thanks for watching and I hope to see you again soon [Music]

Channel: Atomic Shrimp

Views: 436,941

Rating: 4.9549217 out of 5

Keywords: scam, scambaiting, OK, atomic shrimp, 419, advance fee

Id: 3GghzMz0x9Y

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 06 2019