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