Blog archive.

[Wayne]

So yeah, we’re what you’d consider “experts”. Why? Here’s why.


People from time to time come to us asking for help, then proceed to argue with us over it or completely ignore it. Let me explain the background to why we know so much about these scams.

Between us, there’s over 30 years’ experience in dealing with scam emails. We have received thousands of 419 emails in that time. Tens of thousands even. We’ve seen them all. When a new email format comes around, it’s usually nothing more than a variation of an old one we’ve seen before. We can practically smell a 419 email or fake account from a mile away. We’ve also talked to those who have been victims of scams. We know their stories, we know what the scammers did, we can even tell them what the scammer will do next. Remember, scammers tend to be lazy and unimaginative. A leads to B, leads to C in over 99.99% of cases. That’s why, when people come to us for help, we can tell them what’s happened and what to look out for.

Regarding sextortion, we’ve received over 11,000 forms with scammer details and the steps the scammer did. We don’t just post them up on our forum without checking them. We read each and every one of them, removing information that would give away the identity of the victim, correcting mistakes in the form and often going that extra mile to uncover much more than we were given. An email address may lead to a second profile, a phone number may show a connection to another scam and so on. We also talk to people. Our live help room is open for 6 hours a day, every week day. In the years it’s been available, we’ve talked to thousands of people who were caught up in the scam. We’ve even on occasion talked to the scammers themselves.

Putting aside the years we spent on other sites before ScamSurvivors was created, we’ve had four years of talking to people, receiving and replying to scammer emails, reading, studying, investigating and even meeting with government agencies to share information. It’s a long, hard, often thankless task that we do for free, but it means that when we say someone’s a scammer, that the email is fake, you need to deactivate your Facebook account or that there is no trunk box winging its way to you, we know exactly what we’re talking about.

[Wayne]

“Sextortion suicide” documentary.


Back in January I was asked to take part in the filming of a documentary on sextortion for the Asian market. This week I was approached about a potential UK version. A little digging found the original program, and it’s definitely worth watching. I’d say this is one of the best, if not the best documentary I’ve seen on the subject. If the UK version turns out to be anywhere near this good then I’ll be more than happy to help again.

[Wayne]

Apparently we’re “taking kickbacks”.
Of course this is news to me, unless you count the pens I pick up at iDate on the displays. Do they count?

So here’s what happened. Someone joined our site spouting all kinds of rubbish about various dating sites. Some investigation led us to the conclusion that he was either someone angry after being scammed, with an axe to grind with anyone related to dating sites and completely unwilling to listen to reason, or one site trying to badmouth others by creating a fake identity. Either way, we don’t care. That kind of person is not welcome on our site. They come back with several other accounts, which are all also banned. Next up they decide to start adding comments to our YouTube videos. They get removed. Today he decides to have another go. Here’s what’s been written today about us. Click on the image for a larger version. After it I’ll copy the reply I made.



+David Brunner Seeing as you want to do this in a public forum, let’s go for it. We read your posts on our site. We read them and decided that your viewpoint is so “out there” that you’re not welcome on our site. We also saw your posts elsewhere where you were referring to the women on dating site profiles as “prostitutes”, which was the final straw for us. Your comments above pretty much prove our point. We pride ourselves in being independent of the dating site industry, even going as far as to refuse every offer of sponsorship so we can remain so. If there’s a scammer on a dating site, not only do we give the details of the scammer, but we name the site they were found on – no exceptions. We work with the authorities toward getting scammers arrested. We do all this for no money. Every person on the site is a volunteer. We get scammer bank accounts frozen, fake sites closed and their details exposed for the world to see. Again, we do this for free. When at iDate, we give presentations on how to help keep the people on dating sites safer and aware of scammers. We’re not there to help the site owners, but to protect the people who go to their sites from being scammed. We also tell the site owners that if a scammer is found on their site, we will and do name them. That’s hardly winning us any popularity contests, but we do it anyway. Maybe you’d like to explain to me how our presence there can have such an influence that dating sites obtain legitimacy from it. I can only dream of such power. So now let’s jump back to your first sentence. “Scam survivors is crap”. Really? Maybe you’d like to tell this to the tens of thousands of people we’ve helped. To the people we have had to talk to whilst they were holding a gun in their hand ready to end their own life. Am I exaggerating for effect here? Not one bit. What about the people who told us they had no one else they could talk to about their scam? The ones we have spent hours with talking them through what they need to do after being scammed or the ones we’ve helped retrieve their money before the scammer collected it and it was gone forever. Do they think we’re crap too? Of course not. You’re just angry that we wouldn’t give you a platform to spout your drivel. You are not welcome on our site and you never will be.

Next up I find more comments made by him, and this is the one I really need to address.



It’s worth pointing out why we don’t deal with sites, but rather individual scammers. We’re four people. There’s barely enough time in the day to do what we do already. It’s the same reason we don’t deal with “real life” scams, just online ones.

So at this point we’re being accused of taking kickbacks. I don’t know whether to find that more insulting, or being accused of having no sense of humor. It’s a tough choice between the two, but the kickback thing slightly edges it. So let’s talk about the kickbacks thing shall we? No dating site EVER has given us a kickback. Once, on another site I was running at the time, I was offered a kickback if we changed the bad reviews of a dating site to something more positive. They were greeted with a less than polite “take your money and shove it where the sun don’t shine!” response from me which is documented in one of my books. Even the threat of legal action they made later on to try to get us to change it didn’t make me bend, and the same stance holds firm on ScamSurvivors. We offer – as the site’s front page says – “Free, non judgmental help and advice for those scammed online”. Maybe I now need to add “independent and 100% kickback free”!

[Wayne]

Scammer accounts keep getting reported despite everything we say.


Recently we’ve noticed that the Facebook accounts of sextortion scammers that are being posted on our forum are being reported and then deleted. This is the last thing we want, as it causes no damage to the scammers, but can put any investigations in jeopardy. Likewise, people are sending abusive messages to the phone numbers reported. We are completely against this, and will ban anyone we catch doing it. Because of these recent developments, we’ve had to stop posting the Facebook profiles of the scammers. Whoever you are that’s doing this, stop it and stop it NOW! You think you’re helping? You’re not. All you’re doing is making any reports on the numbers/profiles outdated, therefore making it harder for victims to find the help they need and causing more people to suffer being scammed. Feel proud of yourself now? Still think what you’re doing is smart? Maybe you don’t care, and give yourself a pat on the back every time an account is closed because of a report you made. Let me tell you this. What you’re doing is stupid at best, dangerous at worst.

[Wayne]

If we charged for what we did, would it make it more valuable?


Here’s something that really bugs us. What we offer, we offer for free. Free help, free advice. Yet people still choose to ignore what we say. Why? Because it’s free? Would the help we give be considered more valuable if we charged £100 for it? Of course it wouldn’t be, but people seem to think that “free” means “worthless” and it annoys the hell out of us. We go out of our way to give people advice based on our many years of experience about scams. I’ve been doing this for 10 years. Slaphappy has been doing this for 9 years. And so on, and so forth. What we offer is based on the experiences of dealing with thousands of scammers, yet people still choose to ignore it. Would you prefer it if we put it behind a pay wall? Would that make our experience worth more to you? It would still be the same advice, but would having to pay for it make it any more valuable? Of course not. We give what we have for free because we feel that people who have potentially lost everything shouldn’t be expected to pay any more for the help they so desperately need. If we charged, we’d still be giving the exact same advice. Basic moral of this post, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Sometimes the things we give people for free is worth the exact same as what others charge for.

[Wayne]

Busy, busy, busy.


As I was saying in an earlier blog post, there’s lots happening right now. On Thursday last week, we were featured (and featured quite heavily I should say) on a program on Danish TV about sextortion. You can find the link on our site’s main page. The day before I had a meeting about a program about sextortion down the line. It was mainly discussing ideas and so on for how the scam can be shown while still keeping the person safe. Yesterday I had a meet with Folami from voic.org.uk about ways to better work together. Folami’s site is dedicated to helping the victims of revenge porn, which is related to what we do on our site. She also does this for free, the same as us. Tomorrow I’m being interviewed for the BBC, and hopefully on Friday the item we were interviewed for about romance scams back last month will be shown on the BBC too. On top of that, I had a meeting with a government agency last week, again about sextortion. In between those, working on the site and trying to fit sleep in, it’s been a really busy few weeks that look to get even busier. Once the BBC items go out, I’m fully expecting more media requests as always happens. On an extra note, a pretty special anniversary is almost upon me, but more of that at a later date.

[Wayne]

Hacking? No, Googling.


People ask us how we get the real details of the scammers from time to time. Some have even accused us of being hackers. Here’s the simple truth. Not all scammers are as smart as they like to claim they are. Some use the same email address for their scams and their real life. Some even change their profiles on social media sites to pretend to be a different person in order to scam people, completely forgetting to delete the posts and images they posted beforehand that show their real face. All it takes is to put their email address or profile name into Google. Sometimes all it takes is to scroll down a page on their “fake” profile to reveal the truth. Yes, it really can be that simple to identify the real people behind the scams. Not every time of course, but it happens often enough to give us a good laugh at the stupidity of some scammers.

[Wayne]

Beware the recovery scam.


Scammers will often pretend to be an organisation able to recover any money sent to scammers. Below is an example of the kind of email to look out for:



Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Steve Austine, The head of Anti Crime Unit at Economic And Financial Crime Commission.(EFCC). We have 3 criminals here in our custody, and after all investigation and the confessions of the 3 internet criminals, We find out that you are one of the victim. We got your email from them and they told us how they scammed you and collected money from you. The Federal Government has already froze all their Bank Account that contain Millions of dollars.In order to pay back the money to the victims.
We have instructed to find out from the all victims and pay back what is rightfully belongs to them. All you need to do right now is to get back to us, And give us any proof that they truly collected money from you. I am giving you 100% hope that you will recover back all they stole from you. It does not matter where they contact you from or the name they called for you, All is criminal tricks.
I have Attached here with the copy of my ID card, For you to know whom you are dealing with. It will be good for you if you can get back to us and with any proof that you are truly a victim. The Government is doing everything possible to wipe away all the bad seed from this country. And with your help we will find the rest of them and track them down too. Thank You for your cooperation.

Email:- investigation.unit@presidency.com
Yours Faithfully,
Steve Austine.
THE HEAD OF ANTI CRIME UNIT.
Economic And Financial Crime Commission.(EFCC)

[Wayne]

Beware this “minor” scam.


This is one that’s slowly rearing its ugly head. It begins in a very similar way to the standard sextortion scam, but they don’t use the video as the threat. The person is contacted a short time later by someone claiming to be the female’s father. At this point, they claim that she’s a minor and money demands are made. We’ve seen reasons include counselling and to have a police report dropped. We’ve not seen enough cases to come up with steps to deal with this, so for now we’re advising people to follow the same steps as with a standard sextortion scam. The only difference would be to double the time spent away from social media sites to at least a month. As we get more reports, we can offer more tailored advice.

[Wayne]

No, not greedy at all!


How to spot a scammer from Ghana:

How much money did they demand?: 150000 then 15000 then 3000 then 1500