Jason Trost’s Blog

I’ve encountered a few scams before, but never like the one I encountered yesterday – a live chat with a scammer on Facebook. I got a chat from an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years who said he had been robbed at gun point and wanted to know if I could wire £800 through Western Union. I knew something was up right away when he wrote “Thank goodness I found you online”.

Instead of getting rid of the guy, I figured maybe I could nab him online somehow. I tried to keep him going as long as possible, messing with him a bit and trying to get him to click a link in order to get his IP address. After that didn’t work, I called Western Union with my fraudster still on chat, but the fraud department told me they’re “not the police” and there was nothing they could do.