I was "buying" some mobile phones from someone I knew was a scammer, and when I told him I doubted his legitimacy, he came up with a way to "prove" it. He wanted payment through Western Union of course, so he showed me an MTCN number and a sender name, so that I could track the transfer on the WU website. He said this was a payment that someone else had sent him... of course, that does not prove anything, because by tracking it, all you can find out is that a payment was sent from a certain name, not how much it was for or who it was sent to.
So I had a friend contact another scammer in Nigeria, and ask him to pick up the payment (which he was quite capable of despite only having the MTCN and sender name) so the other scammer would not be able to use it as "proof" anymore. Turns out the payment was only $5 sent to and from the same person
I seriously hope noone has fallen for this one. It's probably an old trick but this is the first time I've seen it. The MTCN was 2606481669 and the sender name was Robert Martinez.

Replying to [FraudWatchersDotOrg]:

Thanks for the information.

Replying to [FraudWatchersDotOrg]:tricky tricky tricky.....

Moderator: I started a new topic for this post as it was not related:

http://resources.alibaba.com/topic/18064/Here_is_my_story_.htm

Replying to [FraudWatchersDotOrg]:

New to Alibaba, and of course cautious about wiring $, so I did a little googling about this source for "amazing" Nokia pricing on a product that is not supposed to be available anywhere other than Nokia direct (the 770)

This was the reply: Guessing scam, right?

From: Mino Ltd (on this site)

My company details are:

DATELINE LIMITED
Registered No. 05154043
VAT NO.GB:778499055
certification ISO 9000.
NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE GREAT PORTLAND STREET LONDON GREATER LONDON W1W 6QP

Here is EXACTLY how I propose you to make a safe deal:
You go to your nearest WU branch and deposit the money
you have to pay me on a RANDOM name ( EG your
friend name, your wife name... etc. ) but the address
will be mine.
After you deposit the money you will receive the
receipt ( your Send Money Form paper copy ). Scan it
and send it back to me in JPEG format. In this
way I make sure you that the money have been deposited
correctly and I see you don't want to
cheat me.Once I receive the scanned receipt from you,
I will IMMEDIATELY ship you the items.
After you will receive the items you have 2 days to
inspect and test them. If all is OK, you will
have to go on Western Union and modify the
transfer details by changing the receiver name with my
name
so I can collect the money. And our deal ends there.
If you are not satisfied with the items, you can send
them back to me and securely withdraw the money
you have deposited at Western Union.
It's a 100% safe deal for both of us. Your big
advantage: you can inspect the items before I get
payed.
If this is ok for you reply me asap
Regards




here's the web link discussing this source:
http://www.thewholesaleforums.co.uk/forum/archive/index.php/t-1785.html

Here is EXACTLY how I propose you to make a safe deal:

You go to your nearest WU branch and deposit the money

you have to pay me on a RANDOM name ...

...It's a 100% safe deal for both of us.

Yep, you're right, it's a scam


Asking for WU sent to a random name is a common trick to make people feel safe. It's not, they can pick up the money with only few details about the transfer, even in a different country than it was sent to. It's also common to impersonate registered UK companies by just copying the name and address from somewhere like ukdata.com

http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?p=13278