Scam: Dad I need you!

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I had an interesting conversation with a scammer today. I got this short text message on my phone (shown at left) from a fellow pretending to be my son and in dire need of my financial help. Of course those who know me know that we are childless. My first reaction was to just laugh it off but then I thought, why not pretend that I'm being taken by the scam and see what I can find out. So I responded by text messaging to the number he had provided. If you click on the image you can see the dialogue that followed.

The initial message came from 224 214 0017 and asked me to text him on a different number. That number, 226 786 0736, if believed, is a local Ontario number. As far as I know it's easy enough to forge a number but I think it's harder to have a text messaging dialogue on a forged number so perhaps it really is a local number. Perhaps it might not be a burner phone and could be traced. Or perhaps it's someone off shore ... that's a problem for the police to figure out.

Anyways, I pretended that it was our dear son "John" who is often getting into trouble (e.g., "Your mother is worried sick", "You're not in jail again", "Are you still taking those pills:,  etc.). I was sympathetic to his problem — the story was his phone broke and he couldn't get into his bank account. I pointed out that "Lisa" at our bank (his and ours too) had always been helpful and she would sort things out unless "... did you screw her around too?".  He never caught on that I was yanking him around.

Ultimately, after much back and forth (e.g., he wanted to know my bank and I replied that we both used the same bank with "Lisa") he ultimately gave me a CIBC bank account number, branch, name and address of the account holder in Scarborough and I promised I'd run down to the bank and send $8,765.00 to that account. Which, of course, I did not. "John" promised he'd be over to see me on Thursday to pay me back. And of course I've not heard back from him since.

I called the branch of the CIBC bank where the scammer had asked me to send the money (John advised that for goodness sake don't mention this conversation when you talk to Lisa!). The fellow I reached at the branch was singularly unhelpful and wouldn't even direct me to another number where I could report the problem. I went to the CIBC web page and found the number for reporting a fraud; again this wasn't helpful. When I called the CIBC fraud number they wanted me to enter my CIBC bank account number and I don't have one. So, I gave up on informing the bank. There isn't a branch in town or I might have gone in and found a local "Lisa" to help me.

As the final closure, I called Stratford Police and have sent them the screen captures from the album. The officer I was talking to was helpful and said he would file a report and send it on to the folks who deal with this (I suppose that's province wide rather than local). He was, of course, concerned that I had not been taken in by the scam and that I had not given them any of my financial details. And I had not, all he had was my cell number. I thought that having identified a local bank in Scarborough they might be able to trace the account to a person. He cautioned me that the bank account might have been set up on line with bogus credentials to be used as a transit point with any deposits made quickly transferred out. But sometimes crooks make mistakes, are young, dumb and naive. I hope the police followed up on the report and found someone. I hope banks involved in these scams do better.

Ah well, perhaps nothing will come of this. But it was fun wasting his time.

Ps. We love you John!