Scam payment

[mcdjl]

I may have recently recieved an email from a scammer asking for payment. I may have responded to them asking for an incoming transfer of £10 to confirm the account and given them the details of an empty savings account that can't make direct external payments. It may now have £10 in.
What's the right thing to do? Part of me thinks screw the scammer I'll keep the cash, but intend to tell the bank and or police. Anyone else?

[mcdjl]

I recieve enough of these type of emails that sometimes when bored i bait them to occupy their time and reduce the odds of them having time to get money from someone. I also leave lines from accident claim calls open for the same reason.

[mcdjl]

bhstewie said:

Giving criminals your bank account details so they can transfer you money that might be the proceeds of other crimes.

What could possibly go wrong

So far i appear to have been paid £10 but made a world of hassle trying to report the fraud to companies/the police where it doesn't fit any category they care about!

[mcdjl]

Sheepshanks said:

If the scammer comes round to your house and burns it to the ground with you and your familiy in it they might care then, but that's about the starting point for the police's interest.

Apart from anything else, nothing illegal has happened yet - you asked for £10 and they sent it to you.

Well arguably I'm now meant to be paying them £3209.....

[mcdjl]

The Spruce Goose said:

it is as old as the hills. the only issue will be the people that transfer the money and receive it are usually innocent victims themselves..

Yeah that's my worry, that is a normal person who's back account is being used, that I got the money from.

[mcdjl]

bhstewie said:

And that's why you don't mess with criminals.

The money you've received could be proceeds of crime.

And if the victim reports money disappearing from their account have a guess where the breadcrumb trail leads to.

At the moment having sent the trail of breadcrumbs to action fraud, 3 banks and a friend who's company has looked into these emails for me in the past, right now I'm trying to show the authorities the way to the scammer!

[mcdjl]

bhstewie said:

Scammer to mcdjl - please send me money
mcdjl to scammer - please send me £10 to show you're genuine here's my bank account
Scammer to someone else - please send £10 to this bank account

You get the idea.

Honestly I can't sugar coat it what you're doing is daft beyond words.

Sounds a lot like some of those fundraisers for people that spent all their money on drugs and can't get home. It's daft, I agree. I'm just surprised i actually got money.... For the moment!

[mcdjl]

zzrman said:

What for?

I don't know. I didn't ask. Probably just so that they had my money and I didn't.

[mcdjl]

Countdown said:

I'm confused - which/whose account details were you trying to confirm?

You already know your bank account details. You won't know the details of the account that sent you the money.

I don't know either really, I just didn't expect someone to put money into an empty account for me. I was never going to send them money.

dxg said:

You're in for a fun time.

You're now in the "gullible" list to be traded between scammers...

The more people that want to send me money the better!

[mcdjl]

It appears to be there for use....I suspect they sent it as bait hoping for the rest. They've not followed up asking for the rest of the money since yesterday. Mind you I've not heard anything from the banks/action fraud either.

[mcdjl]

To update this, i now have an additional £25 from my bank for now being communicative enough, and email from the originating bank saying what do you want us to do and an email from action fraud saying, nothing we can do.
So I'm £35 up as the result of an attempted scam. I do feel for whoever the original £10 came from....if it wasn't just the scammer that is.

[mcdjl]

poo at Paul's said:

You're awesome

How did you know? Its clearly not because of this minor story, so do i know you in real life?

[mcdjl]

BertBert said:

Probably being dense, but what does that mean?

I email their phishing team, direct/secure messaged them and tweeted them multiple times with no response. They then decided that one of my emails was a complaint so phoned me up and gave me £25 for not letting me know what they were doing about it.

[mcdjl]

PorkInsider said:

I think the 'now' before 'being' was supposed to be 'not', in the bolded bit.

And I'm just glad I'm at my desk and being paid so technically these aren't completely wasted minutes of my life.

Edited by PorkInsider on Wednesday 31st March 09:43

I saw you'd written thing earlier but didn't reply You're right, though it took me far to long to spot the second now (which was wrong) as opposed to the first one!