Whilst playing Words with Friends, I received an in-game message from someone who I knew straight away was a scammer based on their profile This was completely different and unique to anything I had seen previously. The scam would result in not one, but two scam accounts working together to try and convince me to part with my hard earned money. The Forex scam involves purchasing crypto-currency to deposit into the scammer‘s fake website which is then allegedly used for trading. The only downside is that you’ll never see this money again. These scammers definitely bit off more than they could chew and were sent packing with their tails well and truly between their legs.
The usual Words with Friends confidence builder
The first scammer started off asking me the usual questions, where I‘m from, if I’m single, etc. They then asked if I knew anything about Forex. Forex is the trading of currencies, much like playing the stock market. I knew at this point where things were heading
The sell was pretty convincing really. Who would turn down the chance to make thousands from an investment of just $500. The saying “too good to be true” comes to mind, and youd be right. The request to move to Google Hangouts came pretty quick so naturally we went along to see how this Forex scam was going to progress.
In previous scambaiting examples, I‘ve assumed the persona of Chris, a 36 year old finance worker. As this scam appeared to be based around financial transactions, I changed to Chris, a 36 year old warehouse worker to give the scammer more belief that I didn’t know what I was doing.
The scammer wasted no time in showing me information of how other clients of theirs had made a substantial amount of money. Nice to see this scammer valued the privacy of its “clients” by openly disclosing their balance, email address and phone number.
raised the issue of privacy with the scammer seeing as they had just sent me this personal, albeit fictitious data. Any legitimate financial agency of course wouldnt do this but the scammer justified it by saying because I was a client, they were able to show it to me. Interesting theory!!
Pulling apart the scammers website
For the next part of the Forex scam, I was required to go to their website and sign up for an account. This scam was certainly different than any I have seen recently but by disclosing their website, they opened up a whole wealth of information to me.
To the untrained eye, the website would look fairly professional. On closer analysis, it was a complete shambles and displayed some obvious errors which would lead any vigilant person to the conclusion that it was a scam.
Reading the ‘About Me’ section of the website shows up inconsistencies. First it is Forex, then later in the same paragraph it is forex. Basically it is all just waffle, especially the reason they stand out from their competitors, the platform is 100% web based!!! In 2019, surely not, that is years ahead of it‘s time!!! Also the guy with the beard seems to appear quite a lot on the site. I don’t think he is implicated in the Forex scam. He just happens to be in all of the pictures this scammer pinched.
As this is supposedly a legitimate company, the site lists their postal address. The scammer already told me they were from California so this address is consistent with their story.
As in previous sessions with scammers, we checked this address out on Google Street View, again the results seemed plausible.
It is an office block, it could be a legitimate website company that this scammer is just piggybacking off. I still wasnt convinced. Thankfully, Google Street View allowed us to navigate all around the building which revealed that this was a made up location and no Forex company was trading here.
Companies who were present in the office block was listed outside of the building. None of these dealt with Forex and none were remotely like the name of the scammers company.
This scammer really was dumb. In an attempt to convince people it was a legitimate business. A registration certificate from Companies House in Cardiff was clearly a fake document. Companies house is a legitimate website and great for looking up details of UK companies. Why a company in California would be registered with Companies House in Wales is beyond me., but this one was, or at least that is what we were led to believe!!
The company chairman was named as Grant Cordone. This was the same person who was listed on the about us part of the website. He is a highly regarded businessman in the USA but has had no dealings with this company. I promptly contacted him and sent him a copy of the fake certificate to inform him his name was being used in a Forex scam. I also invited him to contact the co-founder of Zynga to discuss this further. After all, the whole scam had started on their platform.
As we can see from the team, our bearded friend is only a developer yet he seems to get into a lot of their promotional material. The person I took most delight in chatting to the scammer about was David Helen. This guy has obviously been working far too hard as to me that looks like a blonde female, certainly not like any David Ive ever met.
Who is behind this scam？
Id seen more than enough at this stage. It was time to do some digging. A little WhoIs search on the website domain brought up some useful information about this scam site.
The key information in this report is the domain host and the registered address. We would need to contact the host if we suspected foul play. The registered address is where the scammer could possibly be operating from. Again. Street View came to our aid to check this address out. Could we have discovered the exact location this scam was taking place from？
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It can be seen that the author finally discovered the address of the liar and successfully exposed the liar. However, we must say that people like the author cannot represent most of us, because the speech of a liar will attract us and reduce our self-thinking. It is difficult to investigate whether a dealer is formal from 0 to 1 on your own; however; WikiFX can help you reduce a lot of time. Before trading, search for the exchange of your choice on the WikiFX App, and you can see the photos of the dealer‘s company office we took for you; the dealer’s regulatory information; user comments; and other important information. With the help of WikiFX, you will quickly get to know a broker and make judgments.
Below, we have listed some relatively safe traders and less safe traders. You can judge from the score; if you want a deeper understanding, go to the dealer's page to view all the information about the dealer.
Now we can test ourselves. If you dont look at the score, can you tell from the details whether the dealer is safe or not？
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