Catfish Noodles
Mark Honeychurch - 4 September 2023
It all started with noodles. During a work call with a Chinese colleague of mine, Evelyn, I was asked what I would be having for lunch. I told her that I would be having instant noodles and she berated me, saying that I should make noodles from a Chinese recipe instead. A couple of minutes later, several links to YouTube videos appeared via SMS, all showing similar recipes being made, with English subtitles to accompany the Mandarin instructions.
I made the noodles according to the recipe. Well, nearly according to the recipe. My one mistake was a big one, and the noodles tasted awful. After figuring out my mistake, my next attempt the following day was amazing. Then over the next few days I added a fried egg, bok choi, mushrooms, tofu, vinegar soy, and a secret ingredient, a spoon full of Lao Gan Ma - and my noodles went from strength to strength.
At a work lunch a week later, I showed off my noodle skills with a picture I’d taken of them. Someone made a joke about how I should post the picture on WeChat, to follow the Asian trend of people posting pictures of their food on social media. I did this, as I happened to already have a WeChat account, but sadly one with only two friends - Evelyn, my colleague, and Tim from Wellington Skeptics in the Pub, who is learning Mandarin.
I lamented that with only two friends I really wasn’t going to get many likes for my noodle pictures, and Evelyn told me that there’s a shake feature to find new friends on WeChat. If two people shake their phones at the same time with the feature on, they will be connected to each other. I did this a dozen times or so, feeling a little creepy as I did it - sending friend requests to random people is weird. But then, after an hour or so, one person messaged me, in Mandarin. I ignored the message until a few days later when this account not only liked my latest noodle picture, they also sent me another message, this time in English.
After a little bit of small chat, she said to me “as a businessman, paying attention to long-term planning and risk control, making money by investing is one of the important ways to solve the economic pressure and improve the quality of life. What do you think?”. I assume that the use of “businessman” rather than “businesswoman” was due to a lack of genders in Mandarin, rather than a slip-up, but it was already obvious to me just from the fact that someone started chatting with me that there was something fishy going on - the message about investing just sealed the deal for me. I mean, I’m an overweight middle-aged white man, would I really think that someone whose profile picture looks like this might be interested in striking up a genuine conversation with me?
Usually I ignore and report scammers, but this time I figured I might as well give this a go and see where it ends up. It didn’t take long before my new Chinese friend was trying to move our conversation to Telegram - an encrypted chat app that presumably is less likely than WeChat to be monitored by the Chinese government, and another red flag that the person I was talking to was likely to be planning to scam me.
Well, that’s all good, I’ve had a Telegram account for many years. So, I’m happy to move our chat somewhere else, especially when the new platform makes it easier for me to copy and paste our chat history into a Google doc!
On Telegram, my new friend had a couple of new profile pictures - still not showing her face, but reinforcing that she was a real catch. Young, slim, fashionable. I was a lucky man!
Our conversation on Telegram got off to a great start! We talked about New Zealand, and my noodles.
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:43 pm]
Hello!
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:44 pm]
Hi, it’s nice to see you here 🫡
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:45 pm]
And you
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:46 pm]
How have you been doing and how does it feel to live in New Zealand?
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:46 pm]
I saw in your friend circle that you eat noodles a lot, is it a Chinese food?
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:46 pm]
I love living in New Zealand. And I’m doing well, thank you.
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:47 pm]
Yes, I like Chinese food. I’ve just learned to make noodles at home.
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:47 pm]
Oh cool. Looking forward to visiting NZ one day, so my friend recommended you so I can learn more about NZ with you!
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:48 pm]
nice you can make noodles, seems like you have a great ability to learn new things and be exposed to new things, maybe you are a foodie haha
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:49 pm]
I might be!
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:49 pm]
If you have any questions about New Zealand, I’d be happy to answer them. Where do you live?
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:50 pm]
😋 I bet you’re a great cook, looking forward to tasting your cooking!
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:50 pm]
Thank you very much. I’m in Sydney, Australia.
S💕, [14/08/2023 4:51 pm]
I haven’t been to New Zealand yet, but I’ve heard that the environment there is very suitable for raising cows and sheep, and the import and export of beef and lamb there is very famous, and the Wellington steak in the world is also from New Zealand!
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 4:59 pm]
Yes, New Zealand is very rural - although I much prefer cities.
S💕, [14/08/2023 5:01 pm]
I’m guessing you’ll be making delicious Wellington steaks too. The countryside is better for retirement, the emphasis is on your own opinion
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 5:11 pm]
No steaks for me, I’m vegetarian.
It was a lot of fun, and I had to keep catching myself. I knew this was a scam, but in my head I was actually talking to this beautiful, kind Chinese woman. I’d mentally pinch myself, and remind myself that the chances were high that the person controlling this account was actually a man somewhere pretending to be a young female socialite in Sydney. I kept getting photos from this account that appeared to have been recently been taken in Sydney, where this mythical woman was supposed to be living, and several of these photos, while not ever showing a woman’s face, were instead showing legs. (Presumably this kind of titillating content is enough to make many men ignore the red flags and get improper ideas.) Here we are talking about her drinking tea, along with a picture of her legs:
S💕, [14/08/2023 5:33 pm]
Just relaxing, making some tea. Would you like a cup?
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 6:34 pm]
Yes please! What type of tea?
S💕, [14/08/2023 6:38 pm]
Chinese tea, which belongs to the black tea category
S💕, [14/08/2023 6:39 pm]
Do you usually drink tea?
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 6:41 pm]
No, usually I drink coffee. But when I have tea, it’s either Earl Grey or green.
S💕, [14/08/2023 6:52 pm]
Haha People in the West usually drink coffee, which is one of your habits. Earl Grey tea do not know which one, maybe drank, each kind of tea has a unique flavor, some people like the green tea of the elegant, some people like black tea fruity, everyone’s taste is different
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 7:08 pm]
Well, I hope your afternoon tea was enjoyable and relaxing!
S💕, [14/08/2023 7:22 pm]
I usually enjoy drinking tea and chatting with friends, so I can share each other’s views and learn about different fields. And for me, drinking tea is also one of the ways to socialize
S💕, [14/08/2023 7:23 pm]
We can have tea together sometime, make some green tea and we’ll talk while we drink it
Mark Honeychurch, [14/08/2023 7:45 pm]
Of course, if you ever find yourself in Wellington I’d be happy to meet up with you for a cup of tea.
S💕, [14/08/2023 7:49 pm]
Thanks, sounds great, let me entertain you too when you come to Australia!
And here’s a snippet of conversation from a couple of days later, where I get two pictures of her right leg in quick succession:
S💕, [16/08/2023 12:27 pm]
Just finished my workout and I feel energized. Have a great new day!
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 1:08 pm]
Well done you!
S💕, [16/08/2023 1:23 pm]
Ha-ha. Packing up now and heading home. How are you?
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 2:05 pm]
I’m good, thanks. Just having a busy day at work.
S💕, [16/08/2023 2:10 pm]
I know, and while you’re busy, remember to get plenty of rest and remember to eat.
As a good skeptic I used multiple tools to search for each image I was sent online, which included not just leg pictures but also images from inside tea houses, a cafe and a restaurant, as well as outside at Bondi Beach and other prominent Sydney locations, but none of the images came up as having been found elsewhere on the internet. My best guess for the origin of these photos is that there’s one Chinese woman in Sydney being paid to live a “high life”, regularly posting new pictures up to a shared drive so that all of the people running this scam have a constant source of fresh images to use with multiple targets, building up their story of being a successful businesswoman with an active social life.
At this point, I have to apologise for just how cheesy my conversation is. Play-acting accepting the offer of a cup of tea, chatting about meeting up with each other, and even talking about buying a private jet was all a bit weird, but I kind of enjoyed playing my part and hamming it up a little. Anyway, between these two conversations above, a lot happened. I found out that my new friend (maybe girlfriend by now) was independently wealthy, as she has an aunt who helps her invest her money in cryptocurrencies and precious metals.
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:36 pm]
In the financial markets I mainly do BTC ETH and international gold, they are like your career, do some research and analysis and then trade them and make a profit through fluctuating spreads
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:37 pm]
Oh, you have a day job as well? What’s your first career, if finance is a side career?
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:38 pm]
My main business is apparel and I have my own garment processing plant in China. My main business is all supported by a side business, finance, and most of my income comes from the financial markets
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:39 pm]
Wow, so you make more money from your financial wheeling and dealing than your day job! That’s kind of funny.
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:39 pm]
These are inflationary times, business is bad, workers and prices are high, so I make money from the financial markets to balance them out
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:40 pm]
Well, good on you for supporting your business in hard times.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:40 pm]
Hopefully you’ve helped to keep people in a job where they could easily have ended up unemployed.
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:41 pm]
I had a tough time during the epidemic, the national blockade prevented normal production and caused the company’s financial chain to break. Then my aunt knew about it and she lent me a sum of money to replenish the company’s capital to be able to support it. Then my aunt handed me the way of financial investment, and took me into the field, in the financial market to make money to supplement the company’s funds, so now everything is stabilized!
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:42 pm]
Wow, thank goodness for family helping out.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:42 pm]
And now you have a skill that will help you for the rest of your life.
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:43 pm]
Yes. I do it all the time and if my company goes out of business, a lot of people lose their jobs and they are not just one person, but a family. So it doesn’t matter if my company makes money or not, but at least they have a job and an income to support themselves and their families
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:43 pm]
You are so kind!
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:44 pm]
Finance is an important support as a real entity. I’m sure you’re aware that a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises collapsed during the epidemic, putting a lot of people out of work
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 5:45 pm]
Yes, it’s been a real shame - but it’s bound to happen when an economy contracts.
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:45 pm]
So now when I can, I try to help as many people in need as I can, and if it were you, would you be willing to do what I did?
S💕, [15/08/2023 5:46 pm]
You have a great perspective on this, I hope we can share each other’s perspectives and learn from each other for the better 🥰
We chatted about her plans to travel the world and build an amazing house in Sydney at Diamond Bay Reserve (and I received several pictures of Diamond Bay to back this up), and then we got onto the topic of me learning about how to make money from the markets:
S💕, [15/08/2023 6:03 pm]
Yes, we can be mentors to each other and learn together. They don’t make a lot of money, but they still go on giving and helping others for the sake of that burning passion and perseverance in their hearts, and that sense of responsibility and obsession with gratitude. I have time in the evening, if you also have time, I can first teach you some basic
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 6:05 pm]
Yep, sure, most evenings I’m just working and relaxing at home, so I should be available whenever you are.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 6:05 pm]
I’m looking forward to it!
S💕, [15/08/2023 6:05 pm]
That’s good. Then we can set a time.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 6:13 pm]
Awesome - tonight is fine with me, or tomorrow night. Thursday and Friday I’m busy, but I’m available on Saturday as well - although that might change.
S💕, [15/08/2023 6:15 pm]
So let’s do it tonight. You need to prepare a free practice account first so I can teach you better.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 6:16 pm]
Okay, where do I do that?
S💕, [15/08/2023 6:17 pm]
I’ll send you one and you can contact customer service to assist you
S💕, [15/08/2023 6:17 pm]
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 6:18 pm]
Awesome, I’ll do that when I get home later.
S💕, [15/08/2023 6:19 pm]
OK. You need to register an account first, then you can open a free contact account, you have no idea feel free to ask me or contact online customer service
It’s been kind of hard to work out where this text is coming from - some of it seems like a genuine attempt by someone at conversing in English, but then there are sections of larger text that seem to be copy/pasted from somewhere else, maybe a master document with set script points for these scammers - possibly either generated from an AI tool like GPT, or translated by an app that likes to use big words when translating from Mandarin to English.
One weird thing that happened a couple of times that made me think of an AI tool was that a particular phrase was used, that looked really suspicious: (negative prefix). The first time this came up, I asked what it meant and was ignored:
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:10 pm]
Shall I download the PC app?
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:11 pm]
(negative prefix)
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:11 pm]
Huh? Negative prefix?
The second time it happened, I pushed harder, as I really wanted to see what “she” would say. The response I received was weird, suggesting something about security that sounded very cloak and dagger, like I was in a James Bond spy movie:
S💕, [16/08/2023 11:52 pm]
My aunt will send me a message to tell me that it’s all confidential.
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:53 pm]
Ah, okay - so can you forward me the message from her? Presumably at some point I’ll be receiving these messages, so it’ll be good to understand them.
S💕, [16/08/2023 11:53 pm]
(negative prefix)
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:53 pm]
What does “(negative prefix)” mean?
S💕, [16/08/2023 11:53 pm]
Like I said, I’m responsible for the safety and privacy of my aunt and the team. I hope you understand.
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:54 pm]
Ah, okay.
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:54 pm]
So, what does “(negative prefix)” mean - you’ve typed that twice now!
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:54 pm]
It seems a little strange.
S💕, [16/08/2023 11:54 pm]
Depends on your personal interpretation
…
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:55 pm]
This is not an interpretation thing, surely?
Mark Honeychurch, [16/08/2023 11:55 pm]
You wrote it, so you must know what it means!
…
S💕, [16/08/2023 11:59 pm]
(negative prefix) is responsible for security and privacy, don’t ask too many questions about what it means
I talked about my unfolding romance/business opportunity with a colleague at work, and after our conversation had finished another colleague came up to me looking serious. He said that he’d caught parts of my conversation, and he was concerned that I might have fallen for a Chinese scam - apparently as an eligible bachelor himself he receives frequent friend requests that end up in conversations about investing his money in crypto. I thanked him for having the courage to warn me about this, told him I was fully aware that I was being scammed, and let him know that I was documenting everything that was going on in preparation for writing about it, and that I was not planning to give anyone else my money.
So, back to my training. As I was painfully aware that this entire conversation was very likely a scam, there was no way I was going to open the link above, to client.mgsfinc.com, on my phone and create an account. So before my training started, I installed a virtual copy of Windows in HyperV on top of my physical copy of Windows on my laptop, and created a local only account to login into this new copy of Windows with. Then I generated a brand new GMail account within this virtual environment, and used that to sign up for an account with this fake trading service. As I wa doing this, I was being sent screenshots with handily circled areas that I should be clicking:
In return I was asked to send back screenshots of my own, which I did after checking each time that no personal information was visible beyond what they already knew about me:
The system I was logging into consisted of two parts - a web-based dashboard for controlling accounts, and then a mobile web app (basically a website built to run on mobile devices like it was a proper phone app) that I would be making the trades on. For now, I would be trading with a “dummy” account - and I was walked through the process of creating this, including loading it up with $10,000 of fake money:
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:44 pm]
You’ll click on Open New Practice Account and I’ll walk you through the next steps
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 10:45 pm]
So “Open Demo Account”?
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:45 pm]
Yes
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:46 pm]
Open accounts are live trading accounts. The market is the same for practice accounts and real trading accounts
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:47 pm]
Can you understand what I am saying 😆
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 10:48 pm]
Yep - so it’s suggesting a demo account with leverage of 1:100 and a balance of 100k USD.
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:50 pm]
This is a practice account for newbies. You have an account balance of 100,000usd’s?
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:50 pm]
All our trades are traded by converting to usd, and the earning is also usd
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 10:50 pm]
Our trades?
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 10:51 pm]
100k USD seems quite high - do I want to choose something more realistic?
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:51 pm]
Yes. My deal is usd. Your deal is usd.
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:52 pm]
Does it have other prices available?
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 10:53 pm]
Yeah, from $10k to $1m.
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:53 pm]
It’s up to you.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 10:54 pm]
Cool - let’s start with $10k then.
S💕, [15/08/2023 10:54 pm]
OK
At this point, while I was about to trade with my fake funds, I was regaled with a story of how my partner in crime started learning with the training wheels off, with US$100,000 of real money - presumably an attempt to nudge me towards “investing” a large amount of my own money:
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:05 pm]
In the old days when my aunt took me to operate in this field, I also operated from 100,000 usd, but I did not use a practice account
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:06 pm]
What?!!!!! You started with $100k US of real money?!!!!!!
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:07 pm]
Yes
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:08 pm]
Wow, you must have been nervous.
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:08 pm]
So now I’m going to let you use a practice account to learn how to operate, so I’ll see if it’s right for you first.
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:08 pm]
Yeah haha. Me teaching you now makes me feel like I’m back in that time
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:08 pm]
That sounds much safer.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:08 pm]
Okay, how do I start?
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:09 pm]
That’s when I made my first fortune in the financial markets with 100,000 usd.
We hit a snag when I found out that they had set the mobile web app to detect if it was being run on a desktop device and give a warning instead of the interface - and I was told that “Website transactions are not available for the computer version”. However a quick click of F12 to bring up Chrome’s developer tools, and another click to switch to mobile emulation mode, and I was back in business.
The training took a little while, as the UI/UX skills of their developers is not great. All the way through the process, I was sent useful screenshots with pointers:
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:54 pm]
You click where I just marked the brush.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:54 pm]
Done
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:55 pm]
XAUUSD
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:55 pm]
Did you add it?
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:55 pm]
What does that mean?
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:55 pm]
This is the code for international gold.
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:55 pm]
I usually just trade the three BTC ETH xauusd
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:57 pm]
I don’t have XAUUSD as an option.
S💕, [15/08/2023 11:57 pm]
You click on the places I’ve marked.
Mark Honeychurch, [15/08/2023 11:58 pm]
Yep
Okay, so now I’d learned that I’d be trading in gold, using USD to buy and sell. Next up I needed to be shown how exactly I do this:
After a little to and fro, I ended up “buying” a very small amount of gold with my fake money - there were no units, but I apparently purchased “0.01” of gold, whatever that means. At this point, the app crashed and I started getting some Javascript errors.
At this point it was late (about 1:30am), so we said goodnight to each other, and I spent a little while poking around in their app’s code. Although the code had been “compiled” with an app called Webpack, there were some useful parts that contained data that I may try to put to use at some point, including some URLs and credentials, and some “textimonials”:
_CRM_BASE_URL: “https://crmv1.mmt64.xyz”,
BO_BASE_URL: “https://mgswebtraderapi.mmt64.xyz:8090”,
BO_DEMO_BASE_URL: “https://mgswebtraderapi.mmt64.xyz:8090”,
FOX_BASE_URL: “https://mgswebtraderapi.mmt64.xyz:8090”,
TRADE_BASE_URL: “https://mgswebtraderapi.mmt64.xyz:8091”,
s3BucketPath: “https://s3-ap-east-1.amazonaws.com/crm.dev1/”,
ABOUT_US: “https://crmv1.mmt64.xyz”,
CRM_APP: “https://crmv1.mmt64.xyz”,
BRAND_NAME: “CRM”,
LOGGING_BASE_URL: “https://frontend-logging.xxxx.com:9343”,
SECRET_KEY: “1c3f945e-9f43-44d8-ae9a-a247ea385e1e”,
APP_TITLE: “WebTrader”,
MERCHANT_KEY: “12345”,
DOMAIN: “https://demowt.mmt64.xyz”,
“Xuxin-textimonial”: “I don’t know what’s important to brokers, but for me the most important things are trust and honesty. I have worked with Whale-inc.com since December 2016. At the start, my strategy was not really working, but recently I was able to make consistent, substantial gains.”,
“Houan-textimonial”: “I started with $257.49 on January 11th. Withdrew $823.96 of profit on February 12th. I make trades at night - never during the day. And it is not every night either. I like how price changes are calculated to 6 decimal places, letting me come out ahead on more deals.”,_
In part two of this investigation, you’ll hear about how my first test trade goes when we’re supplied with trading information from a “professional team of analysts” and told exactly when to buy and sell in order to make money. I’ll also talk about how this scam works, let you know whether I ended up transferring my own money into their system in order to make my first million (spoiler: I didn’t), and detail the saddening turn my nascent relationship took.
Oh, and I also ended up having both an audio and a video call with my Chinese co-conspirator, and honestly things got a little surreal at one point. Here, as a teaser for next time, is a screenshot of me looking derpy in the corner, and some poor Chinese woman who had to pretend to be the same person I’d been talking to for hours:
