Running out of Steam: The fake Judy scam, part 2
Mark Honeychurch - 13 November 2023
This is the second part of an article detailing an online scam, which started when I accidentally accepted a friend request from a cloned Facebook account. This led to me talking to a second Facebook account named “Agent Patrick Smith”, and being offered up to $100,000 by Publisher’s Clearing House in the US. At the end of part one, I showed off my 9 year old daughter’s amazing forgery skills when I asked her to recreate my driver’s licence so that I could send it to the scammers as proof of my identity:
After a little to and fro with the scammer, where he pointed out that I’d not filled in the application form properly, I eagerly waited to hear if my completed application was going to be successful. For those who read part one, you may remember that the scammer was very keen on typing “Okay” repeatedly, so I’d engaged in a war to type more okays than they did. I managed to keep this up for the rest of our conversation (as usual, the scammer’s text is left-aligned, and mine is italicised and right-aligned).
After a few tense hours of waiting to hear if my application was successful, “Agent Smith” messaged me:
ID SUCCESSFUL
Your information Have been verified on our Database,Congratulations Once again
_Awesome!
What do I do now?_
You are qualify to claim the sum of $100,000.00 which has been donated to you as a grant and financial aid by the Department of Treasury in relationship with The White House Faith-Based And Community Initiatives working to foster global monetary co-operation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. As a result of the federal stimulus program agencies have new funds and incentive to make awards of financial assistance which has been created and authorized by the law.
Wow, that’s a lot of money. Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CONGRATULATION YOU HAVE QUALIFY HERE IS YOUR DELIVERY INFORMATIONS Ref#: 990078567 Batch#: 9056490602/333 Winning no: FB8901/LPRC Ticket number: 85433900-07844570000 Serial number: 7778551111
Kindly let me know if you have written it down
_Okay.
Okay
I’ve written it down.
Okay_
Make sure no one sees your ticket and serial number because it is your passport to get your prize money on delivery date and also make sure no one knows about the delivery for security reasons and also for a safe delivery
Okay, so I have to keep this a total secret and not let anyone know?
Yes
Okay
Notice: you don’t have to disclose your winning money to anyone until you got your winning delivered to your doorstep OK…
_Okay
Okay_
So, I’ve apparently been accepted to receive US money, because I guess the American government has more money than it knows what to do with (I’m presuming somehow it cleared its massive debt first), and wants to give me some to “foster global monetary co-operation”, whatever the hell that is. I even have an official ticket number, serial number, reference number, batch number and winning number - so it must be legit.
But there’s a catch:
We have verify your information’s and it shows that you are qualified to receive the grant,. And you will pay $1,000 for the Clearance fees… We will make every effort to ship your order as soon as possible
_Okay
Thank you
Okay_
Are you ready to pay the payment now so that we can tell you how to make the payment now?
That sentence makes no sense, but… okay.
1-Walmart-available?
2-Walgreens-available?
3-Family dollar-available?
4-Rite Aid-available?
5-Pharmacy-available?
6-Foodlion-available?
7-Warehouse-available?
Which one did you have around you there?
So, there we go. The scam here is that, in order to access the $100,000 that I can claim, I just need to give the scammers a $1,000 “clearance fee”. It’s the same old advance-fee scam again, trying to use people’s greed to blind them into making a bad decision and losing some of the little money they have.
It also looks like the scammers have found a bunch of major discount retailers and listed them all, so that this part of their script should work across a range of different locations - and, surprisingly, although most of these are US based, there at the bottom is our own little home-grown bargain basement store, The Warehouse! I let him know that I had a Warehouse branch near me:
_Ware Whare
7_
You have to go to the Warehouse and get Apple card or Steam card of $1000 okay
Okay, then what do I do?
Once you get the cards just let me know so that i can tell you what to do next
_Okay.
But I’m a little concerned about carrying around that much in cards.
It’s a lot of money!
I have another plan.
How about you take the $1,000 out of the $100,000 you’re going to give me.
Just give me $99,000 instead.
And then you get your $1,000 and I get the rest. Simple!_
At this point, I figured that going full-on Sovereign Citizen on them might be fun:
No we can’t take it out of your winning money because we didn’t have any access to open your winning money okay
Your winning money has been sealed and we didn’t have any access to open it
_Okay
Then I give you official permission to open my winning money._
NOTE: You are not sending me the money, The clearance fee requested from you will only be used to clear your Grant package from the Courier Service, and also Arrange all Necessary Document to STAMP/APPROVED your winning Certificate by the International Monetary Funds IMF.
As a Sovereign Citizen I grant you temporary custody maritime rights over my cash money winnings.
We can’t take out of your winning money okay
I hereby forthwith, as a Freeman of this land, give you inalienable rights under the Constitution to take the $1,000 out of my winnings. We The People.
You have to pay for the clearance fees before the FedEx men can deliver your winning money to you at your doorstep okay
_In fact, you’ve been so helpful that you can take $500 for yourself.
So, please just transfer me $98,500.00._
No we can’t
Well, that didn’t work. I tried pushing this angle a little more, upping Agent Smith’s finder’s fee to $1,000, but he wasn’t budging - telling me again “You have to pay for the clearance fees first before we can deliver your winning money to you okay”. I guess I was going to have to go and buy those Steam cards. So, after a few hours of Agent Smith badgering me, I pretended I’d purchased the cards:
Have you get the cards yet…
Yep, I’ve bought the cards - but I think the police might have followed me home. What should I do? There’s a police car parked outside my house.
You have to open the cards now and send me front and back of the cards
But what do I do about the police?
You have to send the cards now
Hello Mr. Mark have you got the cards now so that we can activate your winning money now??
At this point, you may be wondering why these scammers are asking me to purchase Steam cards rather than just transferring the money to them. For those not in the know, Steam is an online games store where you can buy computer games, including ones that can cost upwards of NZ$100.
My guess is that this is one of the more convenient ways for the scammers to transfer the money to themselves in a way that’s hard to reverse and/or trace.
Unlike an international bank transfer, once the Steam cards are redeemed there’s no going back, no grace period during which I can attempt to have the transfer cancelled.
Also, there’s a question of how the scammers turn $1,000 of Steam credit into cold, hard cash. Well, Steam has the option of spending your credit to purchase a “gifted” game licence key that can be used to add the game to anyone’s Steam account. There are several popular websites that are well known for selling discounted game keys, allowing people to set up an account as a merchant and sell off any game keys they have (I won’t link to them, but G2A and Kinguin come to mind immediately). And so, by generating a code for a $100 game and selling it for $80 or $90, the scammers can turn their Steam credit into cash at a loss of maybe 25% or 30% of their earnings (losing out from both the discount they will need to offer, and the website’s fees).
This loss isn’t great, but crucially it both adds another layer of abstraction and obfuscation to the money trail, and gets the money from Steam, where it’s pretty useless, into a scammer’s bank account, which is a lot more useful. And it does it in a way that, to the casual observer (and possibly even the government), makes it look like legitimate income - when someone declares in their annual tax return that they made money selling game keys, will any government department in any country know or care to ask where those keys came from?
There’s an added bonus that the entire process is digital, involving intangible products, and at no point has anybody had to risk driving a truck full of stolen goods down the motorway. I guess the positive results gained from using this method of laundering are probably worth losing 30% for.
So, back to my scammer.
Hello Mr. Mark have you got the cards now??
…
Have you got the cards now so that we can Activate your winning money??
Yes, the police have finally gone. I have the cards.
Good
They were outside my house for hours. I’m a little concerned, to be honest.
Okay
Okay
You have to open the cards now and send the pictures with the receipt now
Send the cards one by one with the receipt now okay
_Sorry, I’m exhausted. I’ve been worrying all evening, staring out the window at the police car, and the clock on the wall is a quarter past midnight.
I think I have to go to bed. I can send you the cards tomorrow. I’m shattered!_
Okay
I have no idea why the police were outside my house for so long. Do you think it has anything to do with these cards?
No they have nothing to do with the cards okay
_Okay, thank you for the reassurance.
You’re so helpful._
You didn’t have to be scared or afraid any more okay
Thank you so much.
Hope you’re going to send the cards tomorrow morning??
_Yes, of course!
I just really need some sleep._
Good
Good night, gorgeous xx
Okay
Okay
Hope you’re going to send the cards by 8:00 am tomorrow morning??
No, I won’t be awake that early!
Okay
_I like to sleep late on the weekends.
But don’t worry, Agent Smith, I’ll be thinking of you while I sleep.
And I’ll sort out the cards once I wake up._
Good
_Okay
I say unto thee once again, good night fair maiden xxx_
I will be expecting you tomorrow morning
Sleep well.
Good night
The next day was crunch time - I had to send poor Agent Patrick Smith something. Thankfully, I was forearmed. I had spent 15 minutes on Google, searching for images of Steam cards online and downloading them, separating them into folders: “Front”, “Unscratched”, “Obscured”, “Broken” and “Scratched”. Using these different images, I wanted to see how long it would take them to figure out I hadn’t actually purchased any cards.
Hello Mr. Mark
Hello Agent Smith
Mr. Mark we are waiting for you to send the cards now so that we can Activate your winning money now okay
We are waiting for you to send the cards now so that we can start making the next documents of your winning money now
_Okay
Shall I email them to you?_
No
_SFTP?
Happy to upload to a website._
You can send the cards here one by one
Oh, you want me to put them in envelopes and send them to you individually. Cool, what’s your address.
No
Postage may cost a little, but that’s okay.
Just open the cards and snap it then send it
_Okay
Send me the address.
I’ll go and get some stamps.
Won’t be long…_
You have to send the cards how you send your driving license okay
_In this chat?
Is that safe?_
Yes
Are you sure?
Yes it is safe
Okay.
I was going to drag this process out and make it as painful as possible for the scammer. What I followed up with first off was a picture of the front of a Steam card, rather than the back:
Is that right?
Yes but you have to open the cards
Okay, give me a minute…
Okay
_Okay
Right, I’ve opened the first 5 already and added them to my Steam account. How do I transfer the credit to you?
Do you give me your Steam account name?
Do I gift you the credit?
I’ll do the others in a minute._
No you have to send the pictures once you open it okay
Okay, hang on…
Just send the pictures once you open it
Yep, I really don’t see the point of sending you a picture of a card I’ve already credited to my account, but here goes…
How much is this ?
_$10
All done?
I mean, I think it’s useless to you as it’s already in my Steam account, but there’s a picture of it anyway.
Shall I start on the other 99?_
Don’t add them to your steam account okay
_But I’ve already done that, for 10 of them now.
My account has $100 credit.
What do I do with that? Can’t I transfer it to you?_
Okay don’t add the remining cards to your steam account
_Okay
But what do I do with the credit I have? Shall I buy a copy of Starfield?
Have you played Starfield yet?
Is it any good? I’m tempted to ignore the haters and try it out.
After all, it’s a Bethesda game, so it should be pretty good, right?
I love the Fallout games, even Fallout 76!_
The poor guy, thinking he’s just lost the first $100 of his money to my stupidity. At this point I was starting to push things a little:
Okay send the rest of the cards now
You want the pictures of the other ones I’ve added to my account?
No
Send the other cards that you have not added to your steam account okay
_Aaaaaaaaaah, that makes more sense!!!!
Hang on…_
Okay
There we go.
Got it okay?
You have to scratch the cards
_Okay
Okay, done. I’ve added that one to my Steam account as well.
Now I have $110 credit.
Shall I keep doing the rest?_
Hello Mr. Mark are you kidding us here??
_What? No, I thought I was meant to scratch this one as well?
Ohh, hang on. You meant scratch but don’t add to my account!
Oh, I’m so stupid!!!!_
Yes
Hang on, let’s see if I can get the next one right.
I then sent poor Agent Smith an avalanche of images I’d downloaded from the internet of Steam cards that had already been scratched and redeemed - some where the numbers were clearly visible, and some where people had accidentally scratched through the number strips and into the card behind.
As I did this, I had to fend off questions from Agent Smith. He said “this card is not clear”, to which I made an excuse about why I was having problems scratching the shiny silver layer off the back: “sorry, I don’t have a coin - we’re living in a cashless society! So I’m using a rubber chicken to scratch the cards. It’s not doing a very good job”. Later on, after a few more failed cards, I told him “I’m going to get a new rubber chicken, maybe a fresh one will do a better job”.
Next he asked “Why is this card take different places??” and “All this cards is taking different places”. Interesting, it seems he’s noticed that the background to each card is totally different - countertops, carpets, etc, all unique. I just ignored this one for now, as I didn’t have a good answer, and kept sending him more images.
Then he’d finally had enough, saying “Wait” and “Stop sending cards” - nope, I was not going to wait, so I kept sending him more cards - picture after picture after picture…
Finally he asked for the receipt - I think there may be a way to get the Steam card numbers from the receipt: “Send the receipt of the cards first??”, to which I said “The cashier asked me if I wanted a receipt, and I said no. I think they probably threw it in the bin”.
At this point, he’d had enough:
Are you kidding us here??
_Why would I be kidding you? Are you kidding me?
Okay_
Firstly the cards is taking different places
_Sorry?
What does that mean?_
Secondly you didn’t have receipt of the cards
_Nope, no receipt. Sorry.
Okay_
You said that you got Seam card $10 in 100 places how is that possible
_No, not 100 places. All from one place. Are you talking about the pictures?
I’ve been taking pictures of them in different parts of my house, to make them look more interesting.
Who wants a bunch of pictures that all look the same? It’d be hard to differentiate them!_
I think you’re not okay if you’re okay you will not sending fake card here
Given that he’d figured out I was sending him duff card images, I decided to call him out for being a scammer, and tried to ask him a few questions about his job: “I’m writing an article about this, and if I could get some answers it would be really interesting for my readers.”. He just doubled down and responded with denial: “No we are not here to scam people because what we do here is real and legitimate program okay”.
It must have been obvious that I was not going to be giving up any of my money, and that I hadn’t really gone out and purchased a stack of Steam cards, as Agent Smith made one last-ditch attempt to get something useful from me:
Check your gmail you will see code there
Code?
Yes
What code?
To complete your process
Send the code here now
You will see 8 digits numbers
After realising that the scammer wasn’t talking about my fake email account that I use for scams like this, but the real email address that’s attached to my Facebook account, I checked my email and, sure enough, there was an mail with an 8 digit code in it:
Yep, the sneaky bugger had attempted to reset my Facebook password, and was trying to get me to send them the reset code so that they could take over my Facebook account. As a parting shot I thought this was rather clever of them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this worked on at least some occasions. I didn’t want to let him down, so I tried one last attempt at sending him a forgery, this time a made up reset code:
_Oh, haha, that’s funny!
11112222_
Are you kidding me
_Dude, I’ve told you that I know this is a scam and you’ve tried to reset my Facebook account. I just wanted you to be honest, but you decided to double down and be silly instead.
So, in other words, you started it!_
Okay
Okay
What did you want now ?
_To talk with you honestly.
Is that okay?_
And with that, Agent Patrick Smith stopped responding to me, and presumably moved onto his next mark (I’m sorry, I only spotted that pun after I wrote it, so I’m going to have to leave it in). As always, I hope that my meddling with these guys has wasted at least a little of their time. I also now know how this scam works, and it’s disappointing just how simple and pedestrian it is - relying on people’s hope that there’s a quick win out there just waiting for them, as a way to fool them into giving away their money. Presuming that this scam is still working for the scammers in this day and age, which it appears to be, it really does seem to be the case that some people are more than willing to drop their guard if they see the chance of a quick profit.