Who are some of the scammers who should
have gotten away?! Let’s get right into it and start with:
5 - Not a Routine Plattini Stalone de la Torre Cordoso
was an expert at forging identity documents and using them to scam unsuspecting victims.
Unfortunately for him, the authorities were also experts at catching criminals and Plattini
soon found himself in police custody. Plattini was going about his jolly day
when he encountered officers conducting a random stop-and-search operation. At the time, he had
two forged Portuguese ID cards and two forged Portuguese driving licenses in his possession.
House Search
This piqued the officers' interest, and they conducted a larger search of his home.
Police found equipment for making forged passports, identity cards,
and national insurance cards. The investigation discovered bank accounts that were set up
using the forged documents and were intended to be sold on as a ‘package’.
Police also found controlled and contraband substances in his room.
The final nail in the coffin for Plattini Stalone de la Torre Cordoso was the stash
of pictures of him found in his house. In those pictures, he was flaunting the cash he'd gotten
from his criminal enterprise. It’s always a great idea to take pictures of illegal things you do.
Aftermath
In court, the lawyers argued that Plattini posting those pictures was a result of his
total disregard for the law. The judge eventually sentenced Plattini to four years. However, before
sending Plattini on his merry way to prison, the judge spoke about the harm he'd caused.
He said Plattini's action could help international criminals and terrorists achieve their aims,
and that Plattini was a resource for all manner of criminals. In the end, judgment was passed,
and Plattini Stalone de la Torre Cardoso went to jail. Maybe next time Plattini won’t walk
around in public with things that can get him arrested and sent to prison.
4 - A Giant MAGA Scam Edawn Louis Cougham trashed
his pizza and ice cream shop to fake a racially motivated burglary to file an
insurance claim. The suspect, Edawn Louis Cougham is a former NFL player who played
for several NFL teams from 2012-2016. The police were notified of the incident when
a 911 distress call came in at around 9:30 pm. The caller reported that the man trashing
the pizza shop drove a black Chevrolet Silverado that didn't have a license plate.
Pulled Over
Later that night, police officers stopped a truck matching that description leaving the
area and found televisions attached to damaged drywalls in the back of the truck. They also
discovered that the driver of the truck was none other than Edawn Louis himself!
After further investigation, the police discovered that the pizza shop had been
vandalized. There were swastikas on the door, racial slurs sprayed in wet, fresh paint,
and someone had even written "MAGA" on the wall. The video surveillance system
was destroyed, the booth cushions were sliced open, wires were cut,
and the mirrors were broken. It reminds us of that time we got a cat for Christmas. Don’t ask.
At first sight, it looked like your classic hate crime. But officials knew that something
wasn't quite right. When asked about what happened, Coughman coughed out a response
that the police didn't take seriously. He claimed that he'd noticed the damage and
the theft earlier in the day, but had called his insurance company instead of the police.
Arrest
The police, however, could smell what Coughman was cooking,
and it smelled like BS. So the police decided to arrest Coughman. Once he was in custody,
police secured a warrant to search his vehicle, and what they found confirmed their suspicions.
For some reason, Coughman was in possession of a yellow crowbar and cans of spray paint.
Coughman had also found himself in possession of likely tools that had been used to trash the
pizza shop. Some people may think that this was just a coincidence, but not the police.
According to the police, the only reason they'd figured that Coughman was behind
the crime was because of the witness. If the witness hadn't seen Coughman's car,
it wouldn’t have been flagged down. And if it had never been flagged down,
Coughman would have gotten away with the perfect crime.
Unfortunately for Coughman, his plan came with some hiccups and he was
caught. Coughman’s lawyer wanted to remind everyone that he should
be presumed innocent and that we shouldn’t prejudge without knowing all of the facts.
Who DOESN’T drive around with crowbars, spray paint,
and TV’s that have clearly been ripped off the walls? This sounds like an episode of Reno 911!
3 - Scam a Go Round Cybercriminals who use hacking forums
to purchase login details and software exploits keep falling for scams themselves. These criminals
often get duped on these forums, and they usually have no recourse after getting scammed. We all
feel bad for them. These hacker forums are like marketplaces where scammers of all kinds gather
to do business. They advertise what goods they have to sell, and can even advertise for the
services of specialists in certain criminal endeavors. These forums are usually hotspots
for fraudsters who want to purchase databases of stolen passwords and credit card information.
However, these business dealings don't always go according to plan.
The evidence for this extraordinary phenomenon of scammers scamming scammers
comes from a study of three such hacking forums. The forums investigated were two
Russian-language forums, Exploit and XSS, and one English-language forum, BeachForums.
Scamming Platforms The scams that happen
on these forums take many different forms. Some are quite simple, while
others can be rather sophisticated. One example is a rip and run scam.
‘Rip and Runs’ are scams where the seller of merchandise or a
service receives payment but doesn't go through with a sale. It can also be
vice versa as a buyer could receive the merchandise and refuse to send payment.
Other types of tricks include selling merchandise that either doesn't work or is fake. One scammer
on the forum claimed that another seller sold them Facebook data that was already in the
public domain- which was probably more their fault that they didn’t check ahead of time.
Another example was a lengthy post by a scammer claiming that they'd provided a kernel exploit
for someone on the forum, and the person had refused to pay the agreed $130,000.
In other examples, scammers get scammed by multiple accounts working together. An
account with a good reputation may refer a victim to another account,
and that account may perpetrate a scam on the unsuspecting scammer.
One scammer wanted to buy a fake copy of the NFT game Axie Infinity. They wanted to purchase this
fake game and include a backdoor to siphon off legitimate users' funds. Unfortunately for them,
the person they bought the game from included a backdoor in the backdoor. Hence,
the scammer was getting scammed by the game they bought to scam others.
Playing With Fire The most interesting scam
investigators discovered was one surrounding the Genesis marketplace. The Genesis marketplace is an
online forum for criminals to purchase things like hotel login details, email addresses, victims'
names, and other personal details. This forum is quite popular and has been online since 2017.
However, when researchers started researching the forum,
they realized that there was a fake version of the site showing up on
Google searches. The website was built on a basic WordPress template and asked
for money to grant access. The real Genesis website, on the other hand, was invite-only.
Investigation
But that wasn't the only odd thing with this fake site. The site linked
out to other cybercrime websites, and the Bitcoin address people could make payments
to changed after it was copied and pasted. It was also being advertised on Reddit.
This told investigators that the operation was most likely carried out by a group
of collaborators. And they were correct. Over the course of their investigations,
they discovered 20 more fake sites like the Genesis site. Most of the sites
were impersonating real scam forums and often requested new users to pay to join.
Investigations revealed that this phenomenon of scammers scamming
other scammers isn't rare at all. After all, there's no honor amongst cybercriminals and
it seems scammers don't have any sacred cow. They'll scam whoever, however, and whenever.
It's generally difficult to feel sorry for these scammers who get defrauded on the
forum. They’re usually on the forums seeking ways to scam other people,
so it's sweet karma that they get scammed in return.
Another sweet irony is that the complaints of these scammers could lead investigators
to identify them. When they complain about being scammed, they often have to present
evidence and information. And this information could likely lead to their identification.
So not only are scammers getting scammed wholesale,
but they also can’t complain too much if they want to keep their identities secret. It's the
worst kind of trap to be in, and one can only be glad that scammers get into it.
2 - Accounting Never Stops In 2017, an official named Alan Boland
at the bank of Ireland noticed an odd pattern across certain accounts. Boland noticed the same
spelling mistake across the six BOI accounts belonging to three different people. Boland
decided to investigate further and discovered that the spelling mistake wasn't the only similarity.
The banking calls of the six accounts sounded the same, and they had similar IP addresses.
Boland informed the police,
and further investigations began. After concluding investigations, the police,
led by detective Garda Alan McCarthy discovered what he described as an identity factory.
McCarthy uncovered a scheme run by Keith Flynn and Lindsey Clark.
At the time, the six original identities had already taken around
£32,000 in loans. Police began to watch the couple and realized that they rented
different apartments. They were both lawyers at the time and had unblemished records. Hence
the police wanted to be sure that they could both be linked to the fraudulent accounts.
After watching the duo for a while, the police secured an arrest warrant and entered Flynn's
apartment. They found scanners, phones, wigs, documents, and a safe. The key to the safe was
handed over and the police discovered that it contained £92,300 in cash, alongside 21 full
Irish driving licenses with different names, 19 bank cards, and 16 credit union cards.
Digital copies of four passports were also discovered, alongside 31 SIM cards and a shredder.
Loans
Flynn and Lindsey ran the scam by opening a bank account, applying for a loan of about
£10,000 to £12,000, and then draining the account of that loan. They would
make about two or three payments, and then after the next repayment was missed the
bank loan would be written off as a bad debt. There would be nothing to suggest
that any fraud was going on. The accounts would simply be written off as bad debts.
Banks have safeguards against this sort of thing, but Lindsey and Flynn produced
documents of supremely high quality in opening the accounts. The criminal couple got fake IDs
and combed the internet for people who looked like them to create their fake identities.
For addresses, the couple identified homes that were on sale or empty and
called their owners pretending to be the former tenants. Then they
asked the owners if any parcel had arrived recently for them.
Their operation was so good that the police only caught them because of Boland's lucky discovery.
Getting Caught
Boland's leg work was the key ingredient that led to the couple getting caught.
In total, the couple stole around £390,000 from the banks. However, there's still some
confusion over how they spent it. Investigators say there's some speculation that the money was
being sent overseas, but there's no evidence to corroborate it. Another theory is that they
spent the money on living a luxury lifestyle, but there's very little evidence for that as
well. While others believe that the money is likely being kept somewhere as a contingency.
Both Lindsey and Flynn pled guilty to fraud charges immediately. Due to their
immense cooperation, Flynn was jailed for only four years, and Lindsey only got two
years for some reason. The court believed that Flynn was about twice as responsible
as Lindsey for the same crime. Maybe he was trying to make up for the gender wage
gap? In the event of a trial, Clarke was facing 388 charges and Flynn 389 charges.
In any case, we doubt Lindsey and Flynn will be running any
clever fraud scheme in prison. Or could they?
1 - Unknown Circumstances Prince Obieze Nestor made a
name for himself as a rich billionaire who had an extravagant lifestyle and showed off his wealth.
But he passed away in police custody after getting arrested because of one of his videos. From wads
of cash to new luxury cars and exotic homes, Prince Nestor showed off everything he had. In
a video he posted months before his death, the billionaire shared a closeup of a new luxury
car - a stunning white Rolls Royce Phantom 8 that undoubtedly cost nearly half a million dollars.
The billionaire then revealed that he planned to buy the ride and take it back to Nigeria.
Obieze went on to taunt the FBI and the EFCC, a Nigerian anti-graft agency that
investigates all financial crimes. Naturally, his unexplainable wealth would grab their attention
but Prince Nestor wasn’t too worried. He bragged that he wasn’t bothered by
anti-graft agencies like the EFCC and FBI. Prince Nestor said if they questioned him,
he would “settle” them- whatever that means. This was months before his mysterious death.
Opulence
On January 8, 2021, he posted a brow-raising video of himself in his opulent Dubai home,
surrounded by an unbelievable amount of money. He made a show of counting and
waving the wads of dollar bills around- he was probably just showing that he knows all
of his numbers and can count. People brag about weird stuff these days.
Unsurprisingly, the video garnered a lot of attention because people
really like watching other people count stuff. But
some of that attention was from people you don’t really want to notice you.
Aftermath
4 days after Prince Obieze posted his video, the police stormed into his house
in Dubai and promptly arrested him. It all happened so fast and in no time,
Prince Nestor was completely isolated from his friends and family
They didn’t even let him contact or speak to his
lawyer. He was held in custody by the C.I.D for interrogation.
Prince Obieze’s arrest shook the internet but what
happened just a few days later was more surprising. By the end of January 2021,
Prince Obieze had passed away in police custody under mysterious circumstances.
To this day, no one is still quite sure what happened to him.
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