Confessions of a Game Scammer (and Identity Thief)

Marcus Eikenberry of MarkeeDragon has a 38 minute interview with "Patrick" - a young man who made between $10,000 and $20,000 over the course of one year of criminal scamming:



There are some fascinating details (here are my notes on the highlights):

3:00 Started in Eve Online / GoonSwarm

5:30 Scammed his own Eve Online Corporation as a Director (non GoonSwarm) stole 9B ISK in 2006

6:30 WoW Scam/Griefing casual every month of so

7:30 Lost his job and decided to sell his Eve Online Account.. he took the money and realized he didn't have to transfer the account - there was no protection for intangible items in PayPal Terms of Service - He made $750... used it for rent.

10:00 In order to "beat PayPal", he mailed piece of paper with invalid information... got through Paypal security and send the Shipping Tracking information (PERSONAL NOTE: my company used physical shipments to validate shipments of license keys to avoid fraud problems in 2003).

11:45 Scammers "networking" to develop tactics... Paypal changes and protect buyers, not sellers. Reverse scam to a "Buyer Scam": Buy Item, dispute sale, Resell the account quickly

13:30 Started identity theft ... used stolen name and SSN, to set up fraudulent paypal account tied to his Real bank account + fake ID (there is no cross verification of account names - Marcus is currently checking to see if this weakness still exists)...Patrick worked in HR as recruiter... had info of anyone who applied for a job at the company (IT IS SCARY HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR NAME AND SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER) then close Paypal account quickly before they put in a dispute... age 21,22. Blames economy, desperation - rent & food problems.

16:30 - All you need to create a PayPal account is a name & SSN (and your own bank account)

16:50 - $10 to $20K in one year... was active for one year.

17:30 - Why he was not caught - only small transactions... keep it under $1000. Paypal "caught up with him" eventually - then he started using other peoples accounts.. that is why he stared ID theft (but they didn't validate account, see above)

19:00 - Paypal is so easy, much easier than direct deposit or wire transfer... a lot of scammers only do this (scamming) once.

20:00 - Last Scam / Biggest Scam - started getting scared. Meet girls "get them to love him" and use their Paypal account (or get them to set up a Paypal account). "Most interesting" found he actually liked the girl. Got a real job and paid her back. Realized what he was doing.

22;15 - Other most exciting was the first one. When you make over $500,... a "means to get by".

23:20 - Security advise... copy of drivers license & prove its actually the person... TrustWho works (NOTE: run by MarkeeDragon - 99.7%).. if they've never done any sales before on the site, don't trust them... reputation at sites is a problem if you haven't done a sale before... TrustWho really "ruined his (scam) business". He was not able to get TrustWho verified.

29:30 CraigsList is great place to scam people. Get 18 year olds with fresh money (after graduation).

30:50 - Successful transactions in past, get drivers license (repeat)... scary how many people have your drivers license and SSN

33:00 - Wrapup by Marcus Eikenberry - scamming women, HR attacks, name & SSN is all it takes

I'd echo Marcus' comments. The potential for abuse by people in Human Resources and customer service is truly frightening, especially in this economy. It is also disheartening how weak our financial authentication systems are.