Phone scammer Ron McPhish knew of a few scam baiters who were causing trouble to his fellow criminals. You'd never know when you'd come across one and they could hurt your operation if they were disruptive enough. Overall, Ron was a fairly successful scammer, specializing in Bank Impersonation Scams where he would pretend to be representing a victim's financial institution. Some made it easier than others; it varied from bank to bank as well, especially when directing his prey to a physical location to make cash withdrawals.
In a typical scam, he would represent a bank's security or fraud department, relaying to their customer that their account had been exposed and that they would need to transfer funds in order to secure it; transfers being cash withdrawals. Bankers could identify these scams by asking too many questions at this step. Many of them had heard time and again that their customer was taking cash for "home repairs" or "a family member." Sometimes telling them it wasn't any of their business would work. McPhish was effective as he could be to coach his victims to avoid detection, even if it didn't always work.
Often, they would then be directed to purchase and relay gift card redemption codes or deposit the cash to crypto ATMs. Ron pulled in a lot of money from the older folks he scammed; they had the cash and he could usually scare or coerce them into action.
Then one day, while he was scamming away at what he thought was an unsuspecting victim, things took an interesting turn. He'd been communicating off and on with this woman for a few hours. She had relayed that she was headed to the bank to withdraw $10,000 after McPhish convinced her that there was an internal fraud event he was investigating as an employee of her financial institution (in this case a Southern credit union). The woman seemed concerned and compliant, which was more than ideal to make the scam worked.
From the bank, she was instructed to visit a series of convenient and drug stores to purchase gifts cards as "the way to secure her funds and prove the fraud." Ron found that he was much more effective if he had them go to various locations. A concerned cashier could stop a scam if his victim bought too much at one time. His scheme had been ruined multiple times by this. Even so, Velma Scrubbins had no trouble going to the locations and getting $10,000 worth of gift cards. Now came time for the cash out.
"Relaying the code on the back will help me transfer your funds to a new, secure account," he said with as much conviction as he could muster.
"If you say so," replied Velma. "Are we about done with this?"
"Yes ma'am," McPhish lied. If successful, this wouldn't be the last time that Mrs. Scrubbins would be scammed. She had relayed she had more than the $10,000. Ron intended to go for more. She relayed a card number to the scammer and he plugged it into his computer as quickly as he could. He selected the redemption button but nothing happened.
"Can you relay that back again Mrs. Scrubbins?" He made sure his voice was calm. She relayed the number again and he input it. Again, no redemption. "You didn't already redeem these, did you?"
"No dear," was the reply. "I stole those cards." McPhish was dumbfounded.
"You what?!" This wasn't one that he had heard before.
"I went to the store like you said to do but I didn't really want to spend the money and I know you wanted the gift cards. I took 'em and left the store. No one was none the wiser and you've got your cards to do your bank thingy.."
McPhish should have known he was being played at this point, but he was far enough into the scam and felt that Scrubbins was just going senile. He doubled down and spent the rest of the day trying to get her $10,000. It never existed and Scrubbins was just a character a scam baiter had made. His day had been wasted.
The next day McPhish took to the phones again. For the second day in a row, he was involved in a long scam. This time the customer had a lot of money and he was coordinating a wire for $100,000 to be sent to a mule account he controlled at another bank. Mr. Germain Foster took his time and asked too many questions, but it was something that Ron was used to.
"Just imagine what they could do if they used their smarts for good," Foster mused about fraudsters when McPhish lied about working for a fraud department. Yeah imagine that, he thought to himself. McPhish went to check his bank account to see if Foster had sent him the money. For some reason he could not log in to his online banking. "Just imagine what they could do," Foster repeated before disconnecting the call.
Two calls in two days ruined. It was a lot of time to waste. The scammer went over the schemes in his head. How could he have identified it earlier? There had to be a tell to keep his from wasting his time. He'd figure it out the next day.
The third day had McPhish on the defensive. He messed up in his first call with an actual would-be victim by losing his cool when they said they didn't understand what he was talking about. Of the five calls he made that day, he was only able to scam one person. The other four he suspected, for one reason or another, to be scam baiters.
The next day was worse for Ron, only connecting with three people and not seeing a dollar from it. He was also able to determine that his mule account was being shutdown after the scam baiter relayed the number to the bank.
The fifth day was when Ron McPhish lost it. Evelyn Morrow was the target. She didn't have as much money as some of the others, but desperation had set in and he needed a win. He was three hours into the scam when Evelyn pondered out loud.
"Just imagine what they could do if they used their smarts for good." McPhish thought of Germain Foster and lost his cool. Shouting expletives at the senior citizen, he blew any chance of scamming Evelyn. Thankfully Evelyn wasn't wearing her hearing aid so she just went with it, nodding at her phone as if McPhish could see her. "Bless your heart dear" was the last thing she said before McPhish broke his headset, throwing it down in a rage.
What neither person knew is that "Bless your heart" is actually a curse to a scammer. In every future interaction that Ron McPhish had, he became convinced that the person on the other side of the phone was pulling his leg. He was never successful in scamming anyone else again.
The End.
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