How I trolled a scammer

It all started with an error I was having with MOLPoints, a form of online currency to pay for game credit. I couldn't make my payment to Battle.net so I made a post on the MOLPoints Facebook page asking for help.

Then this guy, Toi Jing Wei replied my post (it has since been deleted so I can't screenshot it) which said something to the extent of:

Hi, please PM me your user/pw and I will help you to fix your issue. - MOL assistant

 Alarm bells immediately went off in my head. The number one rule of internet security is NEVER give your user/pw to anyone, and companies will never ask you for it (something I've learnt from young from Blizzard games. They always have this reminder. Thanks Blizzard.).

I immediately identified him as a scammer, and a really low level one too (lol signing off as 'mol assistant'), and decided to have some fun with him.

I made up a fake username, and came up with a deliberately difficult-to-type password. Let's see if he bites.

.

.

.

Yes! Success! 

I added the 8000 molpoints comment because he wasn't replying to my first 2 lines of messages. So I needed to make it more attractive. (8000 molpoints is worth $80)

My plan to confuse him with the big and small letters is a success. I can imagine him trying the different combinations and not having any success logging in hahahaha. (I am so evil.) (#robinhoodsyndrome)

I repeated the nonsensical password which probably took him another 30 seconds to type. I added more bait so that he would keep replying. I can imagine him thinking 'KACHING!! ANOTHER HUNDRED DOLLAR. I WANT'. His level of intelligence can't be too high anyway if he's resorting to signing off as 'mol assistant' to scam people. 

I am trying to play the role of the helpless eager-to-spend-my-molpoints idiot who is asking for his help. If you notice I've been speaking in pretty broken English, mainly to mirror his English AND to make myself seem more helpless.

And also re-emphasizing the amount of money I have in the account, just to remind him of the stakes.

Aww, how kind.

Clearly having difficulties logging in with my bogus information, he asks me to make my password simpler. Hey, problem solving! Good job JingWei!

I obliged. Hopefully you are not as dim as him and you do realize that the new password says 'you are so dumb'. 

I think I am slightly overdoing the 'try to sound stupid' bit, I sound like some 70 year old learning how to use the Internet from my granddaughter.

I wanted to start pressing him for information just for fun, to see how he responds. I wanted to test his lying skills. So apparently MOLPoints sends him to answers queries by asking for username/passwords. Totally believable!

Oh, it's some high level secret technique which can only be done at the company! He's so nice!

The comment about my battlenet account was because I mentioned earlier I was trying to spend MOLPoints on Battle.net. So now he is getting greedy and wants my battlenet account too!

I'm trying to butter him up a bit (oh god my English is so scarily bad it doesn't even sound believable anymore oops) so that he stays with me.

He returns the compliment by thanking me for trusting him. LOL. Sure. I trust him as much as I trust a bull in a china shop not to break anything.

He repeats the bogus password in capitals with 'some small letter' in parenthesis, I don't quite understand why. But ok. He is still trying hard to break into this bogus account that doesn't exist. Which he believes to contain $100+.

I'm getting bored of him, so I decide to drop some clues. The password reads 'stop scamming' and 314 is basically pi (3.14). 

The account names are references to famous conmen/scams. I think everyone knows Ponzi. And Frank Abagnale is supposed to be one of the most famous conmen ever, and the movie Catch me if you Can is based off his life story!

I'm surprised he hasn't caught on yet, given the trollface password LOL. Well, can't expect much from someone who tries to scam people by signing off as 'MOL Assistant'.

Once again, reminding him of the stakes by bringing up the $$ again.

Damn, he used the word 'client', that makes him totally legit. Anyone who has clients definitely is a MOL employee right?

At this point, I'm curious as to how convoluted his story may become, so I tried to press for specifics.

The first sentence actually sounds legit but the second one makes no sense at all. First, I had not even given him any specifics of the error message. Second, the solution he proposed makes no logical sense and doesn't resolve the issue of me not being able to spend my points on Battle.net currency.

Ugh sorry please forgive my (intentional) horrendous grammar. 'It say I need'.
Anyway, I don't think he really understood what I said in my first sentence, and just tries to roll with it and came up with an excuse 'You may have 0 molpoints in your account' because I mentioned the phrase '0 molpoint'. Regardless, I tried to make him squirm, showing some resistance.

Stop hiding things from me Toi Jing Wei!! Anyway quite amusing how he makes up some cock and bull story about what may have caused my error.

I removed a h from my email address just to let him try something else. I don't even think he understands what dyslexic means.

At this point, the slightest SLIGHTEST of doubts crept in that he may actually be a legit employee and perhaps their technical support is just extremely dated. This is because I'm not sure how he figured out that the email address was not valid - when you try to login with those (non-existent) details, it just says 'the username/password was incorrect', and it doesn't actually tell you which one.

And because I didn't want to malign an innocent party, I wrote in to the official MOLPoints email. Here was our exchange:

At this point of time on Facebook, I notice that all of Toi Jing Wei's comments on their page had been deleted. On top of posting a reply to my query, he tried to scam a few other people too by asking for their account information as well. Most just dismissed him with a reply there saying 'What? I'm not giving you my password!'. I was the only evil one.

Anyway, here are our next 2 emails:

Their reply was quite long, so I've highlighted the relevant part, you can skip the rest. No really, just skip the rest, English isn't their first language I think so it's not very easy to read.

This was also followed up by a post on their Facebook page:

So it was confirmed that this Toi Jing Wei is just some lame scammer.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this drama to a climax. And he wasn't replying since my previous Facebook message. Thus I reminded him of the money again.

Ooooh look an official-looking form to fill up! Legit +1

I continue to play along.

Just to explain in case you miss it, username reads 'dumbass', the address is the address of Sherlock Holmes, and ... ok the HP number is just childish but if you type it on a calculator and read it upside down it says ... go figure it out. 

And for the password part, I was trying to give the impression that Facebook was cutting off my message LOL. To make him feel frustrated like ARGH! So close! Facebook come on send this through! 

Hope be patience. I think he meant like, hopefully, be patient. I think.

Anyway, I was actually planning to end all this here, and with his next reply which would obviously say there's still an error, I would take a screenshot of the company's official emails and send it to him. 

BUT.

BUT. 

He provides me with a hilarious finish to this lengthy attempt at scamming me:

HAHHAA. Sorry but I was literally laughing out loud when I read this feeble pathetic attempt. Yes yes, an actual company would actually ask you to change your password to some lame abcde123 and then inform some random nobody after doing so. hahahhaa this guy has to be like 12 years old or something.

I replied him with pictures of the email exchange I had with MOLPoints (as posted above), as well as a link to this blog entry. 

GG. 

Note: Some of you may argue that I am quite mean, but hey, someone has to teach this kid a lesson. Scammers are bad. Hope this changes his choice of hobby. Remember friends, do not share your account details with ANYONE. The company will never ask for your details, they can acquire it themselves if they need to, whichever company it is.