Raven told us how the Hanoi group is doing the PayPal fake transactions and what we should do in case we are engage in such thing.
Raven follow up close the fake transactions and show what the OS group got from players. The methods used is describe by them in the messages from facebook.
The illicit group have some things in common :
They all have facebook fake avatars;
All fake PayPal transactions are related to Hanoi group of black market sellers;
They are poor students/high school or people with real life problems who post as VN business men, using a game cafe as back-up for their illicit activities and VPNs;
They started as 2 person group and now got to 10 and their operation is cross servers, Yin and Tao and korean.
Engaging in such activity is fraud even for Asian countries and you can go to jail.
Also, don't engage with your facebook account with such people. In this scam there is another type of scam. This new scam it’s based on the same social engineering risk. That stupidly simple hack involved tricking users into giving up the one-time codes WhatsApp sends when you transfer your account to a new phone. The compromised account would then be used to message WhatsApp contacts and request money.
The difference this time is that it’s Facebook itself, not Facebook-owned WhatsApp. The issue with the WhatsApp hack was that an attacker would only see contacts that were part of the same groups as the victim. With Facebook, a full set of contacts can be seen, which makes it much more potent. Beyond that, the hack is the same and any compromised messaging platform can be used to fuel the scam.
With the Facebook account hacked, an attacker uses Messenger to contact a number of friends, telling each of them that they are owed money but cannot access their own PayPal account to receive it. So, can they have the money sent to this friend’s PayPal account instead, and the friend can then bank transfer it to them? You can see a typical attacker’s pitch in the screenshot below.
The ITs guys has provided this explanation as to how the scam works, and an image (below) that shows the process in action.
-One of the victim’s friends has their Facebook account hacked, using stolen login details acquired from the dark web. These credentials are easily acquired given the huge volume of breached data online.
-The attacker sends the victim a message from that hacked account, it will be something like: “I just sold something online and need to get paid, but something is wrong with my PayPal. Can you help me out? They'll send you the money on PayPal, then you can send it to to my bank account.”
-The victim says okay and provides their PayPal details. Some time shortly afterwards the money turns up in the victim’s account. The victim checks their PayPal statement and can see that the money is there.
-The money has been sent by the attacker, either from an account or card setup with fraudulent details or through a hacked PayPal account.
-With the money received, the victim sends that same amount to their “friend,” using the bank account details provided. In reality, this is the attacker’s bank account, to be used for a few scams and then closed.
-The victim thinks all is okay. But the next time they check their Paypal account, they find that the amount received has been reversed. This is a chargeback, where the sender of the money (the attacker) has asked for it to be reversed using PayPal’s standard systems.
-The victim is unable to do the same with their transfer to the attacker’s account, there is no such safety net with a bank transfer.
-The money makes a number of further electronic hops (to prevent tracing to the endpoint) before it is withdrawn. It is not coming back.
So it is used a scheme in a scheme.
How do I report potential fraud to PayPal?
How I report the fraud to US authorities ?
Raven what to do you suggest RedFox should do ?
It is clear they have a problem with the source of money and should check it out thorough PayPal activity. Players reported this in same cases. In kid case from Tao it is the same operation method on PayPal, scam, when they scam around 8,000 $ from his father account. This is going on on servers since 2018 when this group started to monopolize all game aspects under RedFox watch.
This people in game and forum make us, the european and american players racist when we say the truth on Vietnamese group, but the truth is there is no racial remarks, everything has proofs and is related to that group. They do illicit activities in game and extort large amounts of $ from UE and US players. RedFox needs to come tell us what they did in these years, why they sleep and why the facebook groups are not closed down, because they sell items on $, the property of RedFox and JWG, same with gold sellers sites.
On a browse of facebooks groups it is clear their objective is to make fraudulent money out of game and because that they target all UE and US players that object or don't buy from them. We explain countless of time the methods used in game, RedFox needs to open open the eyes now and see what they are doing and close their entire operation once for good.
RedFox also should open their eyes and see that their VIP clients from UE and US and people with an image in community who put a fight against this group and their practices are targeted in game and in forum. The last example is Exiled account from Tao. Many people knows Exiled put an extended fight over this black market afair and after he got some negative answers from RedFox he when to play another game call ”Path of Exiled”. He don't invest in his character anymore because of these people. They use his name and account as a bargain : Exiled is no longer a VIP, they are now because they are more rich than Exiled, so showing that, buy from them.
They omit to say that the items they sell will become worthless soon when RF will implement Hainan, because new items will take their place, so folks, keep your money and credits for Hainan, don't buy anything.
RedFox take action or you will be left without the base of players who kept the game afloat.