I have a scammer I’m currently emailing who keeps asking for ‘my’ passport. I’m not sure what the grift is here yet. He’s not really asking for money. I’ve sent an unreadable scan of a fake passport and an ‘image not available’ picture so far and usually, the scammer moves past this part pretty quickly with no mention of the terrible passport picture. But this one is insisting on a clear copy. I’m not sure what to do from here. I’ll attach a picture of the passport he sent me. It’s honestly one of the better photoshopped passports I’ve received. Its a screenshot so that I might fool reverse google image
The wording of the photoshopped names isn’t lined up squarely
It’s a pretty terrible effort as usual from these 419 clowns
I’ve seen hundreds of these in my time from them
I started doing this nearly 30 years ago, every aspect of every scam.
The photo of the passport is from a couple of news articles which are just over 5 years old now.
They’re predictably hopeless. 
Lol 
What do you recommend that I do in this situation? He called my Google voice this morning from a German phone number asking for the passport again and I improvised being a wealthy owner of The Sick and Unwanted Cat Emporium and asked if he knew of any charitable cat foundations in Germany that he could help me get in touch with to expand my emporium internationally. I was hoping to put him off his tracks to delay the passport but he emailed me soon after the call and ask for the passport again
What exactly is the scam about? Maybe we could help you around it lol
I say I’m American, and most Americans do not have a passport because you have to pay for/rent them from the US Gov’t.
Send a grabify link of the same image. That way we trace his location.
I considered that but I think some scammers are on to that trick.
To be honest I’m not really sure what this one is about but here is the initial email:
Hello Good Friend,
I am Engineer,* Terry Glenn, I work by Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol Ukraine, I ****am getting in touch with you### regarding an extremely important and urgent matter. If you would oblige me *****the opportunity, I shall provide you with details upon your response.
Faithfully,
Eng. Terry Glenn
After I sent him some fake info and an readable passport he’s been just asking for a better passport since.
Hmmm. Ask him more about the matter. Divert attention away from the passport and rather towards the business matter.
The grabify info
|Date/Time:2022-08-08 23:32:18 UTC|
|IP Address:185.222.58.83|
|VPN/Proxy Detection:This IP may be a VPN or Proxy|
|Country:Netherlands, Amsterdam|
|Browser:Firefox (103.0)|
|Operating System: Windows 8.1 x64|
|User Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:103.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/103.0|
|Referring URL:no referrer|
|Host Name: burle.deparates.com|
|ISP: RootLayer Web Services Ltd.|
Seems the scammer using VPN.
Seems a 419 romance scam.
As I said earlier, I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years.
I’ve been in contact with hundreds of 419 scammers across those years, sending them off to their nearest Western Union office every day, quite a few for up to 12 months. They never seemed destined to collect their prize due to unforeseen circumstances of misfortune. In the early years before online transactions were possible, they always returned home to complain with bitter disappointment. Then be told another even more farcical story containing the latest long winded email and the newest photoshopped Western Union MTCN receipt numbers.
It wasn’t uncommon to find them to be living in the UK, The Netherlands, Germany and the Mediterranean areas of southern Europe, such as Greece and Turkey. Many thousands of Nigerian refugees are in the Ukraine as well and have likely fled the war to neighbouring countries in western Europe through Poland.
When they arrive in other countries, sadly the lazy scammer class will never seek honourable legitimate employment. Instead they continue to do the only thing they’ve ever done and that is their low intelligence scam email script and other crime.
I don’t find it unusual at all for them to be in any European country or even the USA.
Many Nigerian scammers have moved to Nicosia (Cyprus)
Thank you for all the years of keeping these Jack off’s from being productive. As someone else suggested, this might be a romance scam. What do you think? No mention of money or shipping fees etc. Not yet at least. They really want that passport. Is it possible that they want someone’s legitimate passport to use on other victims?
Why do you think it’s a romance scam? I’m genuinely curious. I’ve never had the pleasure of baiting a romance scam before and I’m sure I could come up with all kinds of frustrating scenarios for them if that’s the case
I almost choked on my drink
Romance scammers are patient (they have several such scams going on in parallel)
Many pose as remotely stationed engineers or offshore oil-rig guys.
I haven’t done a lot into 419 scams for the last few years now.
Despite having covered every possible ridiculous offer of riches in every type of scam over the years,
they present no challenges at all which bores me.
Romance scams are really bad for many lonely people. I’m never that desperate in craving attention/affection from anyone to fall for any of this stuff, which unfortunately many desperate people do every day.
The human being with it’s inherent flaws of greed and the sense of entitlement are very dangerous traits. Scammers know they need these two things in their victims. The more of it displayed, the more they can feed it, the more they can manipulate it. Very sad indeed.
Instead, I decided to direct my attention to developing the tools and systems, to find and track the larger Indian and Filipino call centres via the numbers they use.
It’s very commonplace to see a number on an email, text, or number from a robocall voicemail, which is only one of sometimes dozens and in many instances hundreds of main inbound numbers to the same call centre.
I find all of them and taken them all out simultaneously. I’ve seen more times than people realise, the phone number which is known to the scambait community may go silent but there have been multiple derivatives of the same email, text robocall have been blasted out with many different inbound numbers on them. These call centres have not been shut down as everyone thinks. They continue to take calls from potential victims at will on many more main inbound numbers after they shut that one number down which has been targeted. I see some call centres who try to do it really stupidly and cheaply. They call forward dozens upon dozens of free TextNow/Google voice numbers to each other, to create a network of inbounds. This has become increasingly rare because taking one number down will take them all down. I always make sure call centres shut down completely, taking their ability to make and receive calls away from them entirely.
I have endless amounts of evidence wasting time only wastes your time. The scammers will learn better ways of doing things via any interaction, developing ways to have it making minimal to zero impact on them wherever possible. They are changing their ways and methods all the time. Only the low end, low skill refund type scripts stay the same. The majority of the ignorant public is awake to this crap but it still remains the training ground for the hundreds if not thousands of new scammers starting every day in more and more call scam call centres. The ones who show promise are quickly moved on to the bigger more profitable new scams which are stealing an obscene amount of money very quickly.
Having a chat with them to record content, then walk away leaving the call centre bustling in the background achieves nothing. Except ensuring contact with more potential victims is not only possible but entirely likely.
While hitting a large call centre today with a massive amount of calls they could be heard in the background saying to shut down and go to “their other numbers”. I already knew all their “other numbers” which were spread out on 11 numbers across another 80 number range. They had no backup numbers or plan, other than to wait 5-10 minutes for the threat to pass and try bringing the numbers back online again.
Sorry but that’s not going to work either, they last usually less than two minutes each time they try.
Just the way it should be. Take them out quickly saves victims. Toying with them only ensures more misery.
Absolutely! I scam bait the dog scam, and one website, registered under an African name in Ukraine, was grabified in Poland. These guys, while getting aid from the US government and nations around the world, continue to scam! Despite being given great opportunities in other countries, they continue to use heartless methods of earning money.
When they went on TV and said that they “shouldn’t fight” because they’re not Ukrainian, it made me enraged. If a nation offers you asylum, you have responsibilities too.