Scammers usually get away with what they do because their victims don’t know what to do, and to be honest, the police usually have bigger fish to fry than to track down the guy who scammed you out of $10 on eBay. However in the past, we have seen how scammers have had the tables turned on them, and this latest story is an example of that.
A security researcher in Austria by the name of Christian Haschek recently detailed about how he got scammed online, and how he used his cyber sleuthing skills to track down the scammer, message the scammer’s mother and brother, and also got the scammer to apologize and return his money.
Basically Haschek was trying to sell some iTunes gift cards he had won. However since the gift cards were for the US iTunes store and he was based in Austria, he had little use for them. The scammer got in touch with Haschek and after a bit of back and forth, Haschek (against his better judgement) sent the iTunes gift card codes before receiving payment. This is when things went downhill as the scammer quickly deleted all of his online profiles.
However like we said, Haschek managed to track the scammer down to his actual Facebook profile, and from there connected with the scammer’s mother and brother in which he exposed the scammer’s activities. Shortly after the scammer got in touch with Haschek, apologizing for his mistakes and claiming that he was just young and stupid.
Haschek decided to give the scammer a pass and not contact the authorities as long as the money was returned, which it was. The details of Haschek’s “operation” can be found on his blog.