The Classic Money Laundering Fraud Scam with an Online Poker Twist

An acquaintance of mine just fell for a variation on his Full Tilt Poker account. The scam is the same, only the payment service changes between wire transfer, paypal, or in this case...an online gambling account. It's quite ingenious, actually.

First of all, the criminal befriends his victim at a low limit table. He becomes a regular, chatting it up and letting slip how he'd be playing at higher limits if only he could deposit into the site. Citing a banking problem, or some other regulation excuse, the culprit offers to wire money directly into your banking account if you'll only transfer some chips to them.

So far, you're thinking this is an obvious scam. Only an idiot would fall for something like this.

Oh, but it gets sneakier.

Smelling the obvious scam, the victim protests, but the culprit convinces him to take the conversation to email. After a few emails are exchanged, the victim is given an offer he can't refuse: Take the $1,000 wire transfer and transfer $900 in chips, but only after the $1,000 wire transfer has cleared and the funds are available at your bank. Wow...this isn't the usual scam, now. I mean, if the guy is willing to wait until the money clears before expecting his player to player cash transfer at the poker site then he's putting all his trust in the victim, right? How could the victim be robbed at this point?

The victim agrees to the plan. The wire transfer hits his bank. A few days later and the funds are available and the victim thinks everything is done.

Now, fast forward a couple of weeks. The victim receives a call from his bank's fraud department. It seems that someone way across the world is angry that they didn't receive the new laptop they bought from the victim for $1,000 on Ebay.

What's going on here??

Here's the scammer's plans laid bare. After setting up this "no-risk" deal with the victim found at the poker table, the culprit immediately went to Ebay and created a new auction with a buy it now price of $1k. The item sells, but the scammer gives the winning bidder the victim's payment information instead of his own. That's right...the wire transfer into the victim's bank or paypal account came from a third party: The unwitting winning ebay bidder.

In the end, the transfer into the victim's bank account does indeed clear and become available. Of course! It is a legitimate transfer from somebody who expects you to wait for it to clear before shipping a $1k item.

In the end, the poker victim loses his $1,000 and is wrapped up in an ugly money laundering and wire fraud investigation by his bank. Not a lot of fun when you are constantly moving money between offshore banks, online gambling sites, and your local bank.

I haven't seen much talk about this exact type of scam happening before, but here is a good resource that explains how these organized crime groups run theft and money laundering scams in the same manner. The site is a little low rent, but he's a very thorough watchdog against online money laundering scams.