I was nearly physically sick

[speewa158]

Change all the passwords ,,, do you reckon the scamers could tell me what they are then I could remember & change them                           

[Ricey]

Well done to stop this.
On the news tonight there was a self funded retiree who lost $500000 and now has to apply for the pension.
He invested in a coal mine in China with a 100% ROI.

Cheers

[Mallory Black]

poor bugger, if China had plenty of Coal they wouldn't be paying top dollar for ours!~

[Geoffwin]

They had been directing him and moving things remotely in our computer too .

This is a worry. Did they get him to install any programmes they supplied or sent a link for him to download? If they did I would have started from scratch as they could include data or keystroke loggers.

Burnsy - damn lucky to get that western union stopped. Was the money being sent off shore or to someone in Australia?

[Burnsy]

Burnsy - damn lucky to get that western union stopped. Was the money being sent off shore or to someone in Australia?

It was sent off shore to the UK which is the only reason they were able to get it, no business was open at the time in the UK for it to be collected.

[bobnrob]

On the news tonight there was a self funded retiree who lost $500000 and now has to apply for the pension.
He invested in a coal mine in China with a 100% ROI.

Cheers

No sympathy.
They got him because he was driven by greed, & he got bitten...that's if not a media "gap filler" - stories the media make up to fill in blank space
Hard to believe someone with that much money sitting 'round being lazy, could be fooled

[GU Rich]

Nice save Burnsy, Looks like a good christmas present coming your way 

Cheers

[gibbo301]

Every time microsoft ring me telling me i have a problem with my computer i tell them i don,t own a computer and they hang up lol

[Geoffwin]

It was sent off shore to the UK which is the only reason they were able to get it, no business was open at the time in the UK for it to be collected.

The seller wasn't a marine engineer by any chance ?

[Burnsy]

The seller wasn't a marine engineer by any chance ?

No details about the seller, the van had mandurah number plates and I am not sure which suburb the phone number was listed at but I suspect that they may have already had fraud squad knocking at their door as it is not often they find a solid link to these overseas scammers here in WA that they can actually follow up on and possibly prosecute.

[JCAT]

In all likelihood the phone number will be a skype number, which will not be listed to an actual address, with a false name.

Very easy to do, apparently.

The actual advertisement will be some poor bugger who was actually selling it legitimately that the crooks have just cut and pasted.

[dazzawhipple]

Very lucky there, Burnsy

I have had the phone calls about the computer, I say I have toretts, and tend to give them lots of abuse,

the email's that i have saying i have won money etc are a daily event via my gmail account my biggest concern is my self managed super fund that I have opened up with a company over east, the prefilled forms that have been sent to my email, that is a good con, umm thats with the local police to investigate

[GC19WA]

When they tell me to go to "the" computer with the problem I ask which one since I have a few.  And then when they say turn the Windows computers on I say I only have Apple Macs... they are usually quite persistent though... but I imagine they could appear to be quite convincing to someone who isn't so savvy...

[Captain]

A nice save there Burnsy, bet your glad your parents don't have a printer! Unfortunately I don't think the Police will be able to do much, the van will have been taken off the net and the number will likley be a Skype one as mentioned before. There are so many of these scams around its really sad.

My dad nearly got taken by a microsoft scam. As I will occasionally remotely control his PC when he has issues, he thought it was legit when he was rung up and coincidently had a problem. But when they asked him to download some stuff, he finally twigged onto it.

Cheers

Captain