Tome of the Ancient Thieves

[thebigman]

WALL OF TEXT INC, trolls or the short of minded do not read ahead.


Tome of the Ancient Thieves:
by Thebigman of mmowned


Table of Contents:
Page 1: Table of Contents
Page 2: Introduction
Page 3: The way of the scammer
Page 4: The scams, extended guide
Page 5: A little in depth into psychology.
Page 6: HOW TO COUNTERSCAM
Page 7: Wrap Up

[thebigman]

Introduction

Hello everyone, I am Thebigman of mmowned, and through my years of scamming I have decided to release a guide about the aspects of a scam and how to successfully pull them off. In this comprehensive guide you will learn about the most famous scams, a small ammount of social engineering and how to prevent and even reverse a scam on another scammer. Lets get started shall we?

Vocabulary

The mark: the target of a scammer, either being your victim or you being the targets victim

Scam: Getting the mark or target to perform an action that you have forced him into doing without him conciously knowing you have screwed him over.

I will add more as I see fit.

Legal stuff:
I, Thebigman of mmowned, Hereby release this guide for educational uses only and will not partake in any legal action against anyone who misuses or abuses this guide in any illegal way shape or form.

[thebigman]

I. The way of the scammer
What really, truly, is a scam? A scam is using your mind into using deception and deceit to get the target to do what you want. That being said, this is NOT as easy as most think, you must put in some time and energy into making these work, you can't go in half assed and spent 2 minutes and expect to net 500+ accounts. You need to work at it and increase your skill at it. Nothing in life comes easy, But few are as "fun" as scamming :P.


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II. The scams, extended guide
In this section I am going to post some scams and ways to perform these scams. By learning about these scams you can benefit yourself and be protected.

A. The infamous TCG scams. Spectral tiger,ect.
This scam is one of the most famous and most likely the easiest Con to perform. Go ingame with a scammed account, and tell the trade chat that you are selling a game card code from the trading card game, you use empty promises like the Safetrade way or only taking half initially or even going to booty bay with them to make sure the card is legit, Whatever the promise, it's fake. By doing this you get gold and they get a unworking key.


PROs
~ Easy gold
~ Not much work
~ can have multiple victims at a time

CONs
~ Very low ammounts of people fall for it.
~ unless sold or laundered the gold will be called back by blizzard.


1. How to get a fake key.
I personally use an old copy of the scam suite. But gamecard generates are everywhere, just search mmowned, or be creative and make one up spur of the moment.
2. Safetrade, What is that?
Its a concept that many contributer's on these forums have come up with that an official company or even blizzard themselves support a secure trade. This is perfomed by using evilpage.com or soom.cz (I use soom, make sure to check off high priorty) to make a fake email to said person. That being said, not many players will willingly give you their email. use some social engineering, Promise them something to sweeten the deal. Once they give you their email send them an email promising "SafeTrade" will sends them half the code now and the other half after the trade. Search safetrade on mmowned and theres an email template somewhere. Once done you have the gold, launder it or sell it FAST.


B. Battle.net
This scam usually is VERY simple but is more of a followup of other scams, Usually after scamming an account. The account can be scammed via phisher or extensive deception on markeedragon.com, social engineering. But I will get more into that later. After making an account a battle.net, most people are not REALLY stupid to the point they don't know how to call blizzard, so if you don't perform the following the account gets recalled in 7/10 cases. You scam some gold on the account if you dont have 25$, Once you earn it, use a clean account or a scammed one with full info and you are SURE won't be recalled. you can sell scammed gold to earn the 25$ then, battle.net the clean account, Xfer w/e character you wanted, then get the original account banned. The poor sap will recall the account off of the battle.net and find a banned, blank shell.

PROs
~you can get entire accounts and gold to sell

CONs
~Requires resources to pull off, if not then the scam is unlikely.

C. The FBM scam
Yes guys, he has earned a place in this guide.http://www.mmowned.com/forums/wow-sc...ever-need.html

This scam is basically showing fake proof you have an account and even has a fake id! Or you can photoshop one, the possiblities for this are endless. eventually find a trader on markee and reap his goods. Pretty good stuff.

Pros
~ this stuff works

CONs
~ requires skills and the abilities to make the fake proof.


D. PHishing, The art of code.
Phishing, what a wonderful and various subject. Phisher's have so many subjects and are endless, and despite all these buffs, They are simple to make. Theres plenty of Phisher threads on mmowned if you want to find one to use. There's even some programs that send it via email. This requires Visual Basic though. So unless your good with it or can follow a guide, go with the website one, I reccomend using freehostia as a host site and using firezilla to upload it. Theres even mine and rin's guide ( orw/e his name is) using phisher's in the tcg scam. Use your brain ^_^.

1. If you know how to code
some of these, as I previously said the possibilities are endless. Maybe makeup a custom expansion pack lol. If not, its ok, just use someone elses.

2. EMAIL EMAIL EMAIL,
using an email spider to find the emails and then get a mass mailer to distribute them is the best way to get some accounts phished. I used mmomailer and now use nod, which you pay for but its great and supports html. If not use atomic mailer or find some other one. google email spider and you can find a few spiders to use., go nuts. heres a good free massmailer I just found, http://www.mmowned.com/forums/wow-sc...ss-mailer.html

PROs
~ Easy to make
~ easy to edit
~ lots of people fall for it
~ many tools to use
~ one of the most successful tools.

CONs
~ smart people dont fall for it
~ finding free mass mailers and spiders are hard.


E. keyloggers and rats, fun fun!
I know these are tools in an arsenal of hackers, but alot of great scammers were able to pull them off, so why not you? I myself use poisonivy and encrypt it and bind it to pictures of a fake account during the FBM scam ( my own version of it anyway...) this will get you full info. Thing is not many people accept things directly from you, so I would name it or make it appear like an official addon or similar program people use, or even lie and say its vital account information. At one point I remember attaching it to a exe phisher and got account name and pass, guy goes to change the info and it sends you what he changed it to + some bonus info.

PROs
~ gets ALL info

CONs
~ illegal
~ most people wont fall for it, so you need to be creative.
~ antivirus's ftw?

F. Trading gold for gold on other server scam

http://www.mmowned.com/forums/wow-sc...gold-scam.html

This is fairly new and I have only tried it once. Go onto a private server and named it after a scammed character on your scammed or main account. get a screenshot with the gold the person wants and ask for him to go first since you have proof and other things you can make up. when he gives you the gold launder / sell it fast. Technically a GM cannot remove the gold unless you agree ingame to give him an item, otherwise the gm's just see a trade.

PROs
~ your account can't get banned
~ easy $$

CONs
~ hard to convince them to go first
~ hard to get "proof"

G. what to do with gold so it doesn't get called back
Simple. You put it into a guild bank of which you are the guild leader of. Then pick out the gold on your account or an alt. blizzard can't log all the guild banks due to the sheer amount of guilds, it would probably crash WoW lol. The auction house, despite popular belief, is logged. My brother and I found out one day. It was shocking. Secondly, you can simply sell it to mmopawn or mmofly or some other company that buys gold FAST. mmopawn though most likely pays more.

[thebigman]

III. A little in depth into psychology.
I find that my favorite scams are working with the victim and tricking him into thinking your a guildies friend, or a co worker, or anyone he can really trust. To trick people on a personal level theres a few things you NEED to know about psychology and the human brain.

A. Religion counters logic.
All the damned time, Thus a priest/preacher type person or someone he goes to church with is more trusthworthy then some customer on the internet ~.^

B. All that glitters is not gold
Having a big juicy reward is almost enough to make any sane man fall for something in attempt to get the reward in question. You see it in comercials ALL the time. Sure you get a free laptop, but please fill out this information. Then suddenly your a victim of identity theft, see how that works? People love big shiny gizmo's and things.

C. People are IDIOTS
People are really stupid mother****ers. /end. No serriously. They rarely listen to their logical state of mind.

D. Emotions
Play with peoples emotions, its a proven fact that emotion overrides logic. I mean, look at women sometimes.

Complement the victim on his latest achievement, Make him feel GOOOOOD.

E. E-Friendship
Some people actually have friendship and romantic lives over the internet, isn't this one of the most stupidest things you ever heard? complement the poor fella, be his friend, show you have common ground and share a bond. Make it grow a bit. That is, in his eyes. I once did this to an account salesman and instead of stealing his info right away, I waited and invested in it. I shown him I was trustworthy. eventually I decided to cash in, stealing 4 accounts on his battle.net, his email and password to the email and bought some gamecards to sell with his paypal. This was once one of my finer victories. So patience, fellow scammers of mmowned, patience.

F. Language and grammar
I find in 8/10 cases, the victim likes someone who talks the same way he does. If its an intellectual, smartass pretentious sounding guy, speak old, proper english. If its like a 12 year old, speak and make a few common spelling errors. Even lowball him with your "intellectual appearence." Make the victim feel smarter then you. speak lolcat if you must.

These are some good tips that I trust many of those who work with social trickery will use.

G. Misc tips.
The key to winning negotiations is to "prove" you can walk away.

Smart scammers know how to steer a conversation towards the end goal.

Getting info out of a source usually is quite a project, to do it they need a good enviroment and good company / friends, and compliments. However sometimes they need a bit of pressure, kinda lead him into the end result.Also relate to them and try to find common ground, (you can make up some common interests too.)

When scamming try to chill out and be calm and collective. Note some qualities and traits the victim or other scammer seem to exhibit. This will help in the future.

That said, lets conclude the social engineering section. I don't want to give out too much of my idea's and scamming ways.


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IV. How to see a scam coming
Well folks, here it is. skilled scammers can see a con artist trying to make a quick buck a mile away. Just because he doesn't use the same methods that you do doesn't make the person legit either. Here are some ways you can tell a scammer, Ways I found scammers on MD.

-Somethings Fishy!
Scammers that feel guilt tend to behave strangely, like they are planning something, Obvious suspicion usually means this man is a scammer.

- Keep your cool, bro.
Alot of scammers don't know how to keep their cool, and thus end up trying to hurry their way out and quickly scam you. Alot of chinese scammers on markee seem to be like this.

- Language!
Just because the person doesn't speak good english doesn't mean he is a scammer, But it raises some red flags. I'm not saying all chinese or non english speaking people are scammers, However I am saying keep a sharp eye out. Alot of chinese scammers out there. Usually scammers , if you had to rate the persons english, are 1,2,3/10 on the english speaking quality chart. Anyone trying to speak halfway decent english shouldn't be regarded this way. Neither should the young people.

Also there are some more but I prefer keeping mine a bit.

which leads us to.

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V. HOW TO COUNTERSCAM

This is a section I have not seen before on mmowned and I wish to have some imput, anyone posting some good ideas I'll rep, thank ,and compile into this guide.

If the scammer is trying to quickly find out your paypal, make sure to do a few things. Have him send an email saying that this is his email and paypal, therefore sending it by verifing he is indeed buying the virtual merchandise. Next, Follow up with a .txt saying the same thing and state a no refunds policy. Finally have the paypal sending thing requested and state that by paying for that, he is recieving a virtual item in which he cannot be refunded. If this chinese scammer is stupid enough to have done all this, block him and laugh as paypal holds it, you give and forward the email to their evidence, and have them give you the money back.For an item you did not even sell.

The reasons for this are simple:they cannot say they were not aware and chargeback for it because they filled out the forms. They also cannot chargeback for not recieving the item due to the email receipt, ( you need to have sent) therefore he has the item because it "says" he bought it and he sent a response proving he has puchased it.

You have won.



I have once had a scammer try to trade an account for a few gamekeys. If someone scams your keys, you can call blizzard and because the cards themselves or the box have serial numbers and verification numbers, blizz will ban his account he used them with, and send you the new ones or let you use the old ones.

VI. Conclusion of the guide.

In this guide you have learned a bit about these new and ancient scams and ideas to use, abuse, or protect yourself however you wish, you have also learned a bit about how the human mind works and how to manipulate it. and also a little of how to counterscam scammers.

Remember, theres always a way. And the old ways always change and mutate.


PM me if you need any help.

Also comments are greatly appreciated. Maybe even a sticky if this is good enough.


Conclusion Disclaimer: I did not create ALL of these scams, credits to the creators of the scams or who mutated it into a whole new scam.

[shadowslayer133]

Don't forget to add credits to the people who made up those scams you mentioned

[thebigman]

K. done

filler

[Siretu]

Looks really good, +Rep

[ethtechno]

zzzzzzz at reading that... Should have a warning sign [ WALL OF TEXT ]

[Shleven]

Wall of text crits you for over 9000(200 over kill).

[Zaphry]

First of all... http://www.mmowned.com/forums/wow-scams/220918-epic-new-mass-mailer.html does not work >_>.........

[thebigman]

shadow and sir thanks for the imput, anyone else, begone trolls. Stop derailing my guide / thread.

[hylinus]

awsome post man

[hylinus]

I added you on msn, [email protected]

[JxOxSxH]

Nice post +Rep

[Hammil]

nice guide