Fraud using Western union, Embassy and Consulate

Title: Fraud using Western union, Embassy and Consulate

It’s been long time that I have written blog and today something really bad happened and it was an  extraordinary fraud.

It started as follows. A guy called my wife saying that he is from Indian Ministry of External Affairs person sitting in Embassy of India, Berlin Germany  and identified himself as Alex Johnson and started saying that she has did something wrong while she was coming to Germany from India. As most of people who travel abroad know that one has to fill the Immigration form while leaving India and in that she had wrong date of birth and when I asked what was wrong, he was able to say my wife’s date of birth in the reversed day and month format, so for example my wife date of birth is DD-MM-YYYY he said it as MM-DD-YYYY format and asked me if the date of birth was correct  (which means he had our date of birth information) as I know the date of birth I quickly reacted saying that it was reversely written (he took the advantage of situation by saying that it was a big mistake) he further continued that due to terrorist activities and such things nowadays we are taking these things very seriously and so this has to be rectified. If the rectification is not done, we would be deported to India with immediate effect. He was fluent in English with a kind of Russian English accent (according my understanding). And then he asked what kind of visa do my wife had, she was having dependent visa and so he said as she is dependent I need to speak further. He then wanted to confirm more details that where do we stay he was able to give the then correct address where we stayed (I believe he was able to get this immigration form which is the reason he even knows the address, but my tongue slipped or rather I wanted to be transparent that we have shifted and gave him correct address.)

To make him sound more authentic, he asked us if we are able to see his number. He asked us to search in Google with this number, which was 030/257950. We found that it was Indian Embassy’s Contact number in Berlin (the search of phone number in google gives this site). He also gave his employee ID which was MEA2120. He said he was following the instructions of Ministry of External Affairs, India.

He also asked me what do I do for a profession, when I said that I am a PhD student then he said he would send a legal document to my University and they would remove me from my job and send me immediately to India. This would bring a black remark on my immigration records. He gave me two options for the rectification of my wife’s date of birth in the immigration form:

1. I should go to New Delhi immediately and approach a lawyer, who will work for me in the Supreme Court of India and close the case.  He would also hand over a photocopy of my immigration form and the case closing documents to me, which I have to submit in the Indian Embassy in Berlin.

2. I should proceed with the legal process from Germany by paying certain fees to lawyers employed by Indian embassy office in Delhi and when everything is cleared (he was very confident about it), then we will get back our money today evening itself. Which will be 4 phases process. During complete process I should be connected to him on call and I should not speak to anybody as it is as a process in embassy and everything gets recorded. And I was not suppose to keep in mute or cut the call.

Before he proceeded further he also told us that, he will call after 2 hours to complete the procedure.

After around 1.5 hours he called us and started to say that the call has to be in the scenario such that that is happening in a Embassy. Which I should not talk to any body and have to be connected with ear phone always. If the call gets disconnected it will get connected automatically he said. He also said that if I either mute or end the call the call will directly go to the police and things will be bad. (it was not good usage of my brain and we somehow already surrendered to him, we should have contacted police directly.)

He then started to give a lots of information to make it more authentic:

Following information was given by him in regard to the case:

Recorded conversation from the phone number: 030 257950

First Name: Alex

Last Name: Johnson

Employement ID: MEA2120

Recording number: 0856-4498-0211

Departure Number: 501-GER/5509660

Notification Number: MEA5564/IND0203

Case number: IPC SEC 120B/12-0096     

Lawyer Name from German High commission New Delhi:

Verification Officer:

First Name: F1

Last : L1

Charges: € A1 + € 36 (Transaction charges) - (He was able to give the correct transaction fee of western union, although he did not reveal that we have to pay through western union.)

For the western union collection branch if they ask address I have to give the following address :

German Embassy

Address: No. 6/50G, Shanti Path, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, Delhi 110021, India

Case Closing Officer:

First Name: F2

Lastname: L2

Charges: € A1 + € 36 (Transaction charges)

After he has given above information he found by himself which is nearest western union for us and where a nearest bank available to us after asking which bank we have. (Obviously we already surrendered to him and so he took advantage of the situation, the wiser thing would have been not to tell our bank information.)

He said that I have to visit my bank and take money and then later he will give us information how I should transfer the money to him. I took the money (I was always in call with him) and then he told that I have to transfer via Western Union as lawyers in India have Western union accounts (It was again complete big mistake as I did not know much about western union how it works. I thought that transactions in western union gets recorded and I can track the person, but WHICH IS BIGGEST WRONG AMONG ALL MISTAKES.)  I filled out the western union forms and got the code [For people who does not know how wester union works, usually you fill up a form and then you just need to write only the person name of the receiver. I thought they would have an account) but it is not like that they just need to show the passport with that name. And for such a kind of people getting fake passports is easier or rather the western union center is involved in this fraud then there is no check to be done.]

After checking more about western union I got to know more such frauds in internet. So basically western union setup is itself is not a concrete setup.

Then later after I came home he gave second phase information where in this can be done once my first phase is succeeded. This time it is clearing in supreme court he said:

After succeeding he gave this information:

Transaction number: 9443hc1-0021

Confirmation Number: MEA8856/IND0442

And then to follow was phase 2

For Supreme Court:

Lawyer Name from supreme court of India

Verfication officer:

Firstname: F3

Lastname: L3

Charges : € A2 + € 36

Case closing officer:

Firstname: F4

Lastname: L4

Charges : € A2 + € 36

He also asked me about the battery percentage of my mobile and told me to take my wife's mobile also, so that if it gets switched off he call the other mobile.

And as usual I got another 2 codes of western union and I gave him those (One good thing is that I did not give both the numbers correctly but only number as I felt something going bad more and more and wanted to see what would happen.) In between my wife was able to look for the information related to the fraud calls on Berlin’s Indian embassy website. Then we stopped the conversation and tried to contact western union which was already too late one transaction did not succeed but others got succeeded. We were able to block the transaction for which I had given wrong tracking number on the phone to Alex.

Later I called Indian Embassy berlin, and they said that this is happening since more than a year and they have kept 3 warnings about it in their website. But sadly it was not kept here beside the telephone number that some fraud is happening. I suggested them to keep this message next to all phone numbers in their website, so that people need not go to the circulars section of their website and read this alert. They told me to send our complaint by an email and they will take the required action.

At this point I realized that this happened to many people, as my wife saw in some facebook posts. So I am not sure if already any initiative has been taken or not but I would like to collect all the information which happened to other and would like to know how many people got affected with similar thing. For this purpose I have kept this form. Please fill out this form and contribute to investigate this fraud.