Western Union
Complaint 77977 Details

On February 14th, when I came back from work, around 8 AM, I found out that both my email accounts (Yhoo and Gmail) were hacked. I had about 200 contacts on my contact list. Only around 6PM I was finally able to log into my gmail account. All my previous history (sent and received e-mails) have been deleted. I found only one e-mail in “Sent Mail”, that had obviously been sent by the hackers to one of my contacts as a follow up message.
Here it is:

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"Haribol... Were you hacked didi? As it is I have nothing anyways.... I'm sorry.
On Feb 14, 2012 12:06 PM, "Tulasika Dasi" [email protected] wrote:

Hello,

Now this might come as a surprise to you,but I made a quick
trip to Spain and was mugged at Gun Point. My bag,valuables,credit
cards and passport all gone.The embassy has cooperated by issuing a
temporary passport.I need funds to settle outstanding hotel
bills,ticket and other expenses.

To be honest,i don’t have money with me at the moment. I’ve made
contact with my bank but the best they could do was to send me a new
card in the mail which will take 2-4 working days to arrive here. I
need you to lend me some Money to sort my self out of this
predicament, i will pay back once i get over this because i need to
make a last minute flight.
Let me know if you can be of any help, so I can let you know how to
send the money to me . I will be waiting to hear back from you, Reply
ASAP.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

Tulasika Dasi"

Tulasika Dasi is my spiritual name and this is the name on my email account. The sender was a friend of mine, and he was responding to the broadcast message, beginning with “Hello”..


The following was an email sent to him as a response:


"Thanks alot for your response to my present ordeal. I understand your
condition , i emailed some family Member and have not gotten any
responds from them yet and i dont think i can wait any longer here ,i
will really appreciate if you can lend me some token 350 so as to make
some urgent calls and transport myself around and to feed till i get
more help from my office.I need to quickly report to the embassy which
i think i can get help from them.I don't mind you borrowing,i promise
to reimburse the money as soon as i get back.This is really urgent as
it as kept me in a devastating condition.
P.S. Incase, Western Union Money transfer is a quicker and safer
option. Please send to the following details:

Receiver Name: Tulasika Dasi
Location: Andres Borrego 8,
City: Malaga
Country: Spain
Zipcode: 28004

I will be waiting to recieve the WU reference number and the transfer
details soonest.Thanks alot and God bless"

From this email I learned how the hackers were trying to get the money from my contacts. I called Western Union right away (around 6PM on 14th of February) and gave them all the information, including name, address, trying to prevent fraud. At that time they checked in the system and assured me that no money had been sent to this name by the time of our conversation.
They also assured me that the information received from me will be enacted, and all transactions with these details will be stopped.
Nevertheless right after midnight I found out that $1000.00 was sent to that name (Tulasika Dasi) via Western Union by my friend, Imant Kotsinsh. And when I called Western Union, they told me that money sent by him had been received in Spain. Western Union representative told me to call local police department, which I did. Then later, when I was able to get control over my Yahoo account, in sent e-mails there was conversation between hackers and my friend from Mexico. From that conversation I found out information about fake passport, hackers used to receive money in Spain. I called Western Union again, gave the additional information, trying my best to stop the fraud. I asked the agent to transfer me to their supervisor, but I was told that supervisor was busy.

Western Union has received all information from me to stop the fraud. Yet they did not do that.