Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

Yesterday one of my students (adult) came to the afternoon class with a story.

It seems he left his cell phone in the dorm room yesterday morning. Some scammer called the phone and got no answer so knew he could call the student's mom. He told her he had kidnapped my student and had hurt him some and if she wanted him alive (without his throat cut), she had to send W10,000,000 immediately. Then the scammer put on another guy who pretended to be the student who begged his 'mom' to fork over the money.

She didn't have that much in the bank. Only W3 million. Mom called the student's cell phone and got no answer, so she decided it was a real kidnapping and sent the money.

At lunch my student found out about this when he checked his cell phone messages. He called his mom, learned the story, and chewed her out for falling for such a transparent scam.

Anyone else have scamming stories like this?

[thegadfly]

A student was telling me something like this, but I had dismissed it as an urban myth...not saying that YOURS is, but I found it difficult to believe that anyone would actually FALL for it.

It actually came up when we were discussing phishing, and I had to explain that phishing originally meant trying to get personal information from a person, such as bank account numbers or credit card numbers, in and effort to defraud them -- not outright extortion. Perhaps the word has changed, or perhaps the Konglish definition of phishing involves pretending to kidnap folks and demand a bank-to-bank transfer....

Couldn't they TRACE the transfer to see who got it, and then just go arrest that person? I mean, this isn't actually a REAL thing, is it? Sorry, but I still don't believe that it has actually happened....

[highstreet]

A friend and his wife got scammed for 20mil KRW in the first week or two after arriving.

They called his wife (who is Korean) and pretended to be a gov't worker, apparently they knew all this info about them, when they arrived, etc...had her punch in her banking information over the phone and 20MIL just disappeared. Went to the bank and they said they would try to recover it, which never happend.

[highstreet]

[jvalmer]

Either these scammers are really slick or people are really naive.