MTCN Number

Advance-Fee Fraud And MTCN Numbers

As the internet gained mainstream use in the 1990s, scammers were almost immediately trying to figure out ways to use it to get money from unsuspecting people. One of the most effective scams, both in the beginning and even today, is to use Western Union to make the transaction look more legit. A Western Union MTCN number can make transactions look even more real, and can convince an unsuspecting person to send them some sort of "fee" that they need in order to get a larger sum of money. These sums never arrive, of course, and the person ultimately is unable to track or trace the money that they sent.

Western Union is very clear on their website and materials their wire transfer services are not designed for online purchases, or really for sending money to anybody that you do not already know. That is because a wire transfer has absolutely no fraud protections on them. All a person needs to do is go to the Western Union area, give them the name the money was sent to or the MTCN number (money transfer control number) that was given to the transaction, and they receive the money. It is now gone, and even if you realize soon after that it was a fraud, it is likely that there is no way to track the person that came and picked it up. They did not need to show their own identification if they knew the information for the transfer and you have now lost your money.

In the earliest days of internet scamming, a scammer could sometimes trick people with the 'Nigerian prince' story that has become so common that most of us can recite it from memory. The story goes like this. "I am a prince or some other authority figure from Nigeria or some country near it. I have a lot of money that I need to get out of the country due to the instability of the government here. If you send me your bank account information I will send you 8,234,234 (or some other equally large number) immediately, and then when I come to America I will just ask for a small part of it back. Please respond as quickly as possible."

If you do send your information, you will see your bank account quickly drained. Getting money back from another country, particularly one like Nigeria, where officials are easy to bribe and difficult to work with, is almost impossible. Your money is gone for good.

This hardly works anymore, and so some scammers attempt to get a little more personal. They try to strike up a conversation or some other story to get you involved and convinced that they are telling the truth, and that they really do have money to offer you. They still need to use Western Union, since this is the way to get money without it being traced, so they will either use an old MTCN number or just make one up to make their offering look that much more official. Here is how the story might go.

"I am an official of a foreign government or a large company. We do regular drawings for travelers or potential customers, and your name was chosen. As a result, we have 50,000 for you, to be sent to you in increments of 5000 each. We have attempted to contact you by phone, but are unable to reach you, hence this email. Here is the name and MTCN number that we used to send you your initial payment, and here is the contact information of the person in charge of your winnings. Congratulations."

If you were to go to Western Union there would be no money waiting for you. If you were fooled you might email them, saying that there was nothing waiting for you. This is what they are hoping to have people do. These are the people that have taken the bait and may send them money.

They will reply back that there are unexpected processing fees associated with the transfer, and that in order to send the money they actually need you to send them 150 to cover these fees. Sometimes they may say that the money will be refunded with the money they send you, or they may just let you think that the 50,000 is going to make up for the 150 payment. They have convinced you, using a bogus MTCN, that everything is legitimate. Once you send the money to them, you will never see it again.

Part of the reason this works, even on a small percentage of the population, is that the money you are asked to send is a much smaller percentage of the money they are promising you. There is a psychological effect here where the money they ask for feels so much smaller due to the larger numbers being thrown about that it feels much less risky for you to send the money out. A similar example of this effect would be a child who thinks 5 is all the money in the world until they see a 20 bill. Our brains can be fooled in the same way.

The use of the MTCN number can fool someone who is not familiar with Western Union too. It looks and sounds legitimate, and they may even find an old MTCN number so that it is legitimate. If you have never used Western Union before, you may think that since they have their name attached to the wire transfer they had to show some identification on the other end. That is not necessarily true. You can ask for any name at all to be put on the transfer, so there is no help there if the transfer is bogus. Once a wire transfer goes through the money has been sent, and you will not see it again.

Western Union says that wire transfers absolutely should not be used to send money to someone you do not know. This service is for people who implicitly trust each other. This trust is what scammers are trying to falsify in order to get you to send them money. Even if they show an MTCN number or any other form of ID, never wire money to someone you do not know.