Swindled out of 830,000 euros by a scammer who posed as Brad Pitt, Anne became the laughing stock of the world after the broadcast of a TF1 report telling her story. At least part of its history. Ruined, humiliated, the 54-year-old Frenchwoman does not intend to stop there and is preparing for the counter-attack. And it is in particular Marwan Ouarab, founder of the site Find My Scammer, who will provide him with the weapons necessary to bring down his grazer.
Marwan is very familiar with the subject of scams and online scams having been on the dark side of the force for a while. Today, the man who once sold fake concert tickets has become a formidable hunter of scammers, a service that he also sells to victims of scams. Contacted by TF1, he therefore set out to hunt for the fake Brad Pitt. “It wasn’t easy, I had to put all my teams on the job to find it quickly,” he tells 20 Minutes.
The grazer is fooled by a trapped link
And his work paid off, in results, not in money, Marwan having resolved to work for free for a ruined Anne. Thanks to the information provided by the victim, Marwan was able to contact the fake Brad Pitt and catch him at his own game. “We sent him a booby-trapped link disguised in a message, and by clicking on it he unknowingly gave us access to his phone,” the repentant explains to us. With this, Find My Scammer was able to collect a real wealth of information on the scammer, not only his identity but also the exact address of where he carries out his dirty work, in Nigeria.
What Marwan also knows is that the crook is not acting alone and that this is not his first attempt: “It’s a small group, of three or four fairly young people who does damage. On the fake Brad Pitt's device alone, there were 34 victims. » He was also able to trace the funds paid by Anne, notably distributed by the scammer in cryptocurrency wallets.
Mercenaries or Interpol to arrest the grazer
“Today, he is still active, except that he now pretends to be Keanu Reeves,” laments Marwan, who nevertheless made a report to the Nigerian authorities. “We don’t know if they will act, but he has other options,” he admits. Either call on a group of local mercenaries to arrest the crook and hand him over to the authorities, or rely on the involvement of Interpol to whom Marwan promises to give all the information to catch the Nigerian Brad Pitt. “In theory, we could also go and recover some of the stolen money ourselves, but that could only cause problems for us and Anne,” says Marwan.
Our file on online scams
It is still very unlikely that the grazer will one day be worried by the justice system of his country. On the other hand, Anne could well recover part of the money stolen thanks to proceedings initiated against her bank. “There is a real question that arises about the bank’s duty of information and vigilance,” regrets Marwan.
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