[milos_rs]

Nemački medijski javni servis ARD je napravio dokumentarac o SMS porukama od "pošte" koje tvde da je potrebno doplatiti za paket. To je pokriveno u temi Pošta i kurirske službe - SMS i E-mail prevare

Jedan od novinara koji je radio na dokumentarcu ga opisuje ovako :

It starts with a text message like this:

“Your DHL parcel has arrived at our warehouse but cannot be delivered because your address details are incomplete. Please confirm your address within 12 hours.”

Millions of people receive messages like this every year. Many lose money. Few ever find out who is actually behind them.

For more than a year, my colleagues and I investigated one of the world’s largest SMS scam networks together with NRK and Le Monde. What began as a story about phishing messages turned into an investigation spanning several countries, encrypted chats and a global criminal infrastructure.

I spent five days in Bangkok following digital clues on the ground. At one point, I was tracking scammers’ posts in real time through a bot. When one of them suddenly revealed a location, I ran after a taxi, hoping it would lead us closer to the people behind the operation.

Over months, we infiltrated Telegram groups where the scammers exchanged techniques, celebrated stolen credit cards and showed off luxury purchases. Step by step, the investigation led us to the developers of the software powering these attacks, a platform called Magic Cat.

The result is Kings of Scam, a three-part documentary series.

Dokumentarac je dostupan na Engleskom i veoma dobro napravljen i vredan gledanja. Spominje se i Darcula fišing kit koji se pored poštanskih prevara koristio i za SMS prevara "Saobraćajna kazna nije plaćena" za e-toll - kloniran sajt Putevi Srbije , pogledajte :

Episode 1: You’ve got Mail

There are German versions of the message, as well as English, Spanish, and Norwegian ones... They all involve a package that supposedly can’t be delivered. And the link in the message always has just one purpose: to get the credit card numbers of unsuspecting victims. This scam is called “smishing”: phishing via sms or text message. Victims around the globe are losing billions to these scammers.

Two Norwegian hackers dove deep into the scammers’ software, a program called Magic Cat. Together with the hackers and journalists from Norway we find a Telegram chat group where the scammers communicate with each other and post about their crimes. One member is particularly active and portrays himself as a “Scam King.” He leaves enough digital clues that we begin to piece together who he really is.

Episode 2: One Night in Bangkok

The scammers' software is called Magic Cat, and it's in Chinese. Everyone in the chat group writes in Chinese, too: they are young men in their mid-20s who brag about stolen credit cards, post receipts for luxury goods, and pose with expensive cars.

One of them is particularly active and portrays himself as a "Scam King”: In this scammer chat group, he leaves digital traces that lead us to Bangkok and California. We set out on a search, both online and on the ground, because we have questions for the scammers. How does it feel to steal money from people on the other side of the world? Why do they do it? And do they tell their parents how they afford their luxurious lifestyle?

Episode 3: Cat and mouse

What kind of person develops software that’s designed solely to rip people off, and then calls it Magic Cat? Our quest to find out leads us to China. Not only is the software’s creator “Darcula” Chinese, but our investigation shows a striking number of other scammers are as well. The Chinese government seems to be doing little to combat this. So who protects us – law enforcement, banks, or those whose names are used for the scam, like DHL? Victims try to get their lost money back, but it’s difficult. Then, after our initial report is published, the software developer goes into hiding, and Magic Cat goes offline. The system is down! But that doesn’t mean the scam is over...