Fraud “For Sale-DM me” the scammers of Tik Tok.
Tik-Tok accounts run by young adults selling fraud methods, and stolen items.
Mark is an 18-year-old high school football player; he comes from a respectable, caring, middle-class family, but he wants a life of luxury. One day on the popular social media application Tik Tok, he discovered something that could give him everything his parents work so hard to give him, and in half the time...
While scrolling, he noticed something new recommended to him. Many teenagers, his age, driving mid-model luxury cars, often with new shoes, and electronics, also. Digging deeper into their profiles, he found out they pay for their expensive lifestyle by selling fraud methods, credit cards, and merchandise bought through identity theft.
He decided to try them out, and to his surprise, they worked! Mark is now a criminal, yet documents all of his crimes on social media outlets such as Instagram, Snapchat, and the aforementioned Tik Tok.
While Mark isn’t real, there are thousands just like him committing fraud, and reaping the rewards at the expense of others, all while the documenting evidence to their crimes that will certainly catch the eye of law enforcement.
The culture around this subgenre of criminals is plagued by ostentatious displays through social media, and hip hop, to idolize the career of white-collar thievery. It’s not hard to see where the idea began to spread.
Where it began on Tik Tok
As a fan of hip-hop myself, I often use the platform to discover new music, after all, most of the posts are accompanied by custom audio or music from various streaming platforms.
It’s part of the appeal because it allows people to express their lifestyle through semi-advanced video editing. This is also to its detriment.
An artist by the name of Teejayx6 began releasing music in 2019 dealing with his chronicles of identity thievery. On December 12, 2019, he released the song “Swipe Lesson 3”. The song gives a detailed instruction manual to buying and using stolen credit cards.
While the music itself, is nothing notable, the instructions caught the idea of many Tik Tok creators. Beginning by following the instructions in the song, they soon realized the stolen card was easy to use and accessible.
The age of most of these thieves surprised me as a viewer. I don’t feel comfortable calling most of them out by name or handle, so I will be showing examples without revealing their personal information if they aren’t of legal age. For context, many of them come from lower-middle-class families and still live with their parents.
Often these methods are sold to friends, and family members, close to their age. Accessibility is important, their income relies on others using these methods. If one no longer works, they need to be able to reach out and buy another to resell.
Illustrating how easy it is to find these “methods” of stealing from companies, and individuals, I’m only using videos, and screenshots, I found within the first five minutes of searching the #methods que on the Tik Tok platform.
The Bait
Seemingly underreported, I have found very little information on this, except for a few articles on the matter of scams, most not related to the use of fake credit cards, or the advertisement on social media.
It’s important to know what they do with these methods, before understanding why it’s illegal.
- The social media influencer purchases food, shoes, and loads money onto real cards, using stolen, or fake, cards.
- Sites known as Bin generators are used to create fake cards and disguise real ones.
- Surprisingly much of this can be found with a simple google search. It seems as if all of this information is so accessible, that, quite literally, children are doing it.
- Using a fake card is illegal, even if the merchandiser accepts the payment.
- Many of the perpetrators are not of legal age, and if they are, they still attend high school. Few of them have secondary education.
- Proof of their crimes often advertised as “legal methods” helps us to understand that a lot of why this is out in the open, is ignorance.
immaturity is rampant amongst these criminals. It comes out in how they conduct business. They record every scam they run, in order to prove some sort of legitimacy. An idea of the whole picture can be found by checking all of the platforms they post on.
I decided to message one and ask him a couple of questions. Kevin, a scammer from California. In my query, I found that much of his response to “what would happen if someone threatened to expose you?”, and while I felt there would be a sense of urgency to do damage control his response was more along the lines of “Leave them on a read if they won’t buy something.”.
Kevin recently purchased a used high-end model BMW and makes a frequent trips to Bitcoin ATMs in Southern California.
As I prodded further, trying to be polite, I inquired as to how he plans to deal with ATM’s with security cameras, I reminded him that largely, financial centers record the building, and often even the parking lot. He seemed, for the most part, unbothered. Many of his responses were emojis.
This scammer, in particular, has made no attempt to remove his footprint from his crimes.
Some of these kids, and young adults, don’t understand that using fake credit cards doesn’t grant free reign to exploit companies into fake purchases. Rather, it’s actually a crime. In some cases, even the act of creating the card is illegal. With the popularity of this trend, t’s become a Coronavirus pass time for many. In some states, this “hobby” could land the scammer a sentence of up to one year per card. Provided it’s their first offense.
Illustrating this point is a screenshot post advertising these illegal “methods” as a legal way to scam the system, exploiting the youth and inexperience of their audience. Many of the clients of these scammers have no real knowledge or understanding of how to erase their digital footprint, or even of how they might possibly get caught.
Their income is mostly through this advertising. Therefore, the more scammers using their “methods”, the more they make. Many accounts document the thirty or forty sales they make a day.
When these methods are patched, new ones come out with updated ways to commit fraud, and the clients pay for the new ones, just like the old ones. A complete fraud bible, complete with various methods for different retailers, runs a total of around $75.
Fake cards similarly sell for around $35 per card.
The Targets
Fraud is never a victimless crime, and while its hard to know who these scammers are affecting in total, we know they are taking money, and products, from a handful of companies.
Cashapp is often used when the scammer is in need of liquid cash, while much of the other retailers are used to resell items they got for free, by stealing.
Cashapp is an application used to send money to peers for low fees, without much verification, making it easy for the scammers to send money, and withdraw hundreds, between two accounts.
The second most common target is retailers, often luxury brands, where a fake card is used to ship stolen products straight to their door. No longer will they have to deal with mall security.
This trend has blown up since the start of the COVID-19 epidemic. It raises the question if these many people are using fraud to make income during this time, how is this affecting the businesses?
The loss of income is currently great due to the virus alone. Companies are bracing for recession and restructuring. This loss of legitimate income, undoubtedly, affects their income.
The various methods that are available all seem to attack the same, or similar, retailers, and banks. Bitcoin atm’s are often utilized, not realizing the United States strict KYC (know your customer) laws.
These laws allow law enforcement to be able to track money laundering, and criminal activity, from Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies. Most Bitcoin services, use a scan of one’s ID card or passport in order to track who is buying what.
For some of the methods, a VPN is used to trick authorities into misdirecting them as to who is using the site, or application. This largely doesn’t work when you post your crimes to social media, and these companies are subpoenaed.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for this to go unnoticed by companies, and law enforcement. I couldn’t find much about this phenomenon while searching, yet to some who use Tik Tok, this trend is abundant. While some of the videos get taken down, many of the uploads remain up until the time of writing this.
Is this only on Tik Tok?
Upon further research into other platforms, I realized this was concentrated on Tik Tok. Reddit once had forums dedicated to “carding” but they have since been banned. It seems as if the best way to advertise this kind of work is over Tik Tok due to it being one of the most popular video, and livestreaming, platform for young adults. One month after I last visited the accounts, and the majority of videos are still up on the platform
What’s the cost?
The perpetrators make money every time they sell a new method, a new product, or a new card. They can also withdraw money from existing stolen cards.
One of the accounts posted themselves fanning money and showing off a new luxury car. While they could have another job, it’s safe to say that committing fraud, is a full-time job for them, and it pays well.
It’s quite easy to at least begin to understand what’s going on here, and how the law is being broken. No matter if something illegal is explicitly being shown, nothing can prevent the police from beginning to investigate who is committing these crimes, or selling fake identities.
The idea of being a self-proclaimed “fraud guru”, and using your platform to influence those to commit crimes, pay. It pays enough to where these account creators will stick their necks out to advertise their services.
If you see any of this activity going on, there is an incentive to report it. The IRS Whistleblower Informant Reward will reward you for reporting those who have illegal income, or income they are not reporting. https://www.irs.gov/compliance/whistleblower-informant-award
