How to Scam the Scammers

The Trick That Shuts Them Down - Scam Fighters: How to Act When Your Mate’s Phone Gets Hacked

Scammers aren’t hitmen. They’re weak. Get their mule account, tip off the bank, and you kill the con at its root…

.We’ve all had it. A WhatsApp from a friend, or a text that looks oddly familiar. “Hi, I’ve changed my number. Can you help me urgently?” Maybe it’s a parcel delivery, a banking link, or even a cry for cash. Nine times out of ten it’s nonsense — but one in ten is convincing enough to catch somebody out.

What happens when you realise your mate’s phone has been compromised? Do you just delete the message, laugh it off, and hope for the best? Or is there something you can actually do that makes a difference? After all, today it’s their phone. Tomorrow it could be yours.

The anatomy of the hack

Most scams don’t start with a criminal mastermind in Lagos or Accra. They start with someone, somewhere, clicking on the wrong link. A fake Royal Mail delivery notice, a bogus banking text, an email that looks like it came from Apple.

• If they just clicked: often nothing happens, unless they typed in login details.

• If they entered details: their account (bank, email, iCloud, WhatsApp) is now in the scammers’ hands.

• If they installed something: especially on Android, they may have given away their contacts, messages, and permissions.

That’s the moment the scam snowball starts rolling. Your mate’s entire contact list is harvested, and suddenly hundreds of people — including you — are “potential marks.”

The low-level foot soldiers

When you get a broken-English WhatsApp asking for “urgent family support,” it’s not usually the “Mr Big” at the other end. It’s some underpaid 19-year-old in Ghana or Nigeria working from a script.

They don’t understand the bigger picture. They’ve been recruited online, promised quick money for “customer outreach.” Maybe they earn £50 a week, maybe a small cut of each successful payment. They aren’t masterminds — they’re cannon fodder.

Above them are the money mule recruiters — the people who supply UK bank accounts for stolen funds to flow through. They find students, the unemployed, or even the desperate, and pay them to open accounts or hand over details. Those accounts are disposable cups: used once, drained fast, then discarded.

Mr Big

The real profits land higher up the food chain. Take Nigeria’s so-called “Yahoo Boys.” Entire neighbourhoods in Lagos or Benin City run on internet fraud. Local “Mr Bigs” fund luxury lifestyles with overseas victims’ cash. Some flaunt their wealth openly — convoys of cars, gold jewellery, champagne parties.

International policing does exist. The Nigerian EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) has arrested high-profile fraudsters like Ramon Abbas, known online as Hushpuppi, who flaunted his millions on Instagram before being extradited to the US. But for every one Hushpuppi, dozens slip under the radar. Corruption, weak enforcement, and sheer volume make the trade hard to stamp out.

So the scam chain looks like this: your mate clicks → their contacts get harvested → low-level operatives spam messages → money mule accounts in the UK catch payments → organisers offshore collect the profit.

What you can actually do

Here’s the good news: you can do more than delete the message. Victims’ mates can act — and if enough of us do, it makes a real difference.

1. Cut off the money route.

Scammers can’t succeed without a UK bank account to catch the cash. That’s their weak spot — and it’s where you can hit them.

The bank account details the scammer sends you are gold dust. Don’t just ignore them. Engage with the scammer long enough to get the account number. Play dumb if you need to: agree to pay, then ask for the details. If you say “my bank won’t send to that sort code,” they’ll often hand over a backup account. Each one you collect is another chance to report and shut them down.

And no — there’s no danger in this. These aren’t international hitmen. They’re con artists, and in Britain they have no power. Once they realise you won’t pay, they move on to the next target.

When you’ve got the details, email the bank’s fraud team (every UK bank has one — Monzo for instance uses reporting@monzo.com) and copy the information to Action Fraud. Every report builds a bigger picture, and once a pattern emerges the account gets frozen.

Why does this matter? Because the person who hands over their account — often a broke student in Birmingham, tempted by £200 quick cash — is branded a money mule for life. Once a bank flags you as a mule, it’s on your record. You won’t get another current account. You’ll struggle with loans, mortgages, even mobile phone contracts. PayPal, Revolut, Klarna, Monzo — forget it. Your financial identity is effectively black-listed. For what? A short-term cut of a con.

That’s the hidden story: the scammers are parasitic, but their local helpers destroy their own futures just as surely as they hurt their victims.

2. Warn your circle.

If your mate’s phone is compromised, tell your shared contacts. A quick message — “Ignore anything from X, they’ve been hacked” — can save the next person. Scams rely on shame and silence. Break that chain.

3. Don’t be embarrassed.

Shame is the scammer’s best friend. Many victims never admit they fell for it. But the more we normalise talking about it, the harder it is for scammers to recycle the same tricks.

4. Lock down your own accounts.

Enable two-factor authentication on email, iCloud, and WhatsApp. That way, even if your password leaks, scammers can’t just walk in.

Why this matters

It’s easy to shrug and say “the police in Nigeria won’t do anything.” That’s mostly true — enforcement abroad is patchy. But the weak link isn’t in Lagos, it’s here. Scammers can’t cash out without UK and European bank accounts. Choking off those accounts starves the beast.

Every report of a mule account helps banks and fraud agencies spot patterns, freeze accounts faster, and put names on watchlists. Mule recruiters burn through people quickly, but as more accounts get blocked, the cost of doing business rises.

At the same time, every time you warn your circle, you shrink the pool of victims. Every time someone admits they nearly fell for it, you make it less likely someone else will.

Now you know what to do. If you don’t — if you just shrug and delete the message — then please don’t complain about not seeing bobbies on the beat. Law and order is a fight we can all get involved in. It starts not with politicians, or with far-off police forces, but with us. Spotting the scam, stringing the scammer, shutting the account. That’s how we defend our own streets.

A human story

It’s tempting to think of scammers as shadowy masterminds. The reality is often sadder. A kid in Ghana, paid peanuts, reading English off a script he barely understands. A broke student in Birmingham, roped into opening a Monzo account for £200, now branded a money mule for life.

And above them, yes — there are the big men in Lagos or Dubai living like kings off the back of it. But most of the “faces” we see in scams are pawns.

That doesn’t excuse it. But it does explain why the fight isn’t just “police in Africa” versus “victims in Britain.” It’s ordinary people — us — deciding not to let scammers recycle the same playbook unchallenged.

The lesson for GRIT readers

If your mate’s phone is hacked, don’t just laugh off the dodgy text. Act. Get the details, report the mule accounts, warn the circle.

Scamming isn’t sophisticated. It’s cheap, repetitive, and relentless. But that means small actions — taken by enough of us — actually work. If politics doesn’t protect us, if international policing moves too slowly, we can protect ourselves and each other.

Because the truth is simple: today it’s your mate’s phone. Tomorrow it could be yours.

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SIDEBAR : How to Get a Mule Account Shut Down

1. String them along – agree to pay, ask for the bank details.

2. Push back – say your bank “can’t use that sort code” and they may give you a backup account.

3. Note everything – name, account number, sort code, payment reference.

4. Report to the bank – email the fraud team (every UK bank has a published address).

5. Report to Action Fraud – so the details feed into the national database.

6. Block the scammer – once you’ve got what you need.

One report may save one victim. Ten reports can shut down a whole operation.