FBI MoneyPak scam

Hi everyone,

I didn't see a thread about this in search so I wanted to share with you all an experience I recently had that initially left me baffled & a little nervous. I received a notification that my computer had been locked due to violating copyright laws, illegally viewing or distributing copyright material, and pornography. It looked authentic with the FBI logo on it, my I.P. address, and location, and various statutes that I supposedly infringed upon.

There was a message indicating that I had within 72 hours to pay a fine up to $200 or be subject to deprivation of liberty from 4-12 years, and additional criminal charges being filed against me.

The notice urges you to purchase a MoneyPak card from a retailer, and load it with the requested amount to send, and if you have a problem to contact [email protected]

I was able to log onto another acct and did a search to confirm my suspicions of what I discovered to be "ransomware" and was able to remove the program from my PC.

Here is a tutorial from McAfee (Do not use their anti-virus software, it's sub-par) which has some good directions for removal.

Just wanted to share this with the community so that you do not fall victim to this out of fear of reprisal.

Stay vigilant.

WHAT really... wtf i sent the fti like $800 in total this kept happening to me and i thougth they wanted me to pay for all the movies i downloaded... Fail

j/k bro, im not a retard above is what an average american would respond to this.

Thanks for the heads up on this...I haven't heard of this scam yet . ..I always get the ones that start off " dear madam, I am barista John smith from Nigeria bank and have 300 million dollars of a distant relative of yours..." ...although the funniest one that I got was an email from the airport luggage claims department in Chicago . They had found my bank card with $20,000 on it, and wanted me to send them $50.00 so they could send it to me certified....what a bunch of bull crap!!!!!! ....anyway, thanks for the heads up!

reply to post by Meldionne1


No, this is a popup in your browser, not an email.

So people who have been doing naughty things will stop dead in the their tracks and go "Ohno, red tube.. wuuhhh I better pay this before the wife finds out" and fork over cash to some shonky cretins out there.

Plenty of nooks and crannies out there that people may have been accidentally to or what not, who will think this is legit.

suckers.. lol

reply to post by winofiend


I like how you say " accidentally went to" .....lol! ...thanks for clarifying .

I say a very similar scam on a friends computer here in the U.K. last summer but instead of the F.B.I. it was Metropolitian Police.
I just wiped her hard drive and reinstalled Windows but she feel for it and was panicing.

Originally posted by Kevinquisitor
Hi everyone,

I didn't see a thread about this in search so I wanted to share with you all an experience I recently had that initially left me baffled & a little nervous. I received a notification that my computer had been locked due to violating copyright laws, illegally viewing or distributing copyright material, and pornography. It looked authentic with the FBI logo on it, my I.P. address, and location, and various statutes that I supposedly infringed upon.

There was a message indicating that I had within 72 hours to pay a fine up to $200 or be subject to deprivation of liberty from 4-12 years, and additional criminal charges being filed against me.

The notice urges you to purchase a MoneyPak card from a retailer, and load it with the requested amount to send, and if you have a problem to contact [email protected]

I was able to log onto another acct and did a search to confirm my suspicions of what I discovered to be "ransomware" and was able to remove the program from my PC.

Here is a tutorial from McAfee (Do not use their anti-virus software, it's sub-par) which has some good directions for removal.

Just wanted to share this with the community so that you do not fall victim to this out of fear of reprisal.

Stay vigilant.

edit on 2-2-2013 by Kevinquisitor because: (no reason given)

Avoid them porn sites in the future!

Hahahaha! Guilt can make people do some stupid things. They panic and loose all logical thinking!

I just had this happen to me this morning.With a little research,I found it was a scam.Luckily for me I had a back up disc I made when I first bought my pc,so a simple system restore did the trick.

I just want to warn the fine members here at ATS that this scam/virus is still out there.Beware folks...beware!

reply to post by Kevinquisitor


Although this is an older thread the money Pak ransonware is making it's rounds again with a vengeance right now.

I saw a couple of people on here going to drastic lengths to get rid of this and thought I would add some insight.

If you get this on your computer....

1. Close the window by closing the browser in task manager

2. shut down the computer & re-start in safe mode
(hold f8 while it restarts and when option for safe mode comes up hit "enter")

3. Go to your start menu and click on "control panel"

4. click on "recovery"

5. click on " open system restore"

6. pick a previous date to when you acquired the problem.

7. hit Restore....

It will restore Windows to the previous date and you will lose the problem.

I actually have had to do this 3 times in the last 2 weeks and it has worked great.

And no.....You don't have to be looking at porn to get this ransomware


There is NO reason to wipe the hard drive and re-install windows

mwood



It will restore Windows to the previous date and you will lose the problem.

I actually have had to do this 3 times in the last 2 weeks and it has worked great.

And no.....You don't have to be looking at porn to get this ransomware


There is NO reason to wipe the hard drive and re-install windows

Umm if you had to do this that many times....maybe it didnt work so good.

System restore, restores the system to checkpoints where major hardware or software changes occurred.

It does not clear your browser history cookies nor temp folders let alone remove malicious software.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

reply to post by Kevinquisitor

My whole screen faded out to complete white and an FBI INTERNET CRIMES DIVISION page came up same way.

It entirely...and I do mean ENTIRELY...dumped my whole computer hard drive, operating system except for the white screen.

I had to have the drive completely wiped clean, OS re-installed. Luckily, at work I have an IT friend who hooked up a SATA patch cord to look into the drive alone without using the infected OS...see my files and cut and paste them into an external drive.

I didnt pay any $$$ but freaked out completely. Sitting there watching your screen wash out-white and the fake FBI pop up was heart stopping. Then trying and trying to start it back up...but getting a plain white screen...whoa.

Ive heard people sent $$ in more than once following the bogus instructions...and then sent in even MORE $$$ when it didnt come on.

Friends beware! Scan frequently and read up on past and current malware, virus and trojans attacks. There are many..

reply to post by mwood

That wasn't true for me. I lost ALL...ALL control. You couldn't turn it of, turn it back on...nothing...I had absolutely no key, button...nothing would work. There was a total removal-hijack.

Even my IT guy said even he couldn't get any control. It was the worst he ever saw as it completely wiped out everything. On, off, window, screens...you name it. It only had their one white screen controlled only by them.

What you suggested may have worked for you, but not everyone. As I said, to follow your advice, I would have had to have some even minimal control to say even turn it off and back on...when no key would work.

Nothing remained to control. NOTHING.

reply to post by Kevinquisitor


I've had this happen to me about six seven months ago and it scared the bleep outta me. Nothing worked, completely froze up my computer. Don't know if I were just lucky and caught it, but I manually shut off my computer, got on my lap top and did a search on it and found it to be a scam, then to make short story long found that AVG free seemed to do a good job of removing it along with a scan with Malwarebytes Anti-malware. Don't know if this'll be any help to anyone else, but can't hurt.

Pull the drive out and scan it on a clean computer. At least get your files off of it. Reload windows?.. That's like replacing your car just because it gets dirty.

It happend to my SO. She was looking for apartments, and got poped with that, she woke me up franticly. I had to explaine to her it was a virus. The second I seen that it was asking for money, I knew right away, Now I have to get it fixed. SUCKS.