I was reading the story of a blogger who lost his Adsense income from a thief who claimed it through the Western Union branch here in the Philippines. The story was published at the “In My Solitude” blog.

What happened is that: The particular blogger failed to withdraw her $6,000 Adsense income because someone else has withdrawn it already.

Question: Is it possible that someone other than the suppose recipient can withdraw money at the Western Union?

Answer: Yes! As long as you have the MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number) and any government issued ID bearing the recipient’s name and address including birthday, then you can withdraw the money of someone else.

Question: How could the thief get the MTCN of the money sent by Google through Western Union when in fact it is just sent by Google to its publishers through the Google Adsense website?

Answer: This can be done when your Google account is already compromised. What I mean is that when the thief has gained access to your own Google account, then he can also get your MTCN and your personal information.

Question: Isn’t it any Western Union branches or agents require you to show valid IDs before they give you your money?

Answer: It is true that Western Union requires its branches or any agents to ask valid IDs from the receiver before the release of the money. However, valid IDs can be easily faked or if not, you can get one without hassle, particularly the Postal ID.

I am actually a victim of this but my Adsense income was not stolen from the Western Union but from the Postal office. The Adsense Income was sent to me in check. And I think, the check was stolen in a postal office in Metro Manila since it was cashed in a particular bank in Baclaran. And he couldn’t do it without creating a bank account in my name, because the said check was deposited into a savings account in my name, and creating a bank account needs a valid ID. So, I suspected that the thief has faked an ID bearing my name.

Question: You said that the MTCN can be stolen by accessing my Google account. How can a thief get my Google account login info?

Answer: Thief is using malicious software in doing this job.

For example: If you are using an article submitter program like AMR (Article Marketing Robot), then you are prone to this, because there are article directory websites that infect your PC with a keylogger or with a trojan malware. If your PC is not protected well, then I am sure either a Trojan or Keylogger is spying you, so your logging information in accessing Paypal, Google Adsense and other websites that handle money, are already stolen by the owner of the malware. So, if your Google Adsense income is already stolen, then expect that your money stored in your paypal account will be stolen too in one of these days.

I was once a victim of this too. My Paypal was compromised last year. It just happened that the hacker was coming from outside the Philippines and that Paypal has a system that detects a malicious entry.

I couldn’t say that the hacker was just guessing my password because my password contains characters like @#$%^&* and it couldn’t be read as a word. So, I really thought that the hacker spied me using malware.

From the email of Paypal sent to me, it said that my Paypal account was temporarily suspended because they detected that someone coming from a different location of mine has accessed my account. So, my money stored at my Paypal account was saved.

Question: But according to the article you have linked above, her daughter was using a security feature wherein Google will send her via mobile phone a security code everytime she would access her account. The code should be entered to gain access.

In other words, the thief couldn’t steal the MTCN from her Adsense account because of this feature. So, there should be an inside job from the Western Union.

Answer: I actually don’t know that Google has this security feature. I was not using it anyway. And if this is the case, then it might be true that there is something wrong inside the Western Union.

But a clerk of certain Western Union agent here in my place once told me that they couldn’t get the information regarding the money sent to certain receiver without entering first the MTCN, and that they couldn’t search the Western Union data by simply entering the name of the receiver or the sender.

Would it be possible that the thief was just guessing the MTCN?

Update

Jeff Aspacio, the husband of the victim, commented on this post telling us that the Western Union has investigated the case already and found out that there was really an illegal activity happened.

It is true that the information of the money transfer would be revealed to the teller of any Western Union agents once the MTCN has been inputted, but someone from the Western Union and its agents can access the important list of money transfers.

In other words, this “someone” who has the access to the list and information of the money transfers can be the one who stole the money from the victim.

According to Jeff, the finding of the investigation has prompted the Western Union to send back the money to the sender.

And he also said in a reply to a Facebook communication in a certain group that the Western Union agent involved in this theft is one of the 24-hour establishment in Quezon City. It’s not clear if it’s a pawnshop, rural bank, ticketing office or a bayad center. What is revealed is that the thief is coming from one of the WU agent in Quezon City.

Closing Thoughts

We can’t trust anyone. But at least we should be careful and we should learn how to anticipate the unexpected.

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