Dude! I would of stop right there from the beginning. This is money laundering. If you don’t know the guy than it is not of your business. Why should you care? The guy is a complete stranger. Peace, Flood!

We see this a lot in my $dayjob ... they've skimmed the card details .. the real card holder will spot the transaction in about 6-8 weeks time ... and then you'll see a chargeback from the merchant processor (who usually charge an admin fee for processing it, plus whatever fees you have to pay for refunds / etc usually).

The Police don't seem to care, the banks don't actually seem to care ... you're in different countries and it is just too complicated for the Police to trace and the Banks just consider it a cost of doing business as they get the money back .. the only person who usually ends up suffering is the schmuck at the end of the chain who processed the card transaction :(

I usually ask them for a copy of their passport and a photo of them holding the credit card if the transaction looks fishy

Hi from Mexico, fun story, please do tell if there's any update!

About scams, not exactly made to me but to my bank I guess, I had a debit card cloned or something like that a few years ago, they made $1 dollar charge, as it cleared then they made another $1,500 charge... all this in Madrid, obviously it wasn't me, haven't been there yet hehe. As soon as I noticed this on my bank statement I reported the issue to my bank and they gave me a case # to follow up.

While waiting for a resolution from the bank, I found out that a friend at the workplace got his debit card cloned too, now, we both got the bank accounts at the same time as they issued for us by the company we were working with so the debit card numbers had consecutive numbers in them.

I thought this could only be possible if somehow the bank system was compromised or it was an inside job, I mean, what are the chances of this to happen to both of us at the same time, same charges, same place and all, right?

The thing is, I called the bank again and told them everything about this, their response was that they would see each case individually, and didn't even asked about my friend's name or debit card #, go figure!

Eventually we both got our money back, less the first $1 charge, I think that was a small loss to take as the banks are not really eager to fix stuff when it happens to your own money, when the money is theirs... that's a whole other story.

And now thanks to that event, I check my bank account online a couple of times a week ;)

Yeah I have had a few scams target me too. I never got to the stage of actually getting any money to pass on. The one that got a decent way in was last year where they wanted a photographer for a 50th birthday party that was apparently going to be held somewhere in my suburb. Their problem was the distance between conversations via email took so long that the date of the event was about a day or 2 away at most and they had not given any address of where it was going to be held or even ok'd the items I had quoted them to do. Then I got another email which was basically exactly the same as the first email but with a different date but acting as if it was a brand new person asking and not rescheduling and then I knew for sure it was a scam.
The unfortunate thing about this scam was that I went and bought some gear specifically for this job which has not gone to waste at all but I probably would not have bought it then if I had a choice.
I am amazed he actually tried to talk to you but then I guess you had his money but most as you say just try and stick to text-based messaging.

Please keep us informed on what happens as it is good for those who have not been targeted before to know what they try so they do not fall for it.

Check your balances daily online. No need to wait for monthly statement. Use Quicken or Quickbooks.