The Western Union Money Transfer® service is a great way to send money to people you know and trust. If you need to send money to someone you don’t know well, you may be putting yourself at risk for fraud.

Western Union urges you to protect yourself from fraud by considering the following:

Never send money to a stranger using a money transfer service.
Beware of deals or opportunities that seem too good to be true.
Don’t use money transfer services to pay for things like online auction purchases.
Never send money to pay for taxes or fees on foreign lottery winnings.
Never send a money transfer, in the name of a friend or relative, with the intention of changing the name to someone you have not met personally.
Never send a money transfer, in the name of a friend or relative, in order to delay payment of the transaction to someone you have not met personally.

If you think you've been a victim of fraud, contact Western Union 
 

Sending Your Money Into the Void

Sending funds through the banking system

When you send funds from your bank account to your cousin's bank account in Histown, a paper trail is established.  If your cousin calls you on Tuesday to find out where the money is that you sent last Thursday, your bank can track the path of the money through the banking system to see what went wrong.  A record of transfer is generated each and every time the amount moves from one bank's ledger to the next. 

Sending funds through Western Union

That's not the case at all when you use Western Union.  The only record kept by Western Union is of your funds being transferred from one of their accounts to another.  For instance, if you are in Los Angeles and you send funds to somebody in London, all that Western Union can tell you is that the funds were picked up in London, and at which office. 
Western Union takes your money and gives you a receipt.  Your funds are then placed in the Los Angeles central Western Union account along with all the other monies they have received during the day from all over Los Angeles.  Each transfer request is logged electronically such that your specific amount is then sent off to the central Western Union account in London.
Once the funds are in a central account, the actual money can be picked up at any office covered by that account.  Just because you were told to send money to such-and-such a fellow at such-and-such a Western Union office does not mean he'll actually pick it up there.  He can pick it up at an office clear across the city.
Western Union can verify that the fellow who picked up the money carried the specified identification.  They might even be able to tell you what he looked like.  This doesn't really do you much good.  His identification can be phoney as the day is long.  All you know when you sent the funds is what you were told.  Once your scammer walks out of that office, there is absolutely nothing to bring him back, unlike your cousin in Histown who has an open bank account.  There is no way to trace him.  He's gone.  And in the case of a scam, so is your money.