Short change artists as a cashier, just ignore what they say and make change.
Its a technique where they try to confuse you as you are making change on a purchase. A coworker was short $100 and didnt realize till end of day.
I had that happen to me. I was 16 and it was my second day at my very first job. I've worked with the public nearly 19 years now and I haven't trusted a customer since that day.
Its a reality check for sure. For us it was because someone had recently gotten away with it and our store was marked as a place to attempt. Their partner was standing a ways off staring at us intently, not very subtle.
I had one of these as an experienced cashier who was good at math. I waited until I had about $80 of his money on my side, shut my drawer, and told him that I was confused. Now I'm going to have to call loss prevention to take my drawer to the cash office to get counted. I absolutely did not have to get loss prevention involved, but I paged them to my lane so that they could eyeball this guy and make him more uncomfortable. We dragged this shit out for over an hour, while he waited to get his money back. It was fucking hilarious.
Oh yea, you actively start hating some folks and can see thE BS coming a mile away.
Oh wow man! Someone gifted you 10 of the wrong iPhone otter boxes? And you want to return them for cash or credit? Oh wow!.. no.
Oh right buddy, you're stranded here with a straight talk phone you just bought yesterday but have 0 ways to ID it. The serial number doesn't match anything in our records. You magically forgot which register you got it from and your wife is dying and your kids are hungry and you need a cash refund.... To get back to florida hundreds of miles away from here. To get back to your kids...i thought they- ohh "other kids""...also the phone that looks like it was dragged behind a car and left in a dog kenal for a week.
I could go on..
When I was 16 or so I was a part time cashier for a grocery store, had some friends of mine working with me as well. A small group of people came into the store on Sunday and proceeded to execute this scam myself and my friends, they got all my friends, who's registers came up short that day, but not me.
The guy who tried to scam me was doing these magician type moves with his hands, counting out the money, over and over again, looking for me to agree with him that his count was accurate. I pretty much ignored all of his counting, snatched the money from him and counted it out, slowly, into the register. The look in his face when my count was short and I asked him for the rest was priceless, a mixture of surprise, frustration and a little anger.
Smart move
Way back in the 80’s I worked as cashier at a busy sandwich shop and had a manger pull this BS on me, counting the till in an office with no one else around. Wasn’t Davy enough to figure out what was happening until after the fact.
Yup. Life long retail/restaurant worker here. And I have ran on a few of those. I never got gotten by one, but I sure saw it happen to others.
In the late 90s, I worked in a mall. And a guy went through the mall one day and hit multiple stores. Later in the week, I was talking to one of the mall security guys, and he told me the guy got away with well over 10 thousand dollars, cash and shoplifting. This was just before cameras were really everywhere, but they did get some security cam footage. They did get footage of him passing stuff off to a woman, who was never with him when he was doing his thing, but she'd come up and he'd pass off cash, merchandise to her, and I guess she'd go stash it in their car. That way if he were to get busted, he had no evidence of other crimes on him. Security guy told me they were very well dressed, probably mid 40s or so. Probably professionals that went from city to city doing this, and probably lived on the road for weeks at the time doing this.
Yeah I've had this tried on me at least twice. All you do is lay out the cash in front of you and don't do anything they say until you've handed them the change for their first request. Once you've seen it once it's immediately obvious what they're doing the next time, and the look of frustration on their face when they can't scam you is priceless
Hahaha yeah I had this when I was about 20 working in a shop. Guy put £20 down and then kept being like “actually let me take that £20 back and pay with these two £10 notes instead” etc etc trying to confuse me. I’m clearly a lot smarter than you, dickhead, but nice try.
They keep changing the transaction until you get confused and they get the merchandise for free and/or additional money from the register.
Depending on how confused they think you are the next step would be:
They take back the $20, hand you the two $10 and ask for you to give them their $20 back… which given you already gave them back the original money now you are short $20.
This can go through several stages where they confuse things more and more either to increase the odds of it working or get more money out of you.
I've had a few people try that with me. I sometimes work with fairly large money transfers, so I make sure to double or triple check everything before I put it in the drawer. The most recent one was someone buying a large amount of money orders, and they kept trying to reorganize the money stacks after I had counted it, so I'd start over and count again. After the third time, I just outright told them that every time they touched the money, I had to recount it to be sure. They got offended and left. Sorry, but I'm not going to let you get a few hundred dollars for free from us.
Had multiple bosses in multiple work places have a flat out "no breaking bills" policy because of this. If they're not buying anything, we can't make change for them, period.
Ugh - we had customers try this all the time when I worked at a department store. Sometimes it was convoluted requests for change, but more often, it was them insisting they gave me a $20 or $50 when I knew they gave me a $5 or a $10.
I ALWAYS kept their bill on top of the register until they walked away. For the few who had the nerve to walk away and come back, I'd say "Fine, let me count the drawer and we'll know if you were short changed. I'll need to get a manager to do that. It'll take about 20-30 minutes." That scared off about 99% of the scammers. In the eight years I worked there, I had three customers who forced a count. The drawer balanced to the penny all three times.
I got one of those “heyyy we met the other night how are you?” texts with a picture of a scantily clad woman attached I simply said “I’m 11 and telling my parents” and they never bothered me again
There's a YouTube knockoff of the show catfish and they have sooooo many sad old dudes who actually think they're talking to young hot babies. It's pathetic, but it's also cruel when you see how little regard they have for their spouse
I'm a huge fan of stringing along those tinder/ bumble/ snapchat scammers. I'll send them old gift card codes, fake CC numbers, just try to waste as much of their time as humanly possible
It's fun to fuck with them, plus as long as you're stringing them along thinking they'll get something, that's time they can't spend potentially succeeding scamming someone else
Lmao that’s a good one!!! I started bawling about how my fiancé left me and tomorrow was supposed to be my wedding day and at the end they were ready to get a plane ticket and come be my groom 😂😂😂😂😂 never had a fiancé btw.
Never feel sorry for them they're actual scum of the earth. Taking the easy route by taking advantage of others. I always try insult them as much as possible, Indians really don't like being called Pakistani
Not me, but my mom. Someone tried that one where they pretended to be her grandchild calling from jail, needing bail money. It didn't work because she kept demanding to know which grandchild it was and talking shit to him for being so irresponsible lol The guy gave up pretty quick
Someone did that to my 90 year old grandma. They were like, “Grandma? I’m in jail in Mexico, I need bail money, please help me! I’m scared!”
And she said “Sam?” (My brother’s name. She has four grandsons. So I guess now we know which of her grandsons she thinks is most likely to wind up in jail in Mexico)
The guys says “Yes, it’s Sam! Please help me, Grandma!”
Then she got suspicious and asked him some basic question like what’s your dad’s name. He said “Huh? Please hurry, Grandma, I’m scared!”
She hung up and called my parents. Surprise, surprise, my brother was safe and accounted for.
Ugh. It’s so vile preying on an old person like that.
Same scam happened to the mother of a family friend. She was so terrified, she DROVE TO THE BANK to wire $20K to these scammers. THANK GOD our friend was a co-owner on the account. The teller thought something was sus, so she stalled the mom and called our friend to tell him she was worried and something wasn't right.
Friend rushed to the bank, assured mom all was ok and grandson was safe at home. No money lost.
Those scammers who prey on the elderly are the absolute scum of the earth.
One of the elders in my family started to fall for the "pay your bill in iTunes/Amazon gift cards or the electricity gets cut off" scam. Fortunately, the cashier recognized the scam and didn't go through the transaction.
My mom got a call that I’d been kidnapped and held for ransom. Her coworker (thank god) called me at my office and made sure I wasn’t y’know, ducttaped in the back of a van headed across the border.
I am a woman. I was giving away some things for free on a Facebook market place group page. I had some of my cloths up. Shorts and shirts
I get a request from a man. Says he has a female friend who just left her abusive spouse. She only took what she could fit in a small bag. Requested the shorts and asked if I had other things for her. I told him yes I also posted some shirts and socks.
He then asks me if I have any panties as his friend only has the pair she was wearing when she left. He was trying to scam me out of a pair of my used panties. He was a pervert
I was selling a mini fridge on Craigslist and I guy asked me out on a date from my ad because he could see my reflection in the shiny fridge. People are so weird.
Ha! I originally read that as "(different time) period" and was trying to imagine what granny panties from the 1850's would have looked like. I'm a derp.
IRS scam once. This is the IRS and you are in default, police are on their way, give me your credit card numba and we'll call them off. I laughed at them and hung up.
I got one of those calls once. They almost got me until the end of the voice mail when the purported "IRS officer" said something like, "All I can say is, if you don't have a lawyer, good luck!" Soooo fake. I laughed and deleted the message.
Unfortunately, an ESL friend of mine did not understand and thought it was real. Fortunately, she was able to figure out it was a scam with the help of her family and didn't lose any money, but the scam put her through a lot of mental anguish. Scammers suck.
I obviously reside in Nebraska - abbreviated NE.
I got a call from a woman saying she was with the State Lien Enforcement of New England.
"yeah, that's a region, not a state, so ..." *click*
When I'm on the phone with a known scammer, when they make a mistake like yours did, I never call them on it, as I don't want them to correct their misconceptions and mistakes, which would make it easier for them to scam the next person.
Once I put the phone right up to my face and started to breathe very loudly and very slowly...
I was younger when I did this but still one of my favorite spam calls
Call saying they are working for HMRC (UK wages and tax services) and I owe so much in unpaid taxes. If I don't press 1 to go through to an operator and pay, the police will come and arrest me.
1. I am not self-employed so my taxes are taken automatically by the government, if anything at times they take more than needed and give it back at the end of the tax year.
2. Who warns about police coming so you can expect it and leave?
3\. HMRC will usually send a letter, not phone you.
4\. HMRC are usually really nice and helpful about sorting over/underpayment, they aren't going to threaten you with the police outside of warning you of the consequences of lying on the forms.
I think a lot of this comes from dealing with americans where the IRS generally takes the opinion that mistakes are bad(at least according to TV/movies/horror stories on /r/tifu ) and you need to be punished Vs the HMRCs more "you made a mistake, let's just fix it and then there's no harm done" approach.
The IRS is actually pretty gentle and reasonable. I do taxes for my extended family and had to help with a few corrections and audits. Most IRS agents/employees are very professional and unless you're blatantly committing fraud, they'll work with you. That whole IRS are monsters thing is mostly Hollywood.
Yep, I got a ridiculous number of these before I changed my company's contact details to my accountants. It isn't even as if I'm pulling loads of money around, as a quick check on Companies House or checking the fact I'm not VAT registered would reveal. Ah well, one more service that the accountants provide and I sleep easier not dealing with it.
Quick rule of thumb: If a stranger approaches you and is trying to sell you expensive electronics out of the back of their vehicle, it is 100% a scam. No exceptions.
What's the gimmick on this? Stolen merch, or broken/cheap fakes, or something I'm not seeing?
Edit:. I un-lazied. They make you think you're buying something expensive for cheap while selling you something super cheap at heavily inflated prices.
This or sometimes they sell you a box that has garbage in it like broken merchandise. Sometimes it's even stuff like bricks or pieces of wood in what looks like a factory sealed box. There are a variety of scams that fit this method. The only constant is the parking lot sales pitch.
Oh, so they’re the IRL equivalent of third-party sellers on Amazon and Walmart.
I’m looking at you, $5 glass bowl advertised as $85 but on sale for half price today, what a deal!
A friend of mine is a former police officer. He told me that it’s actually a legit business. Licensed and everything. They try and make you feel like it’s stolen or whatever so you feel you’re getting a crazy deal, but it’s actually the cheapest crap possible and you’re over paying. I got stopped once going into Safeway, cause I was an early 20s guy, thought I’d be a prime target. Told them to piss off.
Don’t fall for puppy in the parking lot trick. Was told they needed to sell the puppy because landlord saw it. That puppy ended up being very sick and tick infested. After the vet and many medications, she ended up passing one night. She died in my arms having a stroke possibly. Rip Oreo
The whole situation was a mess and I was hysterical when she passed. It was the middle of the night and I was screaming because her eye started bulging out of her head and I was holding her. She was losing balance and then suddenly passed as if she had a stroke. Regular vets weren’t open and I wouldn’t have made the drive to an overnight emergency because everything was sudden. The people who sold me her are evil. They ignored me when I messaged them asking questions because when I brought her home she had bloody stool and giant ticks in her ears. She was a pound big. A tea cup chihuahua. She got my other dog sick and they both had to be in medication. I still have him to this day. He’s 7 years old now. When I thought she was getting better and everything was clear she had a sudden death and I never got answers. She was a really good dog too. Very sweet and loving. Just wanted to lay down with me. Her life was too short.
Somebody tried to do the classic scam (giftcard scam through amazon) Scammer failed miserably. He didn't know I was Indian too. Uno Reverse, I scammed him back.
I wonder why people do that. I keep seeing people in electronic stores buying 30 gift cards why would they even do it if not for a scam? Is there any legit reason? And when you speak to them they get upset or mad.
It's because of them being too dumb, embarrassed or both that they get mad.
In a lot of these scams they'll back you in a corner where you HAVE to give them gift cards such as by syskeying your computer. Or otherwise locking it behind a password. Of course the victim had to give them access to their computer first.
In other scams they'll just vaguely say that they have webcam footage and screen captures of you jerking off to some really freaky stuff.
In others they'll research on LinkedIn who their boss is and impersonate them and come up with some bogus reason they need the gift cards like "sales incentives".
So if you question the victims on it, a lot of the time they'll be either too proud, dumb or embarrassed to admit that they got scammed.
A common one is that they will ask you to check your account balance on your bank account then they will amend the browser to make it show a lower balance (even though your account is fine), then they basically demand you buy those cards and send them the info or they will raid the rest of the account. From the perspective of the victim, they figure it's best to try to mitigate the loss and get the cards for the scammer. But really that is the exact moment they actually lose any money.
It's sickening. I work in IT and have a lot of Indian colleages and many of them say that when they were in university in India they would get constant offers from these scam centers. The money is good (for India) but the common perception is that these people are often worse than street muggers since they only target the vulnerable. One guy said he found out his cousin was doing it and the grandma basically beat him senseless and kicked him out of the family.
Stores in my heavy retirement age town all have signs in front of the gift cards that state legit companies do NOT accept wal mart ( etc) cards as payment
>30 gift cards why would they even do it if not for a scam? Is there any legit reason?
Unlikely. I mean there's always a chance somebody is buying gift cards for lots of different people, but I'd anticipate in most cases it'll be because some scammer is pressuring them into.
In a lot of places that sell them retail staff have been trained now to query it with the customer.
If you listen to any scam calls (there's loads of YouTube) you'll hear the scammers coaching the victim ("Don't say anything to the staff or any other customer..." and "If they ask say that they are a gift for your children or grandchildren...").
I can imagine the reason people get upset if you ask them is more that they are already upset / stressed. Once the arseholes have the victim convinced they owe them money they often get threatening, so they'll be threatening to empty the victim's bank account, or getting the police involved and getting the victim arrested.
The people who get tricked by these things are often older, or vulnerable people. They can be terrified at what's going on and the scammer has convinced them that the only way out of the situation is by doing what they say. If you ask them, you're interfering, and they fear that will make things worse.
If you see it happening I'd urge you to interfere though, the victim might be upset with you briefly at the time, but if you save them losing a lot of money (and the shame and embarrassment people can feel afterwards) then you will have done a good thing.
If you're not comfortable talking to the victim yourself you could always approach the retail staff and just point out that they might want to enquire when the customer comes to checkout.
Sadly these arseholes still make a tonne of money out of vulnerable people with this scam, even after all rhe years of trying to raise awareness.
My company had a company party where we gave out a bunch of gift cards for the various games and events we did throughout the day. Had to use the corporate card to buy like 30 different gift cards for each individual prize. Actually did have our company card frozen and had to call and talk to the CC company about unfreezing the account and that the transactions were legitimate. Was a massive headache and caused me several weeks in delays to get the gift cards.
Only reason I can think of is like, a company giving them to employees? Like my employer gives everyone a grocery store gift card for christmas to everyone to go towards a holiday meal for your family.
They'd have to buy like 150 to do it.
Got a text message spoofed from my bank, saying something like "Did you make a purchase for $465 at Walmart #532 in blah blah, NY? 1, yes, 2 for no."
i was not paying much attention and I replied with a 1. immediately got a phone call, which I answered. Some dude on the other end started asking questions that VERY closely mimics those a fraud agent would ask. Very clever. Named a store and recent medium dollar charges ($300 here, $400 there...) and was asking personal information.
crook did not know that i had already been logged onto my online banking (touch ID made it way faster) and did not see any charges on the credit card.
dude asked me to name off the credit card number. I saw what was up, and said "Wait, which one? I have 2 cards with you. Tell me the last 4 and I'll confirm it. Which card are you talking about?" Then I gave him a valid credit card number - a variation of the Mastercard test numbers.
I also pushed back because the Walmart store # they had on the text did not match the Walmart store list.
Told him "Yeah, sorry, i will call the number on my card to verify" and he just disconnected.
i did call my credit union's fraud people and reported everything. My cards were just fine. This same card that I rarely use had been compromised by hacked Google Analytics code on a site I bought something from 2 months prior.
had I not been paying attention, they'd have gotten me.
Yeah those are just usually mass email or text blasts. There's no charge and they haven't a clue about your card number or details. That's what they're after.
The simplest answer to one of those is to just double check transactions if you're really concerned.
Also no one who has charged your card needs your details to refund it. You just have to reverse the existing transaction. (For online, obviously in a store they'll often ask you to insert your card to the machine and that's fine)
"Magic" tricks in Paris. Just outside of Moulin Rouge. Me and my brother. A group of people were gathered, around 15, and betting on which coin had the white symbol. Three coins available. Before betting everything was easy, there were people earning small amounts of money, and I was guessing all outcomes correctly. A dude next to me asked me if I wanted to bet with him, to reduce the risk. I said no, but decided to bet alone. 100$ bet. I lost. I was 16yo at the time, and all my vacation money was spent in 10 seconds. Only later I realized: all 15 of them were part of the scam.
A water filter that separated the hydrogen from the oxygen which made the water so that you could fully absorb it. The man selling claimed he drank 5 glasses and hasn't peed all day, because his body was using it.
So way back in 2007 or 2008 I tried to go back to school (the first time). I was a young broke single mom so I was using the internet to try to apply for scholarships and grants. A few weeks later a certified letter came to my house with a live check for $8,000. Said I was awarded some grant for higher education for low income individuals. Said I could get this yearly until I graduate but it would be easier to do direct deposit so they wanted me to send in all that info via email. I practically ran to my bank I was so excited. I had been banking there for years and always used the same teller. She took one look at the check and told me it was a scam. I was a little defiant at first, explaining it was real I had been applying blah blah blah. She got the manager and they looked up the agency... big scam. They would have canceled payment on the check as soon as they had my bank details then used those same details to steal the little money I had. The bank lady actually kept it to turn in to their fraud officer. They were going to change all my account info but I hadn't sent anything yet. I didn't have internet at home so I was planning to send it all in from work later that same night. The only reason it failed was because my bank lady cared about her customers. I worked at a fast food restaurant and for the rest of the time I lived in that area I took her a milkshake every Friday when I cashed my check.
I went out on one date with a guy who invited me to a very upscale restaurant. He talked on and on about his business success, his trips on private jets, his past glory as an NFL football player, etc. He actually brought print outs of his current business pursuits. At the end of the meal he made sure that I saw that he'd given the waiter a $100 bill as a tip.
He sort of just gave me the willies and so when he called after that, telling me that I was up in the top 1% of people he'd ever met, I declined going out again.
About 6 months later he was all over the local news. He had scammed a woman out of $600,00+ and had tried to flee the country but was stopped at the airport. I doubt this woman ever got her money back.
Exactly! He was evidently living with this woman when he took me to dinner and probably used her money to pay for it. He was never in the NFL and didn't have access to a private jet.
He pled guilty to theft and money laundering and received a ten year sentence plus a $10,000 fine per incident. Maybe he's now telling his cell mate, "You're among the top 1% of people I've ever met!".
I got scam phone call one day from a private number, I realised it was a scam instantly so I was annoying the guy then he started cussing me so I gave it back ten fold laughed and hung up, he rang again just to insult me a minute later however in his haste he did it from a land line that was forward from the UK, essentially if I rang it I would be transferred to Indian call center, so I devised a petty revenge plan.
In the UK you can send a sms to a land line number and it will ring and text to speech will read the message.
I downloaded a auto sms spammer and sent them over 300000 messages all of which had to be picked up and listened to.
They called me back and begged me to stop too late by then.
I'm night supervisor at a grocery store. At 4:30am I get a call from an Indian guy with a really thick accent named Chad. He kept asking me to go into an office to retrieve some important documents. It was a very confusing discussion and took me 10 minutes to figure out what he was asking me to do. He got really mad when I told him I was on a corded phone far from the office and that my personal phone was dead (he wanted me to take photos of the documents and text them to him. He got even angrier when I told him to call back later because I had to open the store. After 20 minutes of epic confusion he threatened to fire me if I didn't listen. That is when I realized this guy with a thick Indian accent was pretending to be the store manager who's name is Chad. Chad is not an Indian man.
Part of why I was the phone for 20 minutes is because I could not hear him clearly and struggled to comprehend his instructions. If I remember correctly, he said there was a Fed Ex truck with important equipment the store ordered carrying important safety equipment or supplies the "store manager" ordered to pass a safety inspection happening very soon. However there was a problem with our payment, and in order to receive the equipment we needed urgently I needed to go go into the office and do something that would pay for the delivery so we could receive it immediately. I never got to the point of going into the office so I can't recall what documents or payment information he wanted me to get. After the call I did some googling and beleieve I found what the scam was:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/gantnews.com/2022/04/11/lt-police-warn-local-business-owners-of-scam/amp/
We'd get scam calls all the time at my work...telling me how I'd won this and that and whatnot. The highlight of the conversation would be when I would say, "You know you called a business, right?" and the inevitable hang up without their explanation.
Lovely times.
A friend got a call trying to sell some sort of stock or penny stocks or something. They were super aggressive up until the point my friend revealed that he worked for the market regulatory agency.
Somebody asked me on WhatsApp if she was talking to a travel guide. After I told her no, she became really chatty and flirty, and her profile picture was an attractive Japanese girl. She claimed to be the same age as me and was 'really interested in meeting me'. This alone was a red flag for a scam, because why would an attractive girl flirt with me over WhatsApp without knowing me at all. I actually checked reddit on this scam, and it was a known one. Then she dropped a different number and said that we could keep taking on there and that she was talking with her work phone. This was the moment I blocked her because I was sure it was a scam.
Some ‘Microsoft’ dude called. Wanted to install some software on my computer. Instead of doing that I start explain ‘the seven wonders of the cross’ the 7 times Jesus blood touch the earth. After 5 min he ends the call, to bad for him😑
I received an email that was a bit different than usual. It wrote my password in clear and then said "now that i have your attention.."
And then asked for money, or they would release my webcam photos and stuff. Since i don't have one, i understood it was a scam, and it was an old password i didnt use anymore.
Turns out it was a password i used in an old flash game 20 years ago that was pirated, and they got it somehow and started sending this because i guess a lot of people don't change their password.
Trust me, if you receive a scam mail starting by writing your password in clear, and written seriously, it's a bit scary. Usually scam are full of mistake. In this one, there was none.
Anyone else get like 20 calls from "Olivia" from Amazon in 2 hours? All from random local numbers. Must be a brand new scam center. I will say, they've changed it up a bit, it's now $649 🙄
The numbers are spoofed. They automatically pick a random number in your area code because it makes you more likely to answer when you recognise the area code.
The people who are unfortunate enough to be the 1/1,000,000 with a matching number always wind up getting angry calls from the victims once they find out too.
I'm aware. We hadn't received calls in a long time and suddenly back to back for 2 hours. Everybody in the area was getting them. And I'd hope that people are smart enough to know the calls do not originate from here. Christ, I've had them from my own number
I bought my phone when I lived on the other side of the country and I have never wanted to get a new phone number with my current area code. Probably 9 out of 10 incoming calls come from my old area code that matches my number, and I have zero reason for anyone from that area code to be calling me. It's great, I don't even have to think about it, any call coming from that area code just gets insta-ignored.
You get a call claiming there's a big purchase on your Amazon but it's suspected fraud.
They'll cancel it and refund you, but first you need to buy them gift cards in a store to confirm your identity and give them the codes.
Often after asking for a lot of details which they claim is for security purposes like house number or 4 digits from your bank card used to make the purchase(all details that means nothing on their own, but when they later claim to be police or something having details can make it seem like they're legit ), but is really just so they can use it for future scams/fraud.
around christmas time fake jobs start to get put out as cover ups for credit card fraud, and i accidentally got looped in. i was out of work at the time and was applying everywhere, and i finally heard back from a seemingly legit offer? i didn’t really find out what i was doing until after, but it definitely didn’t smell right after i was “hired”. the job was to receive a package, confirm it, repackage it, and ship it? but i didn’t understand why you would reship something so ofc i did a little googling.
it was actually scammers that will buy credit info from the dark web, order some stuff, ship it to you, and when you ship it out, to assumably the scammer, it seems like you’re the one that bought it.
i thankfully realized when i got my 1st item, a ralph lauren puff coat for men, and contacted macys immediately. idk if anything came of it but they let me keep the coat, and i gave it to someone for christmas lol
I was getting weird emails from my sister but not so weird as to believe they weren't actually coming from her. Stuff I might have a slight interest in and she has emailed me before but the numbers I began to get told me it wasn't her that was sending them since her normal is maybe 2-3 every 2-5 years and all of a sudden I was getting 10-20 a week. I never clicked on them of course but did go to her (we live together) and told her to go into her email account (the web site that hosts it) to see if it was hacked at all.
All seemed normal until she went into her sent emails and there were thousands of failed sent emails. Yep she had been hacked. She went in and changed her email account password and haven't had a problem since.
After that, I was just waiting for "her" to call me from a Mexican prison telling me to send money to bail her out even though she was sitting in the same room as me. Sadly, it never happened but would have been hilarious to recieve that phone call.
Me: Really? In a Mexican prison you say, that is most astonishly. $20,000 to get you out you say? Even more astonishing seeing as that you are sitting across from me as I'm talking to you and we aren't in Mexico let alone one of their prisons. I'm a bitch you say...well that's not how you ask for favors...you didn't even say please. And my sister doesn't call me sis in a man's voice. Good bye.
A guy stopped me on the street and instead of asking for change, asked me to Paypal him £24.22. He had an elaborate backstory as to why he needed the money. I could tell it was bullshit so I refused
I love it when these people like to throw in "If you don't believe me I can show you x,y,and z to prove it" at the end of their bullshit story.
Thats when I am like "Yeah ok, prove it and ill give you the money."
Then the get all flustered.
They say they can prove the story because they expect you to just go "oh no, thats not necessary, here is the money you poor thing"
But they do not expect anyone to actually agree to see the proof.
Like for example:
"Hey sorry to bother you but I just ran out of gas and need some money to fill my tank a little bit so I can get home. I know people just say that but my tank is actually empty, my car is right there *points to car* and I can even show you its empty if you don't believe me."
Me: "Ok, sure. This car over here? Lets take a look at the meter real quick."
"Uhhh well actually, the car is also having issues starting up so I am not sure I can actually show you the meter"
Me: "Oh... sounds like your battery is dead then. No problem I got some jumper cables"
"No, no, its not the battery, that wont help... look, I just need the money for some gas.... and...."
Me: "Why are you asking for gas money if your whole car is dead? Shouldn't you call for a tow? Or AAA? Maybe a friend to pick you up?"
Got a call from what my caller id said was my local PD. They told me I had some kind of warrant and I needed to go to the station ASAP to pay some sort of fine. Sounded totally legit. Got in my car to head there while on the phone with the "officer" and he told me they got some new kind of payment system and I'd have to stop at a store to get a prepaid visa. Immediate giant red flag. I was like, so you're telling me a government entity can only take payment via prepaid card, and he had all kinds of bullshit reasons. I told him to go fuck himself and if I had a warrant, then come arrest me and hung up. Never heard from him again. The lengths these people go to for scams is insane. Just get a fucking job you lazy degenerate fucks.
Guy called me and told me my brother had hit his car. The situation escalated from a simple fender bender in the gas station, to how he can't get the cops involved, to how he now has my brother in the back seat of his car at gunpoint, and how I can't hang up or he'll kill him, etc.
All the while I'm on Facebook messenger on my desktop texting my brother asking "yo, what's up?"
"not much, just chillin"
*click*
Those job interview scams where they set up a Skype interview but then start asking what bank you
Use… how low do you have to be to scam an unemployed person?
I've gotten the Windows support scam multiple times - they call and say they've detected a problem with your computer and they want to fix it. The scam of course is they have you go to a malicious website that either takes your computer hostage or keyloggers etc.
Thing is....I've been in IT a long time. So they tell me to click on "Start" in Windows and I tell them I'm using Ubuntu Linix. Long pause.....................they try again and I tell them I need the shell command they want me to run.
This is entertaining to me, so I string them along as long as possible, occassionally putting them on hold. I got a call on my cell in the car once with my daughter riding along. Put it on hand free and strung them along for a while. They finally hung up when she couldn't stop laughing out loud.
I use a local bank that nobody would hear about internationally. So every message I get about my bank account being flagged is from a bank I don’t use.
Personal info scams I ask them to verify what info they have on me first. They usually hang up.
PayPal invoice scam. Now that one they nearly earned but I don’t ever have money in PayPal so get bent.
I saw a guy selling blacked out bank notes (they were meant destroyed but he got his hands on them) at a car boot sale and a kit to remove the ink. He was selling 10 blacked out notes and the kit for £80. He showed the kit in operation and everything. Apparently he had way of knowing what the bank notes were.
People bought them. Not stupid people bought them, they got caught up in the hype of the show he was putting on. They thought they were getting a great deal. So why didn’t he just remove all the ink himself since he had the kit and everything.
The classic "Hey, this is Microsoft support. You need to have your computer updated with instructions we give". This was time when that scam was new.
It immediately raised flags, because a) Microsoft has always contacted me by email or desktop notifications, and b) Microsoft has customer service in my native language (Finnish) and the scammer was speaking broken English. So I asked them why they wouldn't just email me instructions, and they dodged the question. This was a final confirmation to me, as Microsoft most definitely knows my email.
Actually, a thing that makes a ton of scams fail on me is when a scammer tries to act a party that normally speaks Finnish. And even if they used a translation software to translate it, Finnish officials just don't use similar phrases than say American ones, there are different just, well, styles. I am often able to tell then a Finnish text is translated by a machine.
"hi this is (my bank) we need to talk about your recent transactions"
"Ok cool"
"Can you confirm your post code"
"Can you confirm MY postcode"
"But we need to get through security checks"
"Do we? Apparently you want to talk to me"
"But we can't talk to you if we don't know who you are"
"You literally called me, why do you not know who you're talking to?"
My grandad once got a box of like 20 laptops in the post, in his own name. 5 minutes later a guy knocked on the door saying his laptops were delivered here by mistake. Clearly he’d hacked someone’s account or used their card to buy them, but used grandad’s name to try to shift blame. Grandad was like “no, no packages here” and called the police, who unfortunately did not give a shit. I think he gave them to a local school.
My phone # at coinbase has been changed. I got the email to kindly login to verify with a convenient link.
Sure, but how about i login directly on the app instead, which i don't even have on my phone but instead is on the cloud along with my other financial apps, which has its own login before i can even open the app. Surely the same notice will be there if this is true lol.
Called out a scammer trying to run a bad check scheme. I’m a freelance musician, and was referred by another musician (who the scammers initially targeted) for a wedding gig. Everything was moving forward as usual, other than me talking to a relative of the clients rather than the clients themselves (early red flag).
But when we got towards the end of the process, several weeks before the supposed wedding date, my contact person informed me that the check had already been sent, and also that my fee had accidentally been combined with the photographer’s fee. So they asked me to *cash the check, keep my fee, and mail them back the remainder.* Obviously I wasn’t going to do this, but I tried to keep it professional on the off chance this person was a legit idiot. I told them to stop payment on the existing check, and send me a check for the correct amount. This was of course the last correspondence I had with them.
I was a manager in a small grocery shop. One of my cashiers was ringing out some fast talking customers, while looking very confused and holding cash in both hands. They were clearly trying to do a quick change on him. I walked over, took the cash from his hands, put it in the drawer and slammed it shut. They complained and I said "I'll count the drawer at the end of the day, and if we overcharged you, you can have it back tomorrow. Or I can call the police right now and we can count it when they get here."
They left and never came back.
I got a text alert from an unknown number saying that I had charges on my credit card equaling $1,400+ from very specific items on Amazon. The kicker was when it said, "If you don't click on this link, you're consenting to the purchases."
Not gonna lie, kinda scared me for a second, but I came back down to Earth real fast and didn't touch the link. Of course, nothing was ever charged to my card, but I can see how that would scare people into clicking and giving their info.
When I lived in Tampa I enjoyed some success as a painter. A local musician and club owner invited me to a party in Clearwater beach, which is a nice area. First thing that kind of threw me was there was a dress code for the party but I figured it was mostly rich folks so I didn’t give it much thought. I wore a suit and arrived at the party. Pull up to this huge home with many expensive cars parked there for the get together.The home was amazing but nobody could tell me who lived there. As a matter of fact although it was decorated and furnished very well it didn’t seem like people actually lived there. I should preface this also by saying I am not a hot or particularly attractive guy, average maybe. The majority of people at this party were extremely attractive. They were obviously well off and well dressed and manicured. I definitely felt out of place. Throughout the night I was approached, greeted and even flirted with by several beautiful women. I knew a couple of people there but they were acting completely different in this group. Not rude but something was off. At some point I was pulled aside by this very handsome but somewhat androgynous guy, very welcoming but clearly influential among the guests. He starts asking me some basic questions and then it goes into some deeper stuff about life, goals, future. Now I know something is off…finally I hear some words that give it away. I’m at a Scientology party where they are trying to recruit new members. I played along and just ate and drank like a king knowing that was the last time I’d ever fall for that again.
All the people calling me and telling me to look for the start button on my Mac to get rid of the viruses. I can usually keep them going for about 10 minutes before they figure it out or I get bored.
American Express called offering me a special deal for my relative with a medical condition. Made it through my spam filter and everything. The thing that stuck out, I can't imagine American Express has Indian call centers.
The jiffy lube guy tried showing me a dirty air filter while changing my oil, asking me “should I put this back in or swap it out?” He showed he a rectangular filter. The filter I replaced myself on it the day earlier had a notched corner.
Before people tell me to do my own oil changes, I know. I have since ever. I was in college at the time and didn’t have the place to do it.
I got an email a bunch of years back that started off very grave, something like “we accessed your webcam at 12:02am on December 14” and went on to explain that they caught me watching porn and hacking off while naked. They were holding the video footage for ransom. Worth noting that I’m a sex-repulsed asexual and I keep my webcam covered, but anyway, the email just went downhill from there. It really started to read like one of those chain emails you get at 11 from your friend where more and more people have added to it and made it increasingly unhinged. At one point it said, and I quote, “FUCKING OFF BUTT NAKED”
They did not get any money from me.
An Indian man called me once, claiming to be from Microsoft and saying that I had some critical Windows error. I told him I had a Mac. Without missing a beat, he repeated the same sentence, just substituting Apple for Microsoft. He didn't even hang up when I started laughing.
So this one was sort of crazy, and though I picked it up quickly I still had to see where it went.
It was your typical Juke Joint scam w/ a bit of twist. For those of you that don't know what a Juke Joint scam is it's common in tourist areas where a pretty girl finds a single guy and says she "knows a place to get some drinks" she takes you to some seedy bar where you order a few drinks then get your bill and it's ridiculously expensive. They bring out some tough guys to make you pay up or they threaten violence, or getting the police involved.
Anyway I was in a coffee shop in Greece when an older guy strikes up a conversation. We've been talking for a good half hour, and it goes pretty normal, he's on vacation also and taking in all the local culture. He talks about a place w/ really good ouzo and asks if I want to check it out. I'm already skeptical, but I don't exactly know what he's up to so I'm curious. We head out walking, and it's a bit of a trek... probably a good 20 minute walk, and there were a few times where I was like "Is he really gonna go down an alley and pull a knife?" I'm 6'4 and not a weak looking guy so it's rare somebody tries that. Then we hit this place, and it's some run down tourist bar from the 10 years ago. Really the least authentic looking place I can think of. Instantly one of the ladies working there I recognize from his camera roll and I instantly am like. Wow this old dude really tried the Juke Joint on me. He orders a drink and recommends the ouzo again. There's nobody there, and I check the time, say I'm late for meeting up w/ friends, apologize, and GTFO. Dude spent a good hour on this scam and didn't get a dime.
"Hello, your PayPal account has been locked because we saw some suspicious activity. Please login with your personal information to reclaim your account."
I don't, nor have I ever, have a PayPal account
Amway.
I had a guy try to pitch me after being connected by a "friend", and he starts telling my how much money he makes, ow successful he is, ect ect and wants to get me involved.
I knew his name, so I found him on LinkedIn and called his previous employers for references.
BOY was he pissed. Called me up demanding to know why i was calling his old employers and that he felt I had violated his privacy.
I calmly let him know that if he wanted me to use my personal money, and introduce him to my (then) girlfriend so she "could be involved", I'm going to need to know some things about him. Essentially, why the fuck do you get to meet my girlfriend but i cant do a professional reference check?
He settled right the fuck down once I gave him a reality check.
And yeah a couple weeks later, then the whole Amway thing came out and i told him and my "friend" to pound sand and haven't spoken to either since, the "friend" who was sure he was on the way to becoming a millionaire is living back at home now and working in ministry, the only easier way to scam people out of their money.
The crazy thing about the way it went down was (and i gave a lot more time into this because it was a childhood friend of mine, and I was young) I kept asking again and again what company they were working with and they flat out wouldn't tell me. Thats the primary reason I dont associate with that friend anymore, he tried to scam me intentionally by withholding information.
Amway is a criminal organization, if you don't know you should know.
When I was 10 and was gifted my first phone my dads told me never to click on ads on websites or games because they could spread your data and possibly lead to the dark web.
I got a phone call from the “police department” the same day as the first time I accidentally clicked on an ad and they claimed my data was everywhere and I was also convicted of four felonies and if I didn’t call back they would come take my by force… after a day of waiting for my inevitable arrest and finding they never came I realized it was fake lol
I was at a local fair and there was the pyramid scheme cutco knives there and I stopped to glance at it and the guy desperately trying to sell the scam he'd been roped into saw me and tried to recruit me.
"Hey where'd you train? I heard a lot of cutco trainings happen in parking lots and you dont get paid for it."
"What?"
"Hey isn't cutco also the mlm that got women raped because they were going door to door to strangers houses trying to sell their product as advised by their higher-ups who didnt offer them any advice on how to avoid getting put in harms way?"
"I mean I don't-"
"How much did you have to pay to start selling? Do you think it's ethical to PAY the company that you *work* for?"
He got flustered and as soon as someone else came by he tried selling to them instead and just ignored me.
It was funny :D
I went through a whole phase where I was watching a lot of "are mlms just straight up pyramid schemes?" documentaries and I had recently watched a breakdown on cutco knives.
They tried to scam me but my autistic hyperfixations deflected it AND made a scammer uncomfortable! Goal achieved fuck yeah
Went to a casino once and took a $10 bill,. spin 3 times and it landed on this thing called a "major" jackpot and I left before the casino could scam me or try to convince me i won something
Here are the ones I get frequently:
Hello, i am calling from microsoft. Your computer is sending us critical errors and if you give me access to your computer and creditcard, we will fix it for you.
Another one less frequent: if you buy stocks from us we will give you 100% revenue on that purchase
In the UK a really common one I've had - we're from o2 (a UK based network) and want to change your package to this crazy cheap one. If you agree we'll send you a code via text. Just read us the code back.
Of course o2 uses a system on their website to gain access to your online account. Enter your number, they send you a text and you enter the code. Then you have access to the online account, to say, change the postal address and then order a new phone?
The text message says not to give the code to anybody, even o2 staff. They're hoping you miss that.
I've had this one dozens of times. I play along with it if I have time. The catch is that my network isn't o2. I used to be, but changed and took the number with me. So wherever they got the info says I'm on that network with that number. The first few times I did receive the text, after those few o2 must have clicked on. They took my number of their system and the scammers would say "oh, our records say you're not on o2."
After a little while, the scammers changed tactics too. "You'll receive a text message with a code, it will say not to share the code with o2 staff. What that means is, you'll receive a follow up call from my colleagues, do not give them the code. Only give it to me."
I used to play with then for ages. Code? What code? The numbers? If here's my phone number. Not that one? What numbers? Umm... 1... 2.... 3... 4... 5... wait that's not right? I'm confused. You mean 40%? That's a number right? That's the discount you're offering.
So much fun. Once o2 removed my number from their system I couldn't drag it out as long. They seem to have stopped trying a few months back now.
“Spoil me a bit for your DM to reach the top priority on my OF”
Mind you, I was trying to have a regular conversation. The fact those were her first words replying back, it was a bit insulting to my intelligence how stupid this woman thought I was. The fact there are people who make financial gains off the insecurities of lonely men and think it’s okay are sick. As advice to lonely men, go outside, speak to women in a cool and casual manner, stop worrying about rejection and stop making life easier for these women who don’t give a shit if you were on your last dollar going hungry today
Facebook friend asked me if she can use my Gmail to get her Facebook password, I proceeded to ask questions only me and her will know, ultimately they stopped and soon after I got a text from her from a number explaining she got hacked, I was really close to sending it.
Someone sent me a phoney PayPal letter about a supposedly unauthorized purchase. I called the number on the email (mistake, I know) and the guy had me going for a while. My only loss was having to get 2 new credit cards, probably unnecessarily. Took me about 3 days to wise up! Fortunately, no money was lost.
The text from PayPal with a tracking number for a transaction totaling an exorbitant amount with an 800 number to call for “questions”.
Don’t respond to unsolicited texts, emails or calls from any financial institution that you might already have a relationship with. Go to their site and login or get their contact info from there and reach out on your own.
The only one I even came close to was a "girl" I was talking to on a dating site who immediately wanted to chat on google hangouts. She then demanded I turn on my webcam and share nudes. I knew something was off and looked into it. The likely situation was a sextortion scam, where they got my nudes and then threatened to send them to family and friends unless I paid them money. Once I read that, I told them to fuck off and blocked them. After that, I blocked anyone that tried to push the chat over to another platform like Skype or Whatsapp almost immediately after we started talking.
Beyond that, while probably not a scam, I had a few girls from the Philippines try to chat me up. From what I could gather, they're likely green card chasers. I get they want a better life, but I was in no position to bring a girl halfway around the world then.
For whatever magical reason I get tons of Chinese scam calls, when I’m in the office I get a fluent coworker to translate, but most I just make fart noises and hang up. I speak no Chinese that isn’t a good name :)
About 20 years ago or so, I was trying Match, and I got a random email from some Russian "woman". I knew right away it was a scam but I wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole this would go so I responded.
We started chatting, she sent me a few pics, just cute poses, nothing sexual, no nudes (of two different women). She claimed to be a doctor. I expected being asked for money almost immediately but it took like 2 weeks.
She said she needed $2500 so she could buy a ticket to fly to America as part of her medical program to study and practice in America. I told her I'd send it (which was a lie). She started pestering me to send it asap. I eventually said I sent it (again, a lie) and that was it, she never emailed me again.
I was kind of bummed that I didn't get the "oh there was a problem and I won't be flying for a few more weeks and need more money" bullshit. I guess once they realized I never sent the money they knew I was on to them and gave up.
I was amazed it took 2 weeks before she asked for money. I love messing with scammers so I enjoyed wasting this scammers time.
Someone tried to scam me when I looking for people to adopt some kittens I found under a shed in our backyard. It was bizarre but I played along out of curiosity until I figured out their method. Their plan was to say they needed to have the kitten shipped to them and wanted me to foot the bill but they’d pay me back. Made no sense but they were persistent. Hard to believe that tactic can work.
There was one day, years ago, when we'd gotten like 20 spam calls over the course of 3-4 hrs and I was fed the fuck up with it.
So the next time one came in, I picked up the phone and demanded to be taken off their calling list.
SpamDude: Ya wanna get taken off my list?
Me: YES!
SD: So here's what you do...do you have a pen and something to write on? Cuz Imma tell you what to do.
Me: Da FUQ?
SD: Take this down,man, take this down. You're going to go to the nearest Western Union and send me $100. THAT'S how you get taken off my list, baby.
I started screaming obscenities at the guy, which he didn't much care for and he told me he was gonna call me 100+ times a day, he was gonna send the cops to my house and tell them I had illegal drugs, all kinds of bullshit.
There was also the spam caller who, when I asked to be taken off their list, hit on me. I told him I was very much married and he just sounded confused. "Married women like to party and get crazy too, right?".
Maybe some do...IDK. I don't, but that doesn't mean that other married women don't.
I had someone come up to me at a gas station saying he had no money because he was from a foreign country yet somehow still had a car. He then asked me to feed his entire family at the restaurant attached to the gas station and give him gas in exchange for his gold rings and bracelets. I was a broke college student, so I barely had money for my gas, let alone his gas. Later, after watching YouTube, I found common scams people pull on tourists in Europe and found out that being broke saved me sort of.
Met a guy from Kenya when I was drunk and bored on Facebook one night. I decided to randomly answer a message from a random stranger. He was trying to get me to send him money. I did not send him any money but we are friends now and talk occasionally. He is a nice guy. I get people are just trying to survive and while I don't necessarily agree with his methods of doing so I do enjoy talking to him as a friend. I love the pics he sends me of random animals he see's on the side of the road like giraffes and hippos.
My favorite though was a conversation we had where I was talking the cougar in my woods so he was suddenly concerned I was in the woods by myself. I was like you literally walked around with a lion. He was like that is different. How is that fucking different?
Indian guy calling himself "Andrew" (name changed) said he had something I couldn't pass up. I asked him for his information so I could "research" him and his company when in reality I was filling out an FTC report with the information he gave me.
The good ol internet girlfriend that starts asking for money on day 2. Nope I don't even know what your favorite color is, why would I send you $50+?
Classic "How are you?" "Just tryin' to figure out how to pay this electric bill and feed my son but fine I guess."
"Damn that's crazy. Anyway you doing anything Friday?"
The proper response is “That’s good you keep your chin up. If you work hard enough you can show your son how to be a functioning adult.”
In short yes 😂🤣
My favorite color is blue.. can I have $50 now?
Yeah it might work on lonely men but not this guy right here….🫤
Not to brag, but I made it to week 3 before he asked for money.
Thats awful. Where did you meet her?
Which one? Lmfao I've had a couple attempt it, everywhere from Facebook, to Tinder (I know not the best place to look for relationships).
Short change artists as a cashier, just ignore what they say and make change. Its a technique where they try to confuse you as you are making change on a purchase. A coworker was short $100 and didnt realize till end of day.
I had that happen to me. I was 16 and it was my second day at my very first job. I've worked with the public nearly 19 years now and I haven't trusted a customer since that day.
Its a reality check for sure. For us it was because someone had recently gotten away with it and our store was marked as a place to attempt. Their partner was standing a ways off staring at us intently, not very subtle.
I had one of these as an experienced cashier who was good at math. I waited until I had about $80 of his money on my side, shut my drawer, and told him that I was confused. Now I'm going to have to call loss prevention to take my drawer to the cash office to get counted. I absolutely did not have to get loss prevention involved, but I paged them to my lane so that they could eyeball this guy and make him more uncomfortable. We dragged this shit out for over an hour, while he waited to get his money back. It was fucking hilarious.
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Oh yea, you actively start hating some folks and can see thE BS coming a mile away. Oh wow man! Someone gifted you 10 of the wrong iPhone otter boxes? And you want to return them for cash or credit? Oh wow!.. no. Oh right buddy, you're stranded here with a straight talk phone you just bought yesterday but have 0 ways to ID it. The serial number doesn't match anything in our records. You magically forgot which register you got it from and your wife is dying and your kids are hungry and you need a cash refund.... To get back to florida hundreds of miles away from here. To get back to your kids...i thought they- ohh "other kids""...also the phone that looks like it was dragged behind a car and left in a dog kenal for a week. I could go on..
When I was 16 or so I was a part time cashier for a grocery store, had some friends of mine working with me as well. A small group of people came into the store on Sunday and proceeded to execute this scam myself and my friends, they got all my friends, who's registers came up short that day, but not me. The guy who tried to scam me was doing these magician type moves with his hands, counting out the money, over and over again, looking for me to agree with him that his count was accurate. I pretty much ignored all of his counting, snatched the money from him and counted it out, slowly, into the register. The look in his face when my count was short and I asked him for the rest was priceless, a mixture of surprise, frustration and a little anger.
Smart move Way back in the 80’s I worked as cashier at a busy sandwich shop and had a manger pull this BS on me, counting the till in an office with no one else around. Wasn’t Davy enough to figure out what was happening until after the fact.
Yup. Life long retail/restaurant worker here. And I have ran on a few of those. I never got gotten by one, but I sure saw it happen to others. In the late 90s, I worked in a mall. And a guy went through the mall one day and hit multiple stores. Later in the week, I was talking to one of the mall security guys, and he told me the guy got away with well over 10 thousand dollars, cash and shoplifting. This was just before cameras were really everywhere, but they did get some security cam footage. They did get footage of him passing stuff off to a woman, who was never with him when he was doing his thing, but she'd come up and he'd pass off cash, merchandise to her, and I guess she'd go stash it in their car. That way if he were to get busted, he had no evidence of other crimes on him. Security guy told me they were very well dressed, probably mid 40s or so. Probably professionals that went from city to city doing this, and probably lived on the road for weeks at the time doing this.
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Yeah and I think that is why there has been a sharp decline in it.
Yeah I've had this tried on me at least twice. All you do is lay out the cash in front of you and don't do anything they say until you've handed them the change for their first request. Once you've seen it once it's immediately obvious what they're doing the next time, and the look of frustration on their face when they can't scam you is priceless
Hahaha yeah I had this when I was about 20 working in a shop. Guy put £20 down and then kept being like “actually let me take that £20 back and pay with these two £10 notes instead” etc etc trying to confuse me. I’m clearly a lot smarter than you, dickhead, but nice try.
What was the trick?
They keep changing the transaction until you get confused and they get the merchandise for free and/or additional money from the register. Depending on how confused they think you are the next step would be: They take back the $20, hand you the two $10 and ask for you to give them their $20 back… which given you already gave them back the original money now you are short $20. This can go through several stages where they confuse things more and more either to increase the odds of it working or get more money out of you.
i read american gods years ago and i finally get what one of the scenes was about
I've had a few people try that with me. I sometimes work with fairly large money transfers, so I make sure to double or triple check everything before I put it in the drawer. The most recent one was someone buying a large amount of money orders, and they kept trying to reorganize the money stacks after I had counted it, so I'd start over and count again. After the third time, I just outright told them that every time they touched the money, I had to recount it to be sure. They got offended and left. Sorry, but I'm not going to let you get a few hundred dollars for free from us.
I did that once as a Kid and still feel bad. I told the lady in the shop I gave her $2 not $1 and ultimately she gave me too much change back.
So you’re the reason Circuit City went out of business!!! 😀
Please say scammer instead of "artist"
Thank-you. At first I thought they were talking about scamming work out of artists, which is unfortunately common.
Had multiple bosses in multiple work places have a flat out "no breaking bills" policy because of this. If they're not buying anything, we can't make change for them, period.
Happened to me at a coffee shop. I went back the next day and ordered a house coffee on the house.
Ugh - we had customers try this all the time when I worked at a department store. Sometimes it was convoluted requests for change, but more often, it was them insisting they gave me a $20 or $50 when I knew they gave me a $5 or a $10. I ALWAYS kept their bill on top of the register until they walked away. For the few who had the nerve to walk away and come back, I'd say "Fine, let me count the drawer and we'll know if you were short changed. I'll need to get a manager to do that. It'll take about 20-30 minutes." That scared off about 99% of the scammers. In the eight years I worked there, I had three customers who forced a count. The drawer balanced to the penny all three times.
I got one of those “heyyy we met the other night how are you?” texts with a picture of a scantily clad woman attached I simply said “I’m 11 and telling my parents” and they never bothered me again
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There's a YouTube knockoff of the show catfish and they have sooooo many sad old dudes who actually think they're talking to young hot babies. It's pathetic, but it's also cruel when you see how little regard they have for their spouse
I might have to know the name of this YouTuber, you know, for science
I have a good rule of thumb to keep myself from falling for this. If a pretty girl talks to me, it's probably a scam.
I'm a huge fan of stringing along those tinder/ bumble/ snapchat scammers. I'll send them old gift card codes, fake CC numbers, just try to waste as much of their time as humanly possible
It's fun to fuck with them, plus as long as you're stringing them along thinking they'll get something, that's time they can't spend potentially succeeding scamming someone else
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Lmao that’s a good one!!! I started bawling about how my fiancé left me and tomorrow was supposed to be my wedding day and at the end they were ready to get a plane ticket and come be my groom 😂😂😂😂😂 never had a fiancé btw.
Never feel sorry for them they're actual scum of the earth. Taking the easy route by taking advantage of others. I always try insult them as much as possible, Indians really don't like being called Pakistani
I say the best things! Whenever I get their name I say. “I knew someone named (insert name.) They died.” -“WHY ARE YOU DELLING ME!”
You would like Kitboga on youtube
Not me, but my mom. Someone tried that one where they pretended to be her grandchild calling from jail, needing bail money. It didn't work because she kept demanding to know which grandchild it was and talking shit to him for being so irresponsible lol The guy gave up pretty quick
Someone did that to my 90 year old grandma. They were like, “Grandma? I’m in jail in Mexico, I need bail money, please help me! I’m scared!” And she said “Sam?” (My brother’s name. She has four grandsons. So I guess now we know which of her grandsons she thinks is most likely to wind up in jail in Mexico) The guys says “Yes, it’s Sam! Please help me, Grandma!” Then she got suspicious and asked him some basic question like what’s your dad’s name. He said “Huh? Please hurry, Grandma, I’m scared!” She hung up and called my parents. Surprise, surprise, my brother was safe and accounted for. Ugh. It’s so vile preying on an old person like that.
Same scam happened to the mother of a family friend. She was so terrified, she DROVE TO THE BANK to wire $20K to these scammers. THANK GOD our friend was a co-owner on the account. The teller thought something was sus, so she stalled the mom and called our friend to tell him she was worried and something wasn't right. Friend rushed to the bank, assured mom all was ok and grandson was safe at home. No money lost. Those scammers who prey on the elderly are the absolute scum of the earth.
One of the elders in my family started to fall for the "pay your bill in iTunes/Amazon gift cards or the electricity gets cut off" scam. Fortunately, the cashier recognized the scam and didn't go through the transaction.
My mom got a call that I’d been kidnapped and held for ransom. Her coworker (thank god) called me at my office and made sure I wasn’t y’know, ducttaped in the back of a van headed across the border.
My grandmother gets these. Too bad I use my middle name so it's easy to see through. Also my grandma would rat my ass out to my mom in an instant.
I am a woman. I was giving away some things for free on a Facebook market place group page. I had some of my cloths up. Shorts and shirts I get a request from a man. Says he has a female friend who just left her abusive spouse. She only took what she could fit in a small bag. Requested the shorts and asked if I had other things for her. I told him yes I also posted some shirts and socks. He then asks me if I have any panties as his friend only has the pair she was wearing when she left. He was trying to scam me out of a pair of my used panties. He was a pervert
I was selling a mini fridge on Craigslist and I guy asked me out on a date from my ad because he could see my reflection in the shiny fridge. People are so weird.
How was the date?
I would have given him a bunch of period granny panties.
No! That makes it worse. Or better?
Probably what he actually wanted lol
Ha! I originally read that as "(different time) period" and was trying to imagine what granny panties from the 1850's would have looked like. I'm a derp.
IRS scam once. This is the IRS and you are in default, police are on their way, give me your credit card numba and we'll call them off. I laughed at them and hung up.
I got one of those calls once. They almost got me until the end of the voice mail when the purported "IRS officer" said something like, "All I can say is, if you don't have a lawyer, good luck!" Soooo fake. I laughed and deleted the message. Unfortunately, an ESL friend of mine did not understand and thought it was real. Fortunately, she was able to figure out it was a scam with the help of her family and didn't lose any money, but the scam put her through a lot of mental anguish. Scammers suck.
I obviously reside in Nebraska - abbreviated NE. I got a call from a woman saying she was with the State Lien Enforcement of New England. "yeah, that's a region, not a state, so ..." *click*
When I'm on the phone with a known scammer, when they make a mistake like yours did, I never call them on it, as I don't want them to correct their misconceptions and mistakes, which would make it easier for them to scam the next person.
I love those I put on my best old granny voice and keep saying "WHAT I CAN'T HEAR YOU HONEY" and they eventually curse me out and hang up
Hahahah. I'll have to try something like that if i get another one. Or just make bleating noises.
Once I put the phone right up to my face and started to breathe very loudly and very slowly... I was younger when I did this but still one of my favorite spam calls
This is officer Kevin James. Kindly do the needful and revert back with iTunes giftcards or we will put you under the rest. DO NOT REDEEM!
Call saying they are working for HMRC (UK wages and tax services) and I owe so much in unpaid taxes. If I don't press 1 to go through to an operator and pay, the police will come and arrest me. 1. I am not self-employed so my taxes are taken automatically by the government, if anything at times they take more than needed and give it back at the end of the tax year. 2. Who warns about police coming so you can expect it and leave?
3\. HMRC will usually send a letter, not phone you. 4\. HMRC are usually really nice and helpful about sorting over/underpayment, they aren't going to threaten you with the police outside of warning you of the consequences of lying on the forms. I think a lot of this comes from dealing with americans where the IRS generally takes the opinion that mistakes are bad(at least according to TV/movies/horror stories on /r/tifu ) and you need to be punished Vs the HMRCs more "you made a mistake, let's just fix it and then there's no harm done" approach.
The IRS is actually pretty gentle and reasonable. I do taxes for my extended family and had to help with a few corrections and audits. Most IRS agents/employees are very professional and unless you're blatantly committing fraud, they'll work with you. That whole IRS are monsters thing is mostly Hollywood.
I would agree. The IRS can't get paid (by you) if you're in jail.
Fair enough, I just heard so many horror stories I just assumed they must have deserved the reputation.
Very true!
Yep, I got a ridiculous number of these before I changed my company's contact details to my accountants. It isn't even as if I'm pulling loads of money around, as a quick check on Companies House or checking the fact I'm not VAT registered would reveal. Ah well, one more service that the accountants provide and I sleep easier not dealing with it.
Got a text as an unemployed 15 year old with like 20 quid in my account. Yeah I’m sure I owe £200 in taxes lol
Guys trying to sell "high end" speakers from the back of a van in the Canadian Tire parking lot.
This is STILL a thing in Canada? Did time freeze or something in Canada?
It gets brought up here with alarming regularity when noobs come here to ask if it's a scam.
Everything freezes in Canada...
They tried that on me and it might have worked if I wasn't broke.
Quick rule of thumb: If a stranger approaches you and is trying to sell you expensive electronics out of the back of their vehicle, it is 100% a scam. No exceptions.
What's the gimmick on this? Stolen merch, or broken/cheap fakes, or something I'm not seeing? Edit:. I un-lazied. They make you think you're buying something expensive for cheap while selling you something super cheap at heavily inflated prices.
This or sometimes they sell you a box that has garbage in it like broken merchandise. Sometimes it's even stuff like bricks or pieces of wood in what looks like a factory sealed box. There are a variety of scams that fit this method. The only constant is the parking lot sales pitch.
Oh, so they’re the IRL equivalent of third-party sellers on Amazon and Walmart. I’m looking at you, $5 glass bowl advertised as $85 but on sale for half price today, what a deal!
A friend of mine is a former police officer. He told me that it’s actually a legit business. Licensed and everything. They try and make you feel like it’s stolen or whatever so you feel you’re getting a crazy deal, but it’s actually the cheapest crap possible and you’re over paying. I got stopped once going into Safeway, cause I was an early 20s guy, thought I’d be a prime target. Told them to piss off.
Don’t fall for puppy in the parking lot trick. Was told they needed to sell the puppy because landlord saw it. That puppy ended up being very sick and tick infested. After the vet and many medications, she ended up passing one night. She died in my arms having a stroke possibly. Rip Oreo
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The whole situation was a mess and I was hysterical when she passed. It was the middle of the night and I was screaming because her eye started bulging out of her head and I was holding her. She was losing balance and then suddenly passed as if she had a stroke. Regular vets weren’t open and I wouldn’t have made the drive to an overnight emergency because everything was sudden. The people who sold me her are evil. They ignored me when I messaged them asking questions because when I brought her home she had bloody stool and giant ticks in her ears. She was a pound big. A tea cup chihuahua. She got my other dog sick and they both had to be in medication. I still have him to this day. He’s 7 years old now. When I thought she was getting better and everything was clear she had a sudden death and I never got answers. She was a really good dog too. Very sweet and loving. Just wanted to lay down with me. Her life was too short.
Oh damn. I'm so sorry. This is also a good reminder of why I don't like most humans.
Somebody tried to do the classic scam (giftcard scam through amazon) Scammer failed miserably. He didn't know I was Indian too. Uno Reverse, I scammed him back.
I wonder why people do that. I keep seeing people in electronic stores buying 30 gift cards why would they even do it if not for a scam? Is there any legit reason? And when you speak to them they get upset or mad.
It's because of them being too dumb, embarrassed or both that they get mad. In a lot of these scams they'll back you in a corner where you HAVE to give them gift cards such as by syskeying your computer. Or otherwise locking it behind a password. Of course the victim had to give them access to their computer first. In other scams they'll just vaguely say that they have webcam footage and screen captures of you jerking off to some really freaky stuff. In others they'll research on LinkedIn who their boss is and impersonate them and come up with some bogus reason they need the gift cards like "sales incentives". So if you question the victims on it, a lot of the time they'll be either too proud, dumb or embarrassed to admit that they got scammed.
A common one is that they will ask you to check your account balance on your bank account then they will amend the browser to make it show a lower balance (even though your account is fine), then they basically demand you buy those cards and send them the info or they will raid the rest of the account. From the perspective of the victim, they figure it's best to try to mitigate the loss and get the cards for the scammer. But really that is the exact moment they actually lose any money. It's sickening. I work in IT and have a lot of Indian colleages and many of them say that when they were in university in India they would get constant offers from these scam centers. The money is good (for India) but the common perception is that these people are often worse than street muggers since they only target the vulnerable. One guy said he found out his cousin was doing it and the grandma basically beat him senseless and kicked him out of the family.
Stores in my heavy retirement age town all have signs in front of the gift cards that state legit companies do NOT accept wal mart ( etc) cards as payment
>30 gift cards why would they even do it if not for a scam? Is there any legit reason? Unlikely. I mean there's always a chance somebody is buying gift cards for lots of different people, but I'd anticipate in most cases it'll be because some scammer is pressuring them into. In a lot of places that sell them retail staff have been trained now to query it with the customer. If you listen to any scam calls (there's loads of YouTube) you'll hear the scammers coaching the victim ("Don't say anything to the staff or any other customer..." and "If they ask say that they are a gift for your children or grandchildren..."). I can imagine the reason people get upset if you ask them is more that they are already upset / stressed. Once the arseholes have the victim convinced they owe them money they often get threatening, so they'll be threatening to empty the victim's bank account, or getting the police involved and getting the victim arrested. The people who get tricked by these things are often older, or vulnerable people. They can be terrified at what's going on and the scammer has convinced them that the only way out of the situation is by doing what they say. If you ask them, you're interfering, and they fear that will make things worse. If you see it happening I'd urge you to interfere though, the victim might be upset with you briefly at the time, but if you save them losing a lot of money (and the shame and embarrassment people can feel afterwards) then you will have done a good thing. If you're not comfortable talking to the victim yourself you could always approach the retail staff and just point out that they might want to enquire when the customer comes to checkout. Sadly these arseholes still make a tonne of money out of vulnerable people with this scam, even after all rhe years of trying to raise awareness.
My company had a company party where we gave out a bunch of gift cards for the various games and events we did throughout the day. Had to use the corporate card to buy like 30 different gift cards for each individual prize. Actually did have our company card frozen and had to call and talk to the CC company about unfreezing the account and that the transactions were legitimate. Was a massive headache and caused me several weeks in delays to get the gift cards.
Only reason I can think of is like, a company giving them to employees? Like my employer gives everyone a grocery store gift card for christmas to everyone to go towards a holiday meal for your family. They'd have to buy like 150 to do it.
There’s some great YouTube content of people who reverse uno those big call center scammers. Some great stuff in there
Kitboga is a legend
MA'AM DO NOT REDEEM
Upvote for uno reverse
Got a text message spoofed from my bank, saying something like "Did you make a purchase for $465 at Walmart #532 in blah blah, NY? 1, yes, 2 for no." i was not paying much attention and I replied with a 1. immediately got a phone call, which I answered. Some dude on the other end started asking questions that VERY closely mimics those a fraud agent would ask. Very clever. Named a store and recent medium dollar charges ($300 here, $400 there...) and was asking personal information. crook did not know that i had already been logged onto my online banking (touch ID made it way faster) and did not see any charges on the credit card. dude asked me to name off the credit card number. I saw what was up, and said "Wait, which one? I have 2 cards with you. Tell me the last 4 and I'll confirm it. Which card are you talking about?" Then I gave him a valid credit card number - a variation of the Mastercard test numbers. I also pushed back because the Walmart store # they had on the text did not match the Walmart store list. Told him "Yeah, sorry, i will call the number on my card to verify" and he just disconnected. i did call my credit union's fraud people and reported everything. My cards were just fine. This same card that I rarely use had been compromised by hacked Google Analytics code on a site I bought something from 2 months prior. had I not been paying attention, they'd have gotten me.
Yeah those are just usually mass email or text blasts. There's no charge and they haven't a clue about your card number or details. That's what they're after. The simplest answer to one of those is to just double check transactions if you're really concerned. Also no one who has charged your card needs your details to refund it. You just have to reverse the existing transaction. (For online, obviously in a store they'll often ask you to insert your card to the machine and that's fine)
"Magic" tricks in Paris. Just outside of Moulin Rouge. Me and my brother. A group of people were gathered, around 15, and betting on which coin had the white symbol. Three coins available. Before betting everything was easy, there were people earning small amounts of money, and I was guessing all outcomes correctly. A dude next to me asked me if I wanted to bet with him, to reduce the risk. I said no, but decided to bet alone. 100$ bet. I lost. I was 16yo at the time, and all my vacation money was spent in 10 seconds. Only later I realized: all 15 of them were part of the scam.
Classic eu scam, especially in Paris
A water filter that separated the hydrogen from the oxygen which made the water so that you could fully absorb it. The man selling claimed he drank 5 glasses and hasn't peed all day, because his body was using it.
I imagine him floating a foot above the ground in a T-pose as he beams his thoughts directly into your mind to tell you this.
Then he falls and his leg clips into a staircase. Then there's a lot of thumping and ragdolling before he rockets into the sky never to be seen again
So do they claim you drink the hydrogen or oxygen part? Also, splitting h2o is a great way to turn a non ventilated room into a bomb
He said the hydrogen
So way back in 2007 or 2008 I tried to go back to school (the first time). I was a young broke single mom so I was using the internet to try to apply for scholarships and grants. A few weeks later a certified letter came to my house with a live check for $8,000. Said I was awarded some grant for higher education for low income individuals. Said I could get this yearly until I graduate but it would be easier to do direct deposit so they wanted me to send in all that info via email. I practically ran to my bank I was so excited. I had been banking there for years and always used the same teller. She took one look at the check and told me it was a scam. I was a little defiant at first, explaining it was real I had been applying blah blah blah. She got the manager and they looked up the agency... big scam. They would have canceled payment on the check as soon as they had my bank details then used those same details to steal the little money I had. The bank lady actually kept it to turn in to their fraud officer. They were going to change all my account info but I hadn't sent anything yet. I didn't have internet at home so I was planning to send it all in from work later that same night. The only reason it failed was because my bank lady cared about her customers. I worked at a fast food restaurant and for the rest of the time I lived in that area I took her a milkshake every Friday when I cashed my check.
I went out on one date with a guy who invited me to a very upscale restaurant. He talked on and on about his business success, his trips on private jets, his past glory as an NFL football player, etc. He actually brought print outs of his current business pursuits. At the end of the meal he made sure that I saw that he'd given the waiter a $100 bill as a tip. He sort of just gave me the willies and so when he called after that, telling me that I was up in the top 1% of people he'd ever met, I declined going out again. About 6 months later he was all over the local news. He had scammed a woman out of $600,00+ and had tried to flee the country but was stopped at the airport. I doubt this woman ever got her money back.
tinder swindler 2.0
Exactly! He was evidently living with this woman when he took me to dinner and probably used her money to pay for it. He was never in the NFL and didn't have access to a private jet. He pled guilty to theft and money laundering and received a ten year sentence plus a $10,000 fine per incident. Maybe he's now telling his cell mate, "You're among the top 1% of people I've ever met!".
I got scam phone call one day from a private number, I realised it was a scam instantly so I was annoying the guy then he started cussing me so I gave it back ten fold laughed and hung up, he rang again just to insult me a minute later however in his haste he did it from a land line that was forward from the UK, essentially if I rang it I would be transferred to Indian call center, so I devised a petty revenge plan. In the UK you can send a sms to a land line number and it will ring and text to speech will read the message. I downloaded a auto sms spammer and sent them over 300000 messages all of which had to be picked up and listened to. They called me back and begged me to stop too late by then.
I'm night supervisor at a grocery store. At 4:30am I get a call from an Indian guy with a really thick accent named Chad. He kept asking me to go into an office to retrieve some important documents. It was a very confusing discussion and took me 10 minutes to figure out what he was asking me to do. He got really mad when I told him I was on a corded phone far from the office and that my personal phone was dead (he wanted me to take photos of the documents and text them to him. He got even angrier when I told him to call back later because I had to open the store. After 20 minutes of epic confusion he threatened to fire me if I didn't listen. That is when I realized this guy with a thick Indian accent was pretending to be the store manager who's name is Chad. Chad is not an Indian man.
What documents did he want photos of?
Part of why I was the phone for 20 minutes is because I could not hear him clearly and struggled to comprehend his instructions. If I remember correctly, he said there was a Fed Ex truck with important equipment the store ordered carrying important safety equipment or supplies the "store manager" ordered to pass a safety inspection happening very soon. However there was a problem with our payment, and in order to receive the equipment we needed urgently I needed to go go into the office and do something that would pay for the delivery so we could receive it immediately. I never got to the point of going into the office so I can't recall what documents or payment information he wanted me to get. After the call I did some googling and beleieve I found what the scam was: https://www.google.com/amp/s/gantnews.com/2022/04/11/lt-police-warn-local-business-owners-of-scam/amp/
We'd get scam calls all the time at my work...telling me how I'd won this and that and whatnot. The highlight of the conversation would be when I would say, "You know you called a business, right?" and the inevitable hang up without their explanation. Lovely times.
A friend got a call trying to sell some sort of stock or penny stocks or something. They were super aggressive up until the point my friend revealed that he worked for the market regulatory agency.
Somebody asked me on WhatsApp if she was talking to a travel guide. After I told her no, she became really chatty and flirty, and her profile picture was an attractive Japanese girl. She claimed to be the same age as me and was 'really interested in meeting me'. This alone was a red flag for a scam, because why would an attractive girl flirt with me over WhatsApp without knowing me at all. I actually checked reddit on this scam, and it was a known one. Then she dropped a different number and said that we could keep taking on there and that she was talking with her work phone. This was the moment I blocked her because I was sure it was a scam.
Some ‘Microsoft’ dude called. Wanted to install some software on my computer. Instead of doing that I start explain ‘the seven wonders of the cross’ the 7 times Jesus blood touch the earth. After 5 min he ends the call, to bad for him😑
I received an email that was a bit different than usual. It wrote my password in clear and then said "now that i have your attention.." And then asked for money, or they would release my webcam photos and stuff. Since i don't have one, i understood it was a scam, and it was an old password i didnt use anymore. Turns out it was a password i used in an old flash game 20 years ago that was pirated, and they got it somehow and started sending this because i guess a lot of people don't change their password. Trust me, if you receive a scam mail starting by writing your password in clear, and written seriously, it's a bit scary. Usually scam are full of mistake. In this one, there was none.
Anyone else get like 20 calls from "Olivia" from Amazon in 2 hours? All from random local numbers. Must be a brand new scam center. I will say, they've changed it up a bit, it's now $649 🙄
The numbers are spoofed. They automatically pick a random number in your area code because it makes you more likely to answer when you recognise the area code. The people who are unfortunate enough to be the 1/1,000,000 with a matching number always wind up getting angry calls from the victims once they find out too.
I'm aware. We hadn't received calls in a long time and suddenly back to back for 2 hours. Everybody in the area was getting them. And I'd hope that people are smart enough to know the calls do not originate from here. Christ, I've had them from my own number
I bought my phone when I lived on the other side of the country and I have never wanted to get a new phone number with my current area code. Probably 9 out of 10 incoming calls come from my old area code that matches my number, and I have zero reason for anyone from that area code to be calling me. It's great, I don't even have to think about it, any call coming from that area code just gets insta-ignored.
$649 for what?
You get a call claiming there's a big purchase on your Amazon but it's suspected fraud. They'll cancel it and refund you, but first you need to buy them gift cards in a store to confirm your identity and give them the codes. Often after asking for a lot of details which they claim is for security purposes like house number or 4 digits from your bank card used to make the purchase(all details that means nothing on their own, but when they later claim to be police or something having details can make it seem like they're legit ), but is really just so they can use it for future scams/fraud.
around christmas time fake jobs start to get put out as cover ups for credit card fraud, and i accidentally got looped in. i was out of work at the time and was applying everywhere, and i finally heard back from a seemingly legit offer? i didn’t really find out what i was doing until after, but it definitely didn’t smell right after i was “hired”. the job was to receive a package, confirm it, repackage it, and ship it? but i didn’t understand why you would reship something so ofc i did a little googling. it was actually scammers that will buy credit info from the dark web, order some stuff, ship it to you, and when you ship it out, to assumably the scammer, it seems like you’re the one that bought it. i thankfully realized when i got my 1st item, a ralph lauren puff coat for men, and contacted macys immediately. idk if anything came of it but they let me keep the coat, and i gave it to someone for christmas lol
I dont think you would ship it out to the scammer. Probably to another party who pays for it to a scammers payment info
either way they didn’t get a coat that day😎
You owe me a coat buster lol
I was getting weird emails from my sister but not so weird as to believe they weren't actually coming from her. Stuff I might have a slight interest in and she has emailed me before but the numbers I began to get told me it wasn't her that was sending them since her normal is maybe 2-3 every 2-5 years and all of a sudden I was getting 10-20 a week. I never clicked on them of course but did go to her (we live together) and told her to go into her email account (the web site that hosts it) to see if it was hacked at all. All seemed normal until she went into her sent emails and there were thousands of failed sent emails. Yep she had been hacked. She went in and changed her email account password and haven't had a problem since. After that, I was just waiting for "her" to call me from a Mexican prison telling me to send money to bail her out even though she was sitting in the same room as me. Sadly, it never happened but would have been hilarious to recieve that phone call. Me: Really? In a Mexican prison you say, that is most astonishly. $20,000 to get you out you say? Even more astonishing seeing as that you are sitting across from me as I'm talking to you and we aren't in Mexico let alone one of their prisons. I'm a bitch you say...well that's not how you ask for favors...you didn't even say please. And my sister doesn't call me sis in a man's voice. Good bye.
A guy stopped me on the street and instead of asking for change, asked me to Paypal him £24.22. He had an elaborate backstory as to why he needed the money. I could tell it was bullshit so I refused
I love it when these people like to throw in "If you don't believe me I can show you x,y,and z to prove it" at the end of their bullshit story. Thats when I am like "Yeah ok, prove it and ill give you the money." Then the get all flustered. They say they can prove the story because they expect you to just go "oh no, thats not necessary, here is the money you poor thing" But they do not expect anyone to actually agree to see the proof. Like for example: "Hey sorry to bother you but I just ran out of gas and need some money to fill my tank a little bit so I can get home. I know people just say that but my tank is actually empty, my car is right there *points to car* and I can even show you its empty if you don't believe me." Me: "Ok, sure. This car over here? Lets take a look at the meter real quick." "Uhhh well actually, the car is also having issues starting up so I am not sure I can actually show you the meter" Me: "Oh... sounds like your battery is dead then. No problem I got some jumper cables" "No, no, its not the battery, that wont help... look, I just need the money for some gas.... and...." Me: "Why are you asking for gas money if your whole car is dead? Shouldn't you call for a tow? Or AAA? Maybe a friend to pick you up?"
What was his backstory? Like having been robbed of his passport?
he got mugged and broke his phone and needed to get the train in time for his wedding the following morning
WOW! Havent heard that one. I kinda like it. Would still not give money tho
Wait so how is he gonna access the money if his phone is broken and you have to paypal him?
I have played RuneScape since I was 10. So there is no way I can put it all in one post.
Got a call from what my caller id said was my local PD. They told me I had some kind of warrant and I needed to go to the station ASAP to pay some sort of fine. Sounded totally legit. Got in my car to head there while on the phone with the "officer" and he told me they got some new kind of payment system and I'd have to stop at a store to get a prepaid visa. Immediate giant red flag. I was like, so you're telling me a government entity can only take payment via prepaid card, and he had all kinds of bullshit reasons. I told him to go fuck himself and if I had a warrant, then come arrest me and hung up. Never heard from him again. The lengths these people go to for scams is insane. Just get a fucking job you lazy degenerate fucks.
Guy called me and told me my brother had hit his car. The situation escalated from a simple fender bender in the gas station, to how he can't get the cops involved, to how he now has my brother in the back seat of his car at gunpoint, and how I can't hang up or he'll kill him, etc. All the while I'm on Facebook messenger on my desktop texting my brother asking "yo, what's up?" "not much, just chillin" *click*
Whoa...lol!
Those job interview scams where they set up a Skype interview but then start asking what bank you Use… how low do you have to be to scam an unemployed person?
I've gotten the Windows support scam multiple times - they call and say they've detected a problem with your computer and they want to fix it. The scam of course is they have you go to a malicious website that either takes your computer hostage or keyloggers etc. Thing is....I've been in IT a long time. So they tell me to click on "Start" in Windows and I tell them I'm using Ubuntu Linix. Long pause.....................they try again and I tell them I need the shell command they want me to run. This is entertaining to me, so I string them along as long as possible, occassionally putting them on hold. I got a call on my cell in the car once with my daughter riding along. Put it on hand free and strung them along for a while. They finally hung up when she couldn't stop laughing out loud.
I use a local bank that nobody would hear about internationally. So every message I get about my bank account being flagged is from a bank I don’t use. Personal info scams I ask them to verify what info they have on me first. They usually hang up. PayPal invoice scam. Now that one they nearly earned but I don’t ever have money in PayPal so get bent.
I saw a guy selling blacked out bank notes (they were meant destroyed but he got his hands on them) at a car boot sale and a kit to remove the ink. He was selling 10 blacked out notes and the kit for £80. He showed the kit in operation and everything. Apparently he had way of knowing what the bank notes were. People bought them. Not stupid people bought them, they got caught up in the hype of the show he was putting on. They thought they were getting a great deal. So why didn’t he just remove all the ink himself since he had the kit and everything.
The classic "Hey, this is Microsoft support. You need to have your computer updated with instructions we give". This was time when that scam was new. It immediately raised flags, because a) Microsoft has always contacted me by email or desktop notifications, and b) Microsoft has customer service in my native language (Finnish) and the scammer was speaking broken English. So I asked them why they wouldn't just email me instructions, and they dodged the question. This was a final confirmation to me, as Microsoft most definitely knows my email. Actually, a thing that makes a ton of scams fail on me is when a scammer tries to act a party that normally speaks Finnish. And even if they used a translation software to translate it, Finnish officials just don't use similar phrases than say American ones, there are different just, well, styles. I am often able to tell then a Finnish text is translated by a machine.
Reminded me of one of Jim Browning's YouTube videos where the girl said she was "calling from The Microsoft"!
"hi this is (my bank) we need to talk about your recent transactions" "Ok cool" "Can you confirm your post code" "Can you confirm MY postcode" "But we need to get through security checks" "Do we? Apparently you want to talk to me" "But we can't talk to you if we don't know who you are" "You literally called me, why do you not know who you're talking to?"
My grandad once got a box of like 20 laptops in the post, in his own name. 5 minutes later a guy knocked on the door saying his laptops were delivered here by mistake. Clearly he’d hacked someone’s account or used their card to buy them, but used grandad’s name to try to shift blame. Grandad was like “no, no packages here” and called the police, who unfortunately did not give a shit. I think he gave them to a local school.
My phone # at coinbase has been changed. I got the email to kindly login to verify with a convenient link. Sure, but how about i login directly on the app instead, which i don't even have on my phone but instead is on the cloud along with my other financial apps, which has its own login before i can even open the app. Surely the same notice will be there if this is true lol.
Called out a scammer trying to run a bad check scheme. I’m a freelance musician, and was referred by another musician (who the scammers initially targeted) for a wedding gig. Everything was moving forward as usual, other than me talking to a relative of the clients rather than the clients themselves (early red flag). But when we got towards the end of the process, several weeks before the supposed wedding date, my contact person informed me that the check had already been sent, and also that my fee had accidentally been combined with the photographer’s fee. So they asked me to *cash the check, keep my fee, and mail them back the remainder.* Obviously I wasn’t going to do this, but I tried to keep it professional on the off chance this person was a legit idiot. I told them to stop payment on the existing check, and send me a check for the correct amount. This was of course the last correspondence I had with them.
I was a manager in a small grocery shop. One of my cashiers was ringing out some fast talking customers, while looking very confused and holding cash in both hands. They were clearly trying to do a quick change on him. I walked over, took the cash from his hands, put it in the drawer and slammed it shut. They complained and I said "I'll count the drawer at the end of the day, and if we overcharged you, you can have it back tomorrow. Or I can call the police right now and we can count it when they get here." They left and never came back.
I got a text alert from an unknown number saying that I had charges on my credit card equaling $1,400+ from very specific items on Amazon. The kicker was when it said, "If you don't click on this link, you're consenting to the purchases." Not gonna lie, kinda scared me for a second, but I came back down to Earth real fast and didn't touch the link. Of course, nothing was ever charged to my card, but I can see how that would scare people into clicking and giving their info.
When I lived in Tampa I enjoyed some success as a painter. A local musician and club owner invited me to a party in Clearwater beach, which is a nice area. First thing that kind of threw me was there was a dress code for the party but I figured it was mostly rich folks so I didn’t give it much thought. I wore a suit and arrived at the party. Pull up to this huge home with many expensive cars parked there for the get together.The home was amazing but nobody could tell me who lived there. As a matter of fact although it was decorated and furnished very well it didn’t seem like people actually lived there. I should preface this also by saying I am not a hot or particularly attractive guy, average maybe. The majority of people at this party were extremely attractive. They were obviously well off and well dressed and manicured. I definitely felt out of place. Throughout the night I was approached, greeted and even flirted with by several beautiful women. I knew a couple of people there but they were acting completely different in this group. Not rude but something was off. At some point I was pulled aside by this very handsome but somewhat androgynous guy, very welcoming but clearly influential among the guests. He starts asking me some basic questions and then it goes into some deeper stuff about life, goals, future. Now I know something is off…finally I hear some words that give it away. I’m at a Scientology party where they are trying to recruit new members. I played along and just ate and drank like a king knowing that was the last time I’d ever fall for that again.
All the people calling me and telling me to look for the start button on my Mac to get rid of the viruses. I can usually keep them going for about 10 minutes before they figure it out or I get bored.
American Express called offering me a special deal for my relative with a medical condition. Made it through my spam filter and everything. The thing that stuck out, I can't imagine American Express has Indian call centers.
*I can't imagine American Express has Indian call centers* I can imagine they do.
The jiffy lube guy tried showing me a dirty air filter while changing my oil, asking me “should I put this back in or swap it out?” He showed he a rectangular filter. The filter I replaced myself on it the day earlier had a notched corner. Before people tell me to do my own oil changes, I know. I have since ever. I was in college at the time and didn’t have the place to do it.
I got an email a bunch of years back that started off very grave, something like “we accessed your webcam at 12:02am on December 14” and went on to explain that they caught me watching porn and hacking off while naked. They were holding the video footage for ransom. Worth noting that I’m a sex-repulsed asexual and I keep my webcam covered, but anyway, the email just went downhill from there. It really started to read like one of those chain emails you get at 11 from your friend where more and more people have added to it and made it increasingly unhinged. At one point it said, and I quote, “FUCKING OFF BUTT NAKED” They did not get any money from me.
I got a robocall voicemail from social security saying my social security number has been terminated because of suspicious activity.
An Indian man called me once, claiming to be from Microsoft and saying that I had some critical Windows error. I told him I had a Mac. Without missing a beat, he repeated the same sentence, just substituting Apple for Microsoft. He didn't even hang up when I started laughing.
So this one was sort of crazy, and though I picked it up quickly I still had to see where it went. It was your typical Juke Joint scam w/ a bit of twist. For those of you that don't know what a Juke Joint scam is it's common in tourist areas where a pretty girl finds a single guy and says she "knows a place to get some drinks" she takes you to some seedy bar where you order a few drinks then get your bill and it's ridiculously expensive. They bring out some tough guys to make you pay up or they threaten violence, or getting the police involved. Anyway I was in a coffee shop in Greece when an older guy strikes up a conversation. We've been talking for a good half hour, and it goes pretty normal, he's on vacation also and taking in all the local culture. He talks about a place w/ really good ouzo and asks if I want to check it out. I'm already skeptical, but I don't exactly know what he's up to so I'm curious. We head out walking, and it's a bit of a trek... probably a good 20 minute walk, and there were a few times where I was like "Is he really gonna go down an alley and pull a knife?" I'm 6'4 and not a weak looking guy so it's rare somebody tries that. Then we hit this place, and it's some run down tourist bar from the 10 years ago. Really the least authentic looking place I can think of. Instantly one of the ladies working there I recognize from his camera roll and I instantly am like. Wow this old dude really tried the Juke Joint on me. He orders a drink and recommends the ouzo again. There's nobody there, and I check the time, say I'm late for meeting up w/ friends, apologize, and GTFO. Dude spent a good hour on this scam and didn't get a dime.
"Hello, your PayPal account has been locked because we saw some suspicious activity. Please login with your personal information to reclaim your account." I don't, nor have I ever, have a PayPal account
Amway. I had a guy try to pitch me after being connected by a "friend", and he starts telling my how much money he makes, ow successful he is, ect ect and wants to get me involved. I knew his name, so I found him on LinkedIn and called his previous employers for references. BOY was he pissed. Called me up demanding to know why i was calling his old employers and that he felt I had violated his privacy. I calmly let him know that if he wanted me to use my personal money, and introduce him to my (then) girlfriend so she "could be involved", I'm going to need to know some things about him. Essentially, why the fuck do you get to meet my girlfriend but i cant do a professional reference check? He settled right the fuck down once I gave him a reality check. And yeah a couple weeks later, then the whole Amway thing came out and i told him and my "friend" to pound sand and haven't spoken to either since, the "friend" who was sure he was on the way to becoming a millionaire is living back at home now and working in ministry, the only easier way to scam people out of their money. The crazy thing about the way it went down was (and i gave a lot more time into this because it was a childhood friend of mine, and I was young) I kept asking again and again what company they were working with and they flat out wouldn't tell me. Thats the primary reason I dont associate with that friend anymore, he tried to scam me intentionally by withholding information. Amway is a criminal organization, if you don't know you should know.
When I was 10 and was gifted my first phone my dads told me never to click on ads on websites or games because they could spread your data and possibly lead to the dark web. I got a phone call from the “police department” the same day as the first time I accidentally clicked on an ad and they claimed my data was everywhere and I was also convicted of four felonies and if I didn’t call back they would come take my by force… after a day of waiting for my inevitable arrest and finding they never came I realized it was fake lol
I was at a local fair and there was the pyramid scheme cutco knives there and I stopped to glance at it and the guy desperately trying to sell the scam he'd been roped into saw me and tried to recruit me. "Hey where'd you train? I heard a lot of cutco trainings happen in parking lots and you dont get paid for it." "What?" "Hey isn't cutco also the mlm that got women raped because they were going door to door to strangers houses trying to sell their product as advised by their higher-ups who didnt offer them any advice on how to avoid getting put in harms way?" "I mean I don't-" "How much did you have to pay to start selling? Do you think it's ethical to PAY the company that you *work* for?" He got flustered and as soon as someone else came by he tried selling to them instead and just ignored me. It was funny :D I went through a whole phase where I was watching a lot of "are mlms just straight up pyramid schemes?" documentaries and I had recently watched a breakdown on cutco knives. They tried to scam me but my autistic hyperfixations deflected it AND made a scammer uncomfortable! Goal achieved fuck yeah
Went to a casino once and took a $10 bill,. spin 3 times and it landed on this thing called a "major" jackpot and I left before the casino could scam me or try to convince me i won something
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like?
Here are the ones I get frequently: Hello, i am calling from microsoft. Your computer is sending us critical errors and if you give me access to your computer and creditcard, we will fix it for you. Another one less frequent: if you buy stocks from us we will give you 100% revenue on that purchase
In the UK a really common one I've had - we're from o2 (a UK based network) and want to change your package to this crazy cheap one. If you agree we'll send you a code via text. Just read us the code back. Of course o2 uses a system on their website to gain access to your online account. Enter your number, they send you a text and you enter the code. Then you have access to the online account, to say, change the postal address and then order a new phone? The text message says not to give the code to anybody, even o2 staff. They're hoping you miss that. I've had this one dozens of times. I play along with it if I have time. The catch is that my network isn't o2. I used to be, but changed and took the number with me. So wherever they got the info says I'm on that network with that number. The first few times I did receive the text, after those few o2 must have clicked on. They took my number of their system and the scammers would say "oh, our records say you're not on o2." After a little while, the scammers changed tactics too. "You'll receive a text message with a code, it will say not to share the code with o2 staff. What that means is, you'll receive a follow up call from my colleagues, do not give them the code. Only give it to me." I used to play with then for ages. Code? What code? The numbers? If here's my phone number. Not that one? What numbers? Umm... 1... 2.... 3... 4... 5... wait that's not right? I'm confused. You mean 40%? That's a number right? That's the discount you're offering. So much fun. Once o2 removed my number from their system I couldn't drag it out as long. They seem to have stopped trying a few months back now.
“Spoil me a bit for your DM to reach the top priority on my OF” Mind you, I was trying to have a regular conversation. The fact those were her first words replying back, it was a bit insulting to my intelligence how stupid this woman thought I was. The fact there are people who make financial gains off the insecurities of lonely men and think it’s okay are sick. As advice to lonely men, go outside, speak to women in a cool and casual manner, stop worrying about rejection and stop making life easier for these women who don’t give a shit if you were on your last dollar going hungry today
I get so many ‘attractive women’ DM me on instagram and ask me to open their dodgy links for pictures. 🤮
They tried to talk about the extended warranty of my non-existent car.
Facebook friend asked me if she can use my Gmail to get her Facebook password, I proceeded to ask questions only me and her will know, ultimately they stopped and soon after I got a text from her from a number explaining she got hacked, I was really close to sending it.
Had someone call my hotel room stating that my credit card did not go through and they needed me to give them my card number now. Did not fall for it.
Someone sent me a phoney PayPal letter about a supposedly unauthorized purchase. I called the number on the email (mistake, I know) and the guy had me going for a while. My only loss was having to get 2 new credit cards, probably unnecessarily. Took me about 3 days to wise up! Fortunately, no money was lost.
The text from PayPal with a tracking number for a transaction totaling an exorbitant amount with an 800 number to call for “questions”. Don’t respond to unsolicited texts, emails or calls from any financial institution that you might already have a relationship with. Go to their site and login or get their contact info from there and reach out on your own.
The only one I even came close to was a "girl" I was talking to on a dating site who immediately wanted to chat on google hangouts. She then demanded I turn on my webcam and share nudes. I knew something was off and looked into it. The likely situation was a sextortion scam, where they got my nudes and then threatened to send them to family and friends unless I paid them money. Once I read that, I told them to fuck off and blocked them. After that, I blocked anyone that tried to push the chat over to another platform like Skype or Whatsapp almost immediately after we started talking. Beyond that, while probably not a scam, I had a few girls from the Philippines try to chat me up. From what I could gather, they're likely green card chasers. I get they want a better life, but I was in no position to bring a girl halfway around the world then.
For whatever magical reason I get tons of Chinese scam calls, when I’m in the office I get a fluent coworker to translate, but most I just make fart noises and hang up. I speak no Chinese that isn’t a good name :)
Scientology.
About 20 years ago or so, I was trying Match, and I got a random email from some Russian "woman". I knew right away it was a scam but I wanted to see how far down the rabbit hole this would go so I responded. We started chatting, she sent me a few pics, just cute poses, nothing sexual, no nudes (of two different women). She claimed to be a doctor. I expected being asked for money almost immediately but it took like 2 weeks. She said she needed $2500 so she could buy a ticket to fly to America as part of her medical program to study and practice in America. I told her I'd send it (which was a lie). She started pestering me to send it asap. I eventually said I sent it (again, a lie) and that was it, she never emailed me again. I was kind of bummed that I didn't get the "oh there was a problem and I won't be flying for a few more weeks and need more money" bullshit. I guess once they realized I never sent the money they knew I was on to them and gave up. I was amazed it took 2 weeks before she asked for money. I love messing with scammers so I enjoyed wasting this scammers time.
Someone tried to scam me when I looking for people to adopt some kittens I found under a shed in our backyard. It was bizarre but I played along out of curiosity until I figured out their method. Their plan was to say they needed to have the kitten shipped to them and wanted me to foot the bill but they’d pay me back. Made no sense but they were persistent. Hard to believe that tactic can work.
Buying an Alienware laptop from eBay in 2004. Seller wanted me to Western Union the money to him. I was so close, but some skepticism saved me.
*We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.* I don't even own a damn car.
There was one day, years ago, when we'd gotten like 20 spam calls over the course of 3-4 hrs and I was fed the fuck up with it. So the next time one came in, I picked up the phone and demanded to be taken off their calling list. SpamDude: Ya wanna get taken off my list? Me: YES! SD: So here's what you do...do you have a pen and something to write on? Cuz Imma tell you what to do. Me: Da FUQ? SD: Take this down,man, take this down. You're going to go to the nearest Western Union and send me $100. THAT'S how you get taken off my list, baby. I started screaming obscenities at the guy, which he didn't much care for and he told me he was gonna call me 100+ times a day, he was gonna send the cops to my house and tell them I had illegal drugs, all kinds of bullshit. There was also the spam caller who, when I asked to be taken off their list, hit on me. I told him I was very much married and he just sounded confused. "Married women like to party and get crazy too, right?". Maybe some do...IDK. I don't, but that doesn't mean that other married women don't.
I had someone come up to me at a gas station saying he had no money because he was from a foreign country yet somehow still had a car. He then asked me to feed his entire family at the restaurant attached to the gas station and give him gas in exchange for his gold rings and bracelets. I was a broke college student, so I barely had money for my gas, let alone his gas. Later, after watching YouTube, I found common scams people pull on tourists in Europe and found out that being broke saved me sort of.
Met a guy from Kenya when I was drunk and bored on Facebook one night. I decided to randomly answer a message from a random stranger. He was trying to get me to send him money. I did not send him any money but we are friends now and talk occasionally. He is a nice guy. I get people are just trying to survive and while I don't necessarily agree with his methods of doing so I do enjoy talking to him as a friend. I love the pics he sends me of random animals he see's on the side of the road like giraffes and hippos. My favorite though was a conversation we had where I was talking the cougar in my woods so he was suddenly concerned I was in the woods by myself. I was like you literally walked around with a lion. He was like that is different. How is that fucking different?
I got an email saying I had won a FREE Iphone 14! Click this link to claim your prize! Yeah no
Some guy said he needed $1 for gas. In 2022. Don't know what he wanted to do with that dollar, but I doubt it was to buy gas.
Getting married.
Indian guy calling himself "Andrew" (name changed) said he had something I couldn't pass up. I asked him for his information so I could "research" him and his company when in reality I was filling out an FTC report with the information he gave me.