This was years ago, but I was driving around listening to music with my windows down and a couple guys in a van pulled up next to me and asked if I wanted a deal on stereo equipment. Being the naive idiot I was I followed them into a parking lot.
They claimed to be home stereo installers and had accidentally received two premium stereos for a customer order instead of one. They wanted to get rid of the second one for beer money and asked for like $200. They had a magazine that showed the stereo was worth several thousand and I thought I might make a quick buck by reselling it to a pawn shop or online.
I didn’t have $200 but I had overdraft protection so I thought I would pull that money out anyway and pay it back once I had sold the stereo. The guy at the pawnshop was the one who told me I got scammed and I have never felt more embarrassed.
what was wrong with the stereo?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_van_speaker_scam
Usually a knock off brand of inferior quality complete with fake magazine or fake website showing an insanely high retail price.
For some reason this pyramid scheme (World Games Inc) was highly popular where I grew up. “Everyone” was in on it, but my family somehow wasn’t. But you couldn’t even strike up a casual conversation with anyone without it ending up as a sales pitch. It was fucking tiresome. Luckily the thing folded eons ago.
I once locked myself out of my apartment. It was not locked-locked, just the key was inside. In full panic mode (because my dog was inside and it was late at night) I googled for a locksmith. You can already see the mistakes I made here. I called them, a guy came over with a lot of tools. He showed me the upcoming cost, I had to agree with it on the spot, but it was what he said on the phone. Then he started his work and, unable to open the bolt with sandpaper (why sandpaper I don’t know), began loudly rattling on the door to loosen it somehow. My neighbors were probably really annoyed by this and my dog scared. This went on for 15-20 minutes and it finally worked (don’t remember if it was only from the rattling or something else). It turns out this was unnecessary, more on that later.
We sat down to do the payment and this is the scam part: it suddenly cost 4-5 times the amount he told me on the phone! I was confused but made my next mistake: I paid it because I suddenly had the feeling this is a criminal organization and I would be in trouble with them.
Next day I checked valid prices and it was way overpaid. I tried to ask my bank to get my money back but it was a kind of payment that wouldn’t allow this. I even called the guy back and asked for my money, he laughed at me. I went to the local consumer protection agency, they could not help me. The „invoice“ he gave me was not valid, it had no real company, no sales tax ID. Nothing I could do here. He did actually help me get inside my apartment but it was way too expensive and the guy was not even good at what he was doing.
Multiple mistakes:
- I panicked
- I did not check if I might be able to do it on my own
- I googled
- I did not check if the invoice is valid (I’m no lawyer but it looked sketchy)
Later I learned how to easily break into my apartment in a similar situation using a simple wire. I don’t know why this asshole made it so complicated and loud.
I have since been very paranoid about forgetting my keys.
Pro tip: When you move into a new place, take some time to check for locksmiths and other services in your local area that are legit and save those in your phone book. If something happens you know where to go and don’t have to ask Google.
One I fell for: last minute, I needed to take a cat on a flight. I was googling what I needed to do for the airline and ended up with a scam number. The issue was I didn’t even have to click through to the site, I’d like to think I’d have caught on. But the number was bolded in the suggested results without having to click through toanywhere. I was in a panic getting ready for the flight, so I wasn’t on my game.
Immediately after I gave the person my credit card info over the phone, like literally the minute I hung up, I realized that it was so obviously a scam. Called my credit card company and had them block the charge and change the card number. Definitely not the pain in the ass I needed right before a trip, but it made me more cautious for the future and luckily I didn’t lose any money.
My sister fell for one I couldn’t believe. A kid was washing windows on the side of the road, she said she didn’t have any cash and he said, “That’s okay I have cash app, I’ll type in my name.” She handed her phone over and he cash apped himself $2000. No recourse since cash app isn’t a real bank transfer. Expensive lesson to learn.
Dad fell for a Microsoft key scam. They were calling him about invalid registration or something. Kept asking for £500.
Stopped calling after my infuriated sister, who was living with our parents at the time, basically bullied the shit out of them on the phone.
I used to buy pokemon cards as a kid
Shit that was a scam?
I also got gold and silver before crystal came out.
That was a scam haha
I got THEM ALL and was never scammed
Though I refused to buy Scarlet/Violet and if I did I would have been scammed
My best friend used to work at a local fast food chain, and there was one week when we were both on vacation with our other friends. He was a Lead and the manager was also away during this timeframe.
We find out that some employee ended up falling for a phone scam, someone called the restaurant stating that they were the manager and needed money to cover some business costs. So this scammer tells the employee to buy gift cards and read out the numbers on the phone and such.
This dumbass ACTUALLY does this, while using the restaurant funds. He goes to Walmart with cash from the drawers, buys the gift cards worth like 5000 bucks, and gives them all to the scammer on the phone.
It wasn’t until after the full transaction completed that the dumbass employee decided to call my friend asking if what he did was okay, and my friend was like “FUCK NO, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT, ARE YOU INSANE?”
And yeah, pretty sure that dude was fired and they just had to deal with being short 5000 dollars.
I imagine the guy being 3000IQ and wanted to leave, so he pretended to be scammed to be fired without quitting and divided the 5000$ with his pal
I feel like part of falling for this is being in a job where you don’t question management doing stupid shit that shouldn’t be your job. I works hope that $5000 would ping your bullshit meter, but I could easily see falling for a more believable story. Maybe not at a fast food place but like, a big office or some place where there are bullshit parties. Especially with a spoofed email or text rather than a voice call. “It’s [some fake appreciation day] and I need to bring in cake/gifts, I don’t have the business card on me, buy this $200 gift card and give me the info.”
If you’re stressed and have a shitty boss with no boundaries, I could see it working.
My cousin has been blackmailed for dick pics twice in his fucken life. Makes me wheeze just thinking about it lmao
Wait,blackmailed for dick pics as in “send me dick pics or else”, or blackmailed for sending dick pics, “yo, you just send nudes to a minor, give me cash or I’ll tell the cops”.
Idk if I said that right. He sent a dick pic and the “chick” was like “Aye sicc now give me money or your family sees this” TWICE.
Idk if they asked first or how that went, but he fell for it twice.
I’d probably laugh at someone who tried to blackmail me with pictures of my dick. I’m a guy, it can’t ruin my life lmao
Yeah but teenagers have no brain for this.
Then young men are always paranoid about dicks.
Eventually we all grow out of fucks to give though
If he was a minor, the uno reverse there is “congrats you have CSAM on your phone, enjoy explaining that to the police”
A believed a guy who said he just got out of jail and needed $10 for a bus ride home. I was 17. Found an ATM, gave him the cash, saw him walking around the mall with his girlfriend 20 minutes later.
That stimulus package helped him very quickly!
My older neighbor got a call from a guy who called her “mom” and said he’d been in a car accident, and there was a problem with his insurance, so he was in real trouble if he couldn’t pay cash for the damage, the other guy was gonna call the cops, and he needed $2,000 to give to the other guy for the damage.
She said “Tim?” and the guy said "yeah mom its Tim and kept repeating he was gonna go to jail for not having insurance cause it lapsed just this week and he needed to run to the store and he was in an accident.
She withdrew 2k from the bank and some guy came and said he was Tim’s friend and he needed to go right then the cops were gonna arrest Tim.
Apparently, he snatched the money out of her hand and ran to his car and left. She felt very foolish.
Wow, what an absolute scumbag.
Had a contractor working on my basement who fell for a pig butchering scam. Took him for 50k
…is a pig butchering scam something that didn’t involve actual pig butchering? Or…
It’s a sophisticated scam where they take you for all you have.
- hire models to talk to guys on tinder
- convince them to download a fake crypto app you created
- have them invest a small amount and let them take out more than they put in to gain trust
- convinced them to invest it all
- don’t let them take it out when they “win”, tell them they need to pay escrow fees
- don’t let them take it, say there’s problems with the escrow service, and make them pay more to fix it
- don’t let them take it out, say the minimum transfer went up, make them invest more to take it out
- when they call out it’s a scam, have the actress say she’s being held captive until she scams enough money to buy back her life/family/whatever and convince the victim to pay it
- when they realize that’s still the scam, tell them you’re sorry and they can get in on it to make their money back. Have them wire you money for lessons and access. Don’t deliver
Damn. And for $50K, brutal.
Not a scam but scumbag behaviour.:
My grandmother was offered a expensive credit line by the bank very insistently on the phone after they solved other of her problems. She obviously fell for it and had to pay a shit ton of interests.
They are verbose and pushy towards elderly people because they know they are prone to accept thing they do not need/want.
Honestly the US credit system is one big scam
Sister wanted to get a job doing art and ended up getting an offer to work as an illustrator for a publishing company. One of her parents was all in in this. The other parent asked me to look out over to see if it was real or not. Turns out it was a scam I found out from 5 minutes of web searching. I had to be the one to break the news and the parent who was all in on the idea didn’t seem fazed that this was likely a scam since “there was a chance it was real”.
Nothing was signed, but I had to take the hit of standing in the way of the sister’s success.
Tried buying lifetime plan of some web (hoster|HTML-less dr(ag|dop) site builder) . Then saw reddit comments about how you apparently get (spam emails after registering with them|your domain hijacked|.*) . Don’t know if can even still get refunded , been years
Bro, people normally don’t comment in the form of a regular expression.
I used to work with a bloke who got scammed in the car park for a house sound system.
He’s a smart bloke runs a company of his own now too but he was at the shop on the weekend buying whatever.
Two guys approached him in a truck and said our boss ordered one sound system but got two and we got told to get rid of it but have to get to the job for install in 15 minutes. If you’re interested its yours for 500 dollars or whatever.
My mate jumped at it bought it all and went on his way.
Turns out the speakers were just speaker boxes no actual stuff inside no cables doe the stereo etc.
As he told us the story we couldn’t believe he fell for it, but there’s a sucker every minute as they say.
