What's the worst scam you've fallen for (or gotten close to falling for)?

Snapz@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 206 points –
192

Someone contacted me on Steam and asked if I wanted to play TF2 with him. It was one of my most played games at the time and I had a TF2 avatar, so no surprises here.

That person later asked me to rate their TF2 team on some website. Didn’t care first but did it eventually. The website needed Steam auth but just faked the Steam auth and relayed every bit of information you entered to steal your account.

Quickly realized my mistake and reset my password before anything happened. Im still surprised how much effort went into this fake rating site just to steal some Steam accounts.

Something similar to this happened to me but I think it was for CSGO. The steam sign in page was a fake popup window inside the main website, draggable and all. I realized it was fake when I noticed it was light theme while my computer was dark theme.

Edit: I realized it was fake before I signed in, luckily

Had some Steam based scammer a couple months ago. I basically instantly suspected a scam and played along, trying them to waste time.

Sadly, they didn't play along that much and ghosted me :(

Mind if I steal your idea and turn this into a psych/thriller/adult manga?

A buddy of mine got her Discord account hacked by someone doing this. They gave her another Discord user who was playing as an employee. To "prove" the account was hers she had to change the validated email to something they sent. She mentioned something about it and then I and another person in IT started freaking out.

All in all it was fine and she got her account back. I think she was just embarrassed. I think it's the first time she's ever had someone try to do something like that. Me and the other person who caught it were trying to reassure her that we noticed it because we've had to do so many IT trainings and phishing tests over the years.for work.

yeah, the second they said something about reporting me by accident and steam banning my IP I knew it was a scammer. Although I suspected it before, as I never had a random person message in in 20 years of using steam.

I had hoped to lure the scammer a little bit further and figure out what they wanted to do, but I got too excited and scared them. very sad

They were almost certainly going to tell you that if you didn't act then both of you would get banned then direct you to a fake Steam employee or fake website. It's interesting they randomly messaged you. Normally this relies on being done to friends.

I have basically the same story, except it was one of my actual friends on Steam asking me to rate their CS:GO team. I fell for it since I was trying to be nice, and luckily changed my password before they could turn around and use my account for the same thing.

I fell for these but they offered free csgo skins or knives instead. Steam support got my back with that.

I haven't changed my Steam password since I got an account many, many, many years ago. No idea what it is anymore—something really short and basic—but other people do. I get two-factor hits all the time 🤣

I once had one of those crypto-people message me with a sales pitch, asking for money to help start their small business in Africa or something like that (can't remember what, I think it was a micro-brewery)

As an actual business owner, their initial ideas sounded okay, and I began forwarding them resources on how to secure a low-interest loan from their government and grants and stuff like that and then they abruptly closed up with:

"This is scam, brother. This is scam. You have good heart. I tell you only once, do not message this number."

We forget that on the other end of scams are real people with real problems, morals, and lives. The person on the other end of your scam probably started to feel bad and helped you out. And likely that person is being forced into performing these scams on people.

There's an excellent "Search Engine" podcast episode about this that came out recently called "Who's behind these scammy text messages we've all been getting." It's well worth a listen because it dives into all the slavery and human trafficking involved in modern scams that people aren't aware of.

The especially vile thing about these scam centers is that often they trick normal people just trying to find work and support their family. They steal their passport and then hold them hostage with slave labour.

Can you link the podcast?

Look up "pig butchering" by John Oliver. Yes, this is the technical term for it.

The podcast goes much more in depth than Oliver did. But they're both good content.

When I was younger, like 15/16, I was working a job in a stone quarry during my spring break. Long days, hot sun but all cash and made decent money.

One of my neighbors whom I would briefly speak to all the time wanted to borrow some money. I think it was $400 or something. At that age, I wanted to help out and I wanted seem cool, so I lent it. He asked for a bit more and more and eventually it ended up to about $1100. My neighbor said their paycheck was coming 'next week' and could easily pay me back.

Next week never came. I followed up with the neighbor and they said something happened to their paycheck but the money was coming. He then said a showing of good faith, he'd give me his payslip as proof and that I needed to get it back to him so I he cash he check. Stupid me knew something to was up but because I was naiive and impressionable, I told him I trusted him and I'll await the money.

I managed to get his number and I called to follow up again, but he had some girl answer the phone and when I asked to speak to him, she said, "Oh he's getting cookies right now..."

A week later the phone was disconnected and then I didn't see him for a while. I then moved out of the neighborhood.

Eventually I saw him a few years later and mentioned about the money that he owed me but he 'wasn't sure what I was talking about'. I long since before then realized the money was gone. Expensive lesson but that's a story of how I got scammed.

That’s pretty expensive for the age, but cheap overall. I was in a similar situation with my coworker at the same age, but it was luckily about an order of magnitude smaller a loan. I mentioned it to my family and they sat me down to explain that I’d inadvertently given both of us a gift, just mine was in the form of experience.

I got lucky with that. I'd loaned a coworker money multiple times and he paid me back every time, sometimes with interest.

I guess I was cheaper than the payday loan places.

I still lend people money, I just don’t expect it back, and then it’s a nice surprise

I made a purchase on a sketchy site (during Covid when things were hard to find). A day or so later, some unauthorized transactions were made on my card. “Bank” called from actual number of my bank, to verify if I actually made the transactions. provided some of my personal information, transaction amount etc then asked to verify ssn. It was very convincing.

Luckily I refused because I know anyone can call you claiming to be any number, and I didn’t give out any info, and said I would call back that number (my bank).

Bank had no knowledge of a call.

15 minutes later, get real fraud department call from my bank. They just wanted to know if it was fraud or not and didn’t ask for any other info.

Moral of the story: if someone calls you, never give out personal info. Tell them you will call back if needed.

My bank sometimes call me with questions about verification, as I travel a lot and have weird purchase patterns that can span several continents over a few days.

But it's easy for me to verify that it's them: Not only is Norwegian a rare language among Nigerian princes, but I use a tiny local bank so I recognize them by the dialect.

And even if it were a scam verification, they only ask for relatively inconsequential information, such as how much I have in my savings account, where I use my card the most, and roughly how much is paid into my account by my employer every month.

Anyone can call from any number? Surely it's not easy to spoof numbers.

When I was 16 I looked a bit older, so people would often assume I was over 18.

I was in Boston one day wandering around and I was approached by someone who wanted to give me a free personality test or something. He was handsome and I was a young gay boy so I figured why not?

It ended up being a scientology recruitment. They freaked and stopped trying to hard sell me their book when I told them I was 16. And their recruitment video had me laughing like crazy as I walked out.

I didn't know how crazy of a cult they are at the time. But it was a funny experience.

i did that test and got a ~$40 book for free 😆

In a trains station gave someone enough money for a ticket cuz he was claiming that he lost his train. Felt real stupid when I saw him the next day asking the same shit.

Consider that at the time you were helping a stranger with the relatively trivial cost of a train ticket.

Now you know you "helped" a likely homeless dude.

Technically a scam but a pretty minor one.

Probably not homeless, pretty well dressed, that was probably his day job.

An assumption on my part.

I'll argue that not everyone begging for coins is scamming though some probably are. Trying to figure out which is just a recipie for misery.

Train tickets by me cost 4x an hour of minimum wage work. Even if a single person helped per hour, that's more than enough to make it worthwhile compared to a paying job. That's a scam, taking advantage of people's help as a regular living rather than making an honest living.

Train tickets near me have a variable cost depending on how far you're going, but the bus costs about 1/4 or 1/5 of minimum wage per hour...lol

That's a much more costly train ticket than I was imagining.

I was assuming something like the inverse of that: a quarter of an hour of minimum wage.

That does tip the scale back to scammy.

Person you responded to was not the original poster. Not sure why they've felt the need to inject extra information that is entirely unrelated to the comment you replied to. Seems pretty scammy to me

This happened to me in a Walmart parking lot with a guy telling me a sob story about how he's traveling with his family and out of gas (with a gas can in his hand). I didn't give him any money but saw him there in the parking lot a couple weeks later and he gave the same story obviously not recognizing me from before.

I fell for this one in college. At the time I felt really stupid, but it was less than $20 and that guy probably needed it more than I did.

I paid for Windows 10 once. It was actually quite good at the beginning but then, through updates, Microsoft turned into intrusive garbage of a system pushing their shitty services and behaving like my laptop was their property. I'm still ashamed of that purchase. If you really need anything from Microsoft - pirate it.

I upgraded to Windows 11, and I regret it to this day.

I was forced to upgrade my work laptop by my company, and I basically lost two full days of productivity because of how truly shitty the new OS is. Still not back to normal productivity, and it’s been two weeks. Definitely felt like a scam…

Oh yeah? I paid for WIndows Vista. I mean it eventually upgraded to 7, 8, and 10. But that was it...

Years ago, I bought headphones that were ¼ of the price of the big name Bose and Sony's and provided at least ¾ the experience. When I wore them so much they eventually broke years later, I purchased some more from their website. Turns out they have been taking orders and haven't been delivering products. Their Facebook page still posts ads and the comments are people talking about how it was a scam. That's $170 dollars I won't get back. It's weird because I really liked their product and had no reason to think they would suddenly stop delivering. Very strange.

Brand is Cowin, by the way.

You can contest that sort of thing with your bank if you are quick about it. Probably too late now, but I had something similar happen and that's how I resolved it. In my case, the rumor was the owner of the website had died

Yeah I wasn't fast enough and I also tried to contact their support and such. Oh well

I believe this company used to sell MP3 players about 20 years ago. I had several and they were all actually pretty decent products at the time. if its the same company I am rather sad that it may have devolved into some sort of scam.

I went to what I thought was a job interview, but they were really just recruiting people to sell Cutco stuff. I was still pretty excited about it, because I’d never heard of Cutco before. When I got home, Dad explained that Cutco was basically a pyramid scheme.

They almost got me. They had rented space in an office park and everything; it wasn’t at some dude’s house. The interview seemed legit… to a young and clueless college student, anyway.

I sold cutco knives for a month.

If you're looking for a job, stay the fuck away from anything dealing with "CutCo" or "Vector Marketing."

Edit: Its not really a pyramid scheme... They just do everything they can to weasel out of giving you your paycheck on payday and because it's sales commission, I don't think they have to follow minimum wage laws since you're not paid hourly.

Unless they've seriously changed how it fundamentally works (this was when I was 18). They never encouraged or paid extra for getting others to sell for you, like a typical MLM thing.

So what is actually the deal with CutCo? I know they’re a scam, everyone knows they’re a scam, but this one particular woman I know to be in general not a dummy, says her son spent the summer selling their knives once and made good money.

Was he just lying to her? How does the scam work?

Like all these multi-level-marketing scams, the scam part is that you have to buy your stock from the company/from your "upline", and then whether or not you make money depends on you reselling your stock.

John Oliver did an excellent video on the overall topic. Definitely worth the watch.

MLMs can be actually viable jobs for a very select few of people. Not entirely unlike how you can theoretically make money at a casino. There need to be winners to the game once in a while, or else no one would play. The game is just rigged wildly out of your favor.

The general structure of an MLM as I understand it is sort of a cross between a wholesale job and playing a mobile gacha game. Unlike a normal business where you purchase stock to match your demand, and only stock items that actually sell, an MLM contractually obligates you to buy a certain volume of stock, and each shipment is essentially a lootbox full of who knows what. It then becomes your responsibility to get rid of the stock any way you possibly can.

When you buy all that stock, you are not buying it from a factory or a warehouse. You are buying it from another person in the same position as you, one layer up. They are also playing the lootbox gacha and trying to get rid of all the crap. Except, hmm, now they have at least one person beneath them who is contractually forced to buy from them, and can't select which stock they're buying. Gee, I wonder what you're gonna be getting...

Whenever you actually do manage to sell something off, a cut of that kicks back to the person who sold you that stock. And a piece of that kickback goes to the person who sold them that stock, and so on, up and up.

The real money in MLMs is having so many people beneath you that the kickbacks start adding up into significant income. This is theoretically achievable. But it requires a very specific kind of personality matrix who is not squeamish about being a little cut-throat to get ahead, and generally requires a significant investment where you are going deep into the red just for the opportunity. And even if you do make it there, you have to accept the knowledge that your profitability can only exist necessarily because of the existence of many people beneath you all spinning those slots and losing the rigged game to the house (who by this point is you).

Okay, so, it's not technically a scam. It's an MLM. The salesman has to buy the stuff they want to sell up-front, and then they have to try and sell it to people. If no one wants to buy, then they're stuck with a whole bunch of whatever--knives in the case of CutCo/Vector--and out the money that they spent. If they happen to be an exceptionally good salesperson, then they can sell everything they purchased, and use their profit to buy more, and sell more, etc.

The issue is that the knives aren't particularly great. They're solidly 'okay', and that's about it. But despite being just kind of okay, the prices are on the higher end. That is, you can get Global or Shun for a similar price, and Global and Shun are both quite good. So if you're a serious cook, your going to spend the same and get better knives. If you're a typical home cook, you're not going to see the value in spending that much on kitchen knives.

But! The real money is in convincing some poor sucker to buy his stock to sell from you. You buy from your supplier, and then you sell at a markup to some other poor schmuck that then has to sell knives at either a higher cost or lower profit margin to someone else. It's a game of hot potato, and the person holding it at the end gets burned.

The knives are decent; if the only way to get a new one wasn’t through an MLM I might actually buy them.

It's not an MLM or pyramid scheme; it is regular sales employment. You're not getting other people to sell them for you nor are you encouraged to find others looking to join the sales team. It just sucks dick because the pay is shit (and they go through hoops to pay you less or nothing; which is where the scam part comes in), they treat you like shit, and you have to basically sell them door-to-door.

It's stupid because the knives are great products; I still have my sample set because they actually rock. They just only sell them like Tupperware clubs and only market them via word of mouth. They'd be making bank if they just sold them to retailers instead of fucking with young people looking for their first job.

Oh ok, good to know! They’re always lumped in with MLMs so I always thought they were one. I appreciate the correction, even if they still have a predatory business model—just a different one than MLMs.

I went to buy Norton Antivirus. (This was... probably almost 25 years ago?) I went to https://symantic.com/. The correct domain name was https://symantec.com. ("e" vs "i").

https://symantic.com/ went to a page owned by... I think it was Avast. But the page was (in retrospect) very obviously meant to look like it was made by Symantec/Norton. It had images of cardboard boxes like software CDs used to come in and such, in exactly the Norton yellow/orange.

I went through their purchase funnel and installed Avast before I realized it wasn't Norton. As soon as I realized it, I immediately uninstalled it. I don't remember if I found any way to contact Avast, but I did call the credit card company and contested the charge. Avast contested the... con...test..ment...? I appealed and Avast gave up.

And I bought Norton.

Years ago I was approached by a guy in a suit while working my shitty retail job. He was trying to recruit me to a pyramid scheme. I knew what was going on from the get go and just wanted to do a morbid curiosity suicide burn on it. Met him for an "interview" at a Starbucks and gave me like 10 CDs with talks from their independent business owners(lol) talking about how great it is and how much money they are making. He later invited me to a meeting at a hotel where they had a guy give a speech about the schtick in the conference hall with interviews played on a projector of success stories in tropical mansions.

I felt like, but don't know, that I might have been the only person there who knew what was going on. I talked to a few people who were also being recruited and they didnt seem to see what was going on. There were a lot of people there that really drank the Kool aid and had their dreams of not living paycheck to paycheck taken advantage of.

The guy who recruited me sat down with his wife, myself and another recruit and wanted to get us all signed up. I told him I didn't want to join a pyramid scheme. He tried to explain to me how it wasn't a pyramid scheme. I "wanted to get things straight" and drew a diagram on a napkin of the company structure, he confirmed my understanding was correct, I drew a triangle around it. The other recruit figured it out. The guy was trying to make me feel bad about not understanding how big of an opportunity I was throwing away, it did not work.

All the products they sold were crap. I looked at their website and couldn't find fuckall that I or anyone would actually want to buy if they weren't compelled to by being involved.

If you ever get someone trying to get you to do a pyramid scheme and they have one of those conference hall talks, do it if it is free just so you can enjoy the spectacle of con-men working in the open.

I remember seeing one of those and thinking about how overpriced everything was. It didn't seem high quality, and even if it was, I don't think I'd have wanted to pay anywhere near those prices.

I tried the draw the triangle around it trick with a coworker who was getting sucked into LuLaRoe.

They 180ed that shit and drew the CEO, his direct reports, the next layer and was like... "How is this not the same. All companies are in a pyramid"

That's when I just let it go and let her get scammed.

Got duped into giving my login info to a dude who promised to put money into my bank. Lost my account for like a week, and when I finally recovered it, they had taken what little I had. I cried.

Runescape as a child was a good place to learn life lessons

Hahahaha I also just posted a story about being a kid on RuneScape!

Mine was about a guy who told me he could get me good gear and walked me out to the wilderness and killed me.

1 more...

This absolute bastard said he would give a rune platebody to the person that traded him the highest value item as a sign of trust... lost a DDP++ to that jerk.

Which sounds like a joke, but that was a real eye-opening experience for 8 year old me. Enough that 20+ years later I still reflect on it on an almost daily basis, to remind myself that if something seems like a bleedingly obvious scam it invariably is.

When I was playing that game as a youngling, someone asked me to help get some wine from a cult temple. I did, which made the door slam shut and every cultist in the room attack me. I just barely made it out of there alive.

Then they told me to go get a second one. Yeah, they didn't need wine, they wanted me to die to a trap so they could take my stuff without killing me.

I'm embarrassed to say I actually went to get that second wine.

I fell for the same thing back in the day. Probably where my trust issues began….

I don't have trust issues, and I think that might actually be worse. Like, if that happened now, I'd only shirk at going in twice, but I'd still go in once.

Lol when I was 15 or so I got way into competitive pokemon, and that eventually led to me breeding my own mons. Early on in my journey, I met some dude on Serebii chat that wanted to to do a 2 for 1 trade for my kingdra. He just sent over the pidgey and didn't send over the other mon. I was really salty about that.

by the time gen four ended, I had bred a flawless Kingdra and (still to this day even) have all my .pkm files backed up on a hard drive somewhere.

Where would one go to look into backing up Pokemon?

...and if they're backed up, why not Gen them? Haha

I guess it's the satisfaction of knowing they're truly legit.

Lol so the program I used was called HyperGTS. You could change the DSs target server, and you changed into to your routers IP, and then you could send stuff up to the GTS, at which case it would be saved into your PC. You could send it back the same way. I also have my .sav files. I might have gotten into the switch games if there was an easier way to transfer my old pokemon over.

The practice of cloning was (and I have to imagine, still is) pretty standard among breeders. Most competitive pokemon was (and again, still is) tool assisted: We made use of tools to check IVs, and to clone. The mons themselves were not altered. That was the point; no one cared if you were battling with hacked mons, as long as they were legal. There were still events that checked legitimacy, and those created a demand for legit mons. That being said, once RNG became standard issue, I just bred because I was playing in the pre RNG days and I liked them.

Is "Gen" the new pokesav?

Thanks for that! That's some good stuff for me to look into.

Gen is just the word I saw people using for "generated Pokemon". It was probably Pokesav, but obviously I've never gotten too deep into the scene, haha

Student loans for in-person university. I'll be paying for that for a long time.

Eventually dropped out and finished my degree with WGU. I highly recommend that for anyone considering a college degree. I was able to finish with PELL grants so I added no debt and have a degree

Student loans had to be a top answer. The fact that they even call loans "student aid" is bonkers. There were two events with student loans that really drove that home for me.

First, there was a school I was considering applying to that advertised that they would pay 100% of what the government determined was your family's need. They had 2 admission windows, one "early-decision" with a good chance of getting in, that was before when the govt releases their estimates of your need, and another with abysmal acceptance rates, but after you'd know the cost. For someone without money, you would have to give them a binding agreement to go there if accepted without knowing what you will end up paying, or you likely wouldn't be accepted at all. I ended up not applying, but if I had, I could have attended a good school for around $3,000 per year, including room and board.

Second, one year i was in college, my parents (who weren't paying for any of my education) made less money. This made the government offer me higher loans. Because I could get more "student aid" from the government (loans), my school reduced my scholarships.

The fact that you count as a dependent on FAFSA until well after your parents don't write you as a dependant is wild.

I used to help people apply, and it was hellacious when there was animosity from one parent due to a divorce. It could really fuck things up for the poor kids.

Not really fallen for, but at some point you don't really have a choice. So in Bali near the waterfalls you sometimes have these people who claim to work for some official company asking for the entrance fee, but of course they don't. But are you gonna just say no and keep on driving to save like 2,50 bucks when 2 burly guys are telling you to stop?

Seems like happens in almost everywhere in 2nd & 3rd world countries. :(

Fucking herbalife. Not necessarily because I thought it was worth a damn, but to help a friend that thought it was worth a damn. I didn't commit because I had this niggling doubt that it would be helping them to essentially waste good money to give them a "start" in something they were determined to try and make work.

Told them to let me think on it, and reckoned that backing a scam "business" in any way wouldn't benefit them at all. Told them a polite version of that, and the number of people I already knew that had tried it and done nothing but get deeper in debt and more broke. Actually convinced them to cut their losses and move on, which was a surprise.

I've been fairly lucky about only running into scams either after I'd already heard about them, or when I wasn't desperate enough to go for it despite the risks of how it was presented. The whole Nigerian Prince thing, as an example. The first time I ran across it, it seemed like a really bad idea, if it was legitimate at all, and I wasn't desperate enough to risk anything for hope. It wasn't long before it became known as a scam for sure, so the next time I got one of those emails, not only was I aware, but the second email would have shown or to be a scam what with being from an entirely different email address and not saying anything about following up.

I received a friendship request on Facebook from a friend, picture matched, 30 common friends, so I accepted. Next day he wrote me, that he was sick of strep, but now is fine, I said sorry, then he asked "have you applied for the NEH government fund? they help people that do social labor". As I do some kind of social labor I asked what was that, he asked me to contact the NEH official, this second guy asked my address to check if I was a potential receiver, I gave my address, he said "yes, you can apply" please send me this filled form. I got suspicious, went back and asked my friend "have you contacted Rose again? the consultant we met at Berlin?". He answered, "no, no further contact with her". We have never been together in Berlin or known any Rose. So, I reported the fake account to facebook, contacted my friend and let him know about the fake so he can also report it, and adviced him to notify the other 30 common friends on the list.

Nice idea, scammers! Weeding out what works and doesn't with this feedback! But it won't work on meeeeeee

My RuneScape account got rinsed because of my teenage stupidity in the early 2000's, learned a very valuable lesson and haven't been scammed since.

I got lured for my bandos armor back in the day, I stopped playing for a couple of years after that one

I was a teenager and sold an old iPod Touch on eBay, first time I’d ever sold anything on there. The buyer reached out and told me she wanted to mail straight to her son who was deployed in Nigeria. I didn’t know any better, so I put it in the mail. As soon as I did, they cancelled the order, and I had no recourse. Of course eBay was no help. Ruined my day, for sure, but in the grand scheme of things, not a huge price to pay to learn that lesson.

In college I lost one of my jobs and knew I needed another one fast or I wouldn't be able to make rent. I spammed my resume on Indeed and Monster.

I got an email offering an IT-adjacent job in town. It was Saturday and they said I could stop by in a few weeks to fill out the paperwork or we could do it over the phone and start Monday. I called so I could get my first paycheck before the end of the month. We eventually got to her asking for my Social Security number and I froze.

I realized this could be a scam, but I was really desperate. I tried to think of a way to test them, so I said that I just realized I would be unavailable during certain hours, would that still be okay? She said she had to put me on hold to talk to the manager. After a while she came back and said it should work, but I would have to discuss the specifics with my supervisor once I started.

That sounded real to me. If it was a scam surely she would have just immediately said my schedule was fine, right? I gave her my SSN. She said I was ready to go and to have fun on Monday. I got there and it was just a parking lot. Couldn't get a response via phone or email.

A couple months later I found out someone across the country had used my SSN and I had to freeze my credit.

The problem is you have to give your SSN for legitimate employers as well. It is mind-bogglingly stupid that there's a magic number you have to keep secret and also have to give to everyone to participate in modern economy.

Moving into a new neighborhood with my girlfriend. We each lived in different parts of town and worked different schedules, so each arranged for separate moves. I had just finished unloading my stuff. Friendly neighbor walked over to say hello. We started chatting. Nice guy.

At some point, he mentioned something about having to head home for a pizza party. Checked his wallet and he was short. We all know where this is heading so I'll skip to the end. It only cost me $40. Never saw him again.

Lesson learned.

When I was younger I read somewhere “If you give someone $20 and never see them again, it was probably worth it.” Accounting for inflation I think that perfectly fits your situation.

I moved into a new place, there was a tenant in private suite downstairs.

We hung out here and there and I fronted him for a couple restaurant meals over a few weeks.

When I started asking for him to pay me back he laughed and said no, you shouldn't give money to strangers.

I let the landlord know, he didn't care, we stopped talking and I eventually moved out.

Lol, I'd rather be a nice person and short $40 than a jerk to every new friendly person I met.

Couple years ago I won a scholarship to a college in Germany, for the carreer I had always wanted to work in but couldn't practice it, as it just doesn't exist in local colleges. I was born and bred in the third world, and still live here; I thought my luck was finally turning around. I'd be able to maybe have a better future, doing what I really wanted instead of just what I was good at.

One night as I was overthinking ish, I decided to look for everything relevant about the college. It was a scam college. No certifications, and the owners had recently been in hot waters due to money laundering. I had everything ready to hop on a plane.

So one summer while me and my cousin were broke and bored, we decided to pimp out her feet as she has crazy long toes and apparently some foot fetish dudes enjoy that niche.

I set up an Instagram, we decided that I would be the manager and media representative (AKA answer the messages on the account for her) and she would provide the goods (long toes)

One dude started messaging the account praising her toes and I would of course be as courteous as possible. Soon enough we got him to place an order. Only problem was, he only used cashapp to send money, something not available in our country, which should have stopped us initially but we tried finding a workaround.

Where we (or I) fucked up? He said he wanted to see the video before sending any money.

I, a dumbass, sent the video.

Never heard back from him.

Thankfully the video wasn't even of significant production value (very clearly an amateur job) and the only thing sacrificed was the dignity of my cousin's toes.

Safe to say that discouraged us and we haven't attempted to do that again since.

Elsewhere in this thread....

"My cousin pimped it my toes online and I never saw a cent!"

And also “man, those toes weren’t even that long. Im glad I didn’t waste a cent on that tug.”

How dare you. Her toes are so long I've mistaken them for fingers in some weirdly posed pictures

In high school, i was watching a movie online free and got a popup from the FBI. I panicked and closed instead of paying the $99. After the panic cooled, I was so glad my panic response is running away. Clearly a spam popup

In the early 2000s, I bought a book for someone from amazon.com. I'd had good experiences with Amazon a few years earlier in the late 90s when it worked like a normal store - you pay Amazon and they send you the book you ordered. Little did I know that Amazon had since become a 'marketplace' where they let any old scammer list, take your money, and not send anything. After a couple of months with no book arriving, luckily I was able to charge back and get the money back from the bank.

Purchasing my first home, apparently all info regarding the sale is public information. Companies scrape or buy this data and then spam your mailbox with various extra services. In my case, it was mortgage premium insurance or something like that. Anyways, the letter I received in the mail went something like this: "You forgot something important regarding your home purchase". I don't remember the exact words, but it was something like that.

I'm a first time home buyer and I am trying to stay on top of things. Of course, because they are able to get all the information regarding the sale. It looks legit, they have my name, address, loan number, loan amount, the bank serving the loan and everything. I call to make sure everything is alright and fortunately they didn't answer. I took the extra time to look up what mortgage premium insurance even was and that is how I came across the fact that it may be a scam.

Anyways, they call me back eventually and by this time I am on to them. I ask some questions regarding their company and the entire time they keep repeating the name of the bank that is serving my loan, but refuse to give me the name of their company. After a bit more back and forth they finally let it slip that they are from some unrelated insurance company to which I decline their offer. I wanted to curse them out, but I just wasn't raised that way.

Edit: A lot of people don't take online privacy seriously. Usually going whats the harm. I was never really comfortable with it to the point of apathy, but I was a bit lax at times. This experience made me find out first hand what the harm of everyone having access to your data is.

When I was about 16 I was walking past a nightclub as some guys were packing up a van outside. One of them called out to me and started telling me a story about how they were fitting out the club with a new sound system and had some surplus speakers. They asked if I wanted to take them off their hands. Really, I wanted to go and research them first, but this was in the olden days before the entire internet was in your pocket. They showed me the brochure and manual, I gave them £200 cash, and they drove me home in the van with the speakers. On the journey I started to get suspicious and got them to drop me a few roads over from my actual house. Lugged the speakers home by hand, started researching them and found it was a common scam. The units themselves were totally fake and from what others had said were a fire hazard. Police weren't interested as I had given the money freely. I had a buddy take them to the dump in his van. I spent quite a while researching who was behind it and ended up with the details of the "company" manufacturing the units in a workshop in London. I then spent a few weeks having fun prank calling them with various soundboards (Arnie was the best!). I made my peace with the whole scenario by framing it as an overpriced, but entertaining subscription to a guilt-free prank call experience.

Oh yeah, the old "white van speaker scam", I've heard of that, there's some interesting YouTube videos about it.

I'm still waiting for my $1000 from Bill Gates for passing on his e-mail :(

To my eternal shame, that really happened. I was young, gullible and stupid..
I guess there are worse ways to learn not to be so trusting.

One time when I was in middle school I started playing RuneScape, and there was this helpful guy hanging out in the starting area. He told me he could get me better gear if I followed him. He took me to the wilderness and killed me and stole all my stuff. I didn’t really know anything about the game so I thought that without my precious starting gear I would be lost, so I started a new account.

And then once I had played a lot and understood the game better, I made a bunch of sets of steel armor and food and I hung out in the starting area and gave it out for free to new players. Because fuck that guy. I decided I would take his evil and turn it into kindness.

I honestly don’t know what he had to gain, the starting gear is worthless. Maybe he just liked fucking people over.

I remember having the same thing happen to me in RS

A few decades ago I got a letter (snail-mail even) that my domain was expiring soon and asking if I wanted to continue. I signed into the link given and paid a small amount, only to realize I hadn't even registered my domain with that registrar in the first place. I locked my domain to prevent a transfer, but obviously the money were lost.

I had a scam that netted me in no change in money whatsoever.

These scammers offer you this "you'll rate these stuff on sites and we'll give you money", after completing a first batch and they give you some money, they'll try to get the victim to believe they are legit. After believing that you're trusting them enough, they pull the ponzi card "for next missions pay us 30-1000$ amount; you'll recieve double after doing them".

I got 30$ from them in total so I sent 30$ knowing it was a scam to see what they would do; of course they blocked me. I was expecting them to try to get more money out of me, appearently they're satisfied with getting their bait back.

Curious what would have happened if you just stopped at $30 up (also remember, $ before the number; ¢ after)

Was the $30 paid into your account, or in the form of a check or something?

Imagine if it was check, and it bounced a week later and OP never realized, living his whole life thinking he didn't get scammed.

Many years ago, before I'd heard of the Nigerian prince scam, someone emailed me asking for help to transfer 180 million out of an African country. I had no reason to think this wasn't a genuine (if slightly dodgy) foreign national trying to involve random internet weirdos in a scheme to raid his country's treasury.

I wrote back saying "sorry, wrong address" because I ain't fuckin' with Inland Revenue.

Pig butchering romance scam on Tinder. Matched with a pretty girl. Our conversation felt genuine. Even had a short video call. But things were feeling a bit too good to be true, but I went on to see where things were going.

Saw through the scam once she started offering helping with cryptocurrency investment, so I didn’t lose anything.

What does that have to do with pork products?

As the other person said. The metaphor is that you trick the person into making small investments first into a fake cryptocurrency app, and then over time make bigger and bigger investments. Like feeding a pig.

When the victim has made a large investment (the pig is well fed), cut all connection and run away with all the money (the butchering).

It’s a scam that targets emotionally vulnerable people and can go on for many weeks.

It's apparently a reference to fattening a pig before the slaughter. Basically, they trick you into feeding their crypto-pig before running off with all the pork.

I learned about Pump and Dump the hard way. 🤷‍♂️

Rough times when you're forced to go at a sketchy gas station 😖

What is this? Breast milk when drinking alcohol??

It’s an old scam classically done with penny stocks and in modern times with crypto. Scammer buys up a whole bunch of garbage investments, cold calls a bunch of inexperienced investors and gets them to buy in (the pump), the price of the investment shoots up, and the scammer sells all their shares before the price collapses (the dump.)

It’s actually illegal, but people still get away with it.

got a phone call that I owed money on some loan that I had taken out like 10 years earlier. they had enough information correct to make me actually believe I might have done it (I'm a former junkie, and did a lot of dumb fucking things to get money, plus decent sized holes in my memory).

I was planning on doing research before sending money, but as soon as I explained exactly how the conversation had gone to a friend of mine, they were like "that's a scam". and as soon as they set it, it was so fucking obvious too.

I'm a lot less inclined to make fun of people who get phished or social engineered

When I was switching careers I looked into one of the IT schools. They looked nice and promised me a decent job with decent pay. In exchange, I'd need to pay a percentage of my future salary. I said ok, and signed the papers.

Little did I know they offered a course that was available for free and "exams" that were conducted by students that have finished one chapter more. Saw a lot of bullying and left this mess before finishing it without paying a dime.

Got a job that actually lied in between the career I pursued previously and the career that was offered by this "school". In some sense they've helped me, and to this day I'm ashamed that I haven't paid them anything.

I also took an airport taxi that costed me ten times a usual cost.

My mother-in-law straight up bought the Nigerian Prince scam hook, line and sinker.

My MILs partner bought gift cards for Rod Stewart who messaged him on FB.

  1. Bought a timeshare in Vegas. Never used it. Paid the mortgage and maintenance fees for a few years then said fuckem and just stopped. Such a scam. They went out of business during the 2008 recession and it eventually fell off of our credit reports.

  2. Sold cutco knives in college (MLM). Perfectly fine product but overpriced and they basically get you pester all of your family and friends. I paid for the sample products myself. Made the biggest sale to my parents. Mostly just embarrassing.

  3. I bought speakers out a van like some other commenters. Probably paid too much, they sounded good and I used them for at least 10 years.

Had a lapse of judgement once and sent one of those 2FA passcodes sent to me via SMS to a shady guy on Craigslist. This was back when 2FA was still in the process of becoming ubiquitous, I do not believe I had seen one before that point.

I believe the only thing it allowed them to do was register a Google Talk number in my account's name. I immediately dissociated my account from the number after this interaction (strangely, you could not actually cancel the number, only disown it, so I guess the scammer still got what they wanted anyway) and changed my account password for good measure.

I've also bought many bootleg collectors items off of Ebay. Though, each time I've done so was fully knowing the listings were lying, and still wanting the bootleg garbage anyway.

When I was a teen looking for a job, I checked the classified section of the newspaper. Saw a job post I thought I could do and called them. Ended up giving them some of my info, and maybe my social security number, don't remember. All I know it I put them on hold to ask my parents a question about something, and they said "anybody can put things in the paper". That's when I learned that scammers just post their shit in public with little to no consequence.

Rush my passport by FedEx. I usually never get scammed but I assumed FedEx, at an in person location, wouldn't just rob you.

Thankfully I was able to get my 1k$ back by doing some extremely convoluted shit on reddit.

Why would it have even cost $1k to begin with?

We needed the passports really soon, I believe it was the 2 week expedited service

Two I can think of, luckily neither was that bad.

Firstly I got impatient and bought a new DSLR camera kit off eBay, thinking I would save money and get a good deal. It came with two decent lenses, supposedly, and a bunch of other accessories. Very highly rated seller.

After I made the purchase, I get a message to expect a phone call from such-and-such number. Strange, I thought. They call and immediately I can tell it's a bait-and-switch. They tell me what they're going to send, but it's not what was in the listing. Only one lens, instead of two, and some other shenanigans like substituting inferior brands and cheap shit. I called them out and said either you deliver what was promised in the listing, or I'm opening a dispute, and it won't be a good look that you tried to change the deal over the phone.

Anyway I got what was listed, but overall it was a disappointment. Grey market items from overseas, not official US licensed gear, so I had no warranty. But I ended up paying as much or more than if I had walked into a local shop. It wasn't counterfeit, but just left a bad taste in my mouth. The seller disappeared from eBay not long after that...

Second time: I received one of those emails with a password in the subject. It looked familiar, and was in fact an (old) password I had used. Someone took a hacked DB and just fired off countless emails with the passwords to the matching email addresses. But the tone of the email was what spooked me. It said, I have had full access to all your emails, I have figured out how to reset accounts and hacked into your webcam and have some very interesting photos. Either you pay this amount to this bitcoin address or I send the photos to all your contacts and your life will be ruined.

In the moment, I panicked like oh shit this is legit. Even though I couldn't imagine what photos they referred to, it was still scary being blackmailed. I thought about it, discussed with some people, and they helped calm me down. After a few days, I realized it must be a scam. It was so generic. Surely if it was real, they would mentioned specifics... my name, or what I looked like, or some other unmistakable details.

Over the years, I received a number of other variations with the same jist, and different passwords (my email address was in several major leaks in mid-2000s). I'm glad I didn't fall for that shit, regardless of how serious it seemed in the moment.

Second time: I received one of those emails with a password in the subject. It looked familiar, and was in fact an (old) password I had used. Someone took a hacked DB and just fired off countless emails with the passwords to the matching email addresses. But the tone of the email was what spooked me. It said, I have had full access to all your emails, I have figured out how to reset accounts and hacked into your webcam and have some very interesting photos. Either you pay this amount to this bitcoin address or I send the photos to all your contacts and your life will be ruined.

I got one of those once. They were demanding that I send them bitcoins. I knew it was a scam because I never used a computer with a webcam while doing anything that would have provided them interesting pictures. I didn't know how to buy bitcoins anyway so I was just like "welp, if that turns out to be real enjoy looking at my nudes family and friends". I look good naked anyway.

I got one of those, and they claimed to have hacked my webcam, and knew what porn I was watching, etc.

I have a webcam, but I only plug it in when I absolutely have to attend a virtual meeting. Otherwise it's stored in a drawer.

I once changed power company based on a phone seller (stupid, I know).

They were promising all kinds of savings but in the end they ended up costing MORE than my previous one AND make it almost impossible to get out of the fraudulent deal.

I eventually managed to get out of it though, and since they pissed off a shitload of other people too, that company doesn't do business in my country at all anymore. And of course I've hung up on every telemarketer since then.

One of those near-number ones where you're trying to call customer service and you get a scam instead. Something about a free cruise. Fortunately I came to my senses, the operator was very slick and kept redirecting me away from things that would make me think twice.

I got one of those once. Tried wasting their time but they weren’t having any of it. Wanted to get straight to the sale?? of this supposed cruise I won. Wanted my credit card number. They thought they had me in the bag, but I had a card up my sleeve. See, a lot of credit cards and credit card systems have these dummy card numbers you can enter to test the system. The POS will recognize the card number as valid and try to run the charge without flagging it as an invalid number. I slowly read a couple of these to them with it coming back denied each time. Kept trying over and over, LOL. “I don’t understand! I have lots of money in that account! Let’s try again, I’ll read it a bit slower this time.” Hahaha

Shortly after turning 18 I was offered a commission job selling Kirby vacuum cleaners with a fairly large guaranteed weekly pay. I product was high quality and the people interviewing were calm, well mannered and assured that we would absolutely not be using any pressure tactics for the sales.

Day 1 we're taught about how to demo the machine and get to tag along for a couple scheduled sales

Day 2 we're taught how to pressure entry into a home for door to door sales demos...

Day 7-ish a friend of the boss joins the group who is super high pressure and boss gets excited to immediately move that direction

After 2 weeks it was clear that this was exactly the opposite of what I'd signed up for (including the lack of guaranteed pay) so I left in search of something better.

Somebody on RuneScape back in the early 2000s threatened to report me if I didn't tell them my password and so I reluctantly told them and immediately got locked out of my free, low level account :⁠-⁠(

I've never fallen for bad scams luckily but I fall for little ones sometimes. Like once I was entering the subway in a country where I didn't speak the language and this guy coming the other way said the trains were cancelled, so I asked how do I get to X place, and he's like "Oh, my friend has a taxi company, come with me and I'll sort you out". I was just about to follow him when I came back to my senses. Obviously there was nothing wrong with the trains and he was trying to fleece a tourist... or kidnap a woman, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Indian car insurance is expiring call around 2010. That was still kinda novel at the time. But before I read off my debit card number, I asked what model car I had. They hung up and I was saved.

I got ripped off for $100. I was on Haight street in San Francisco and a guy offered me acid. I said no thanks, but I am looking for some hash. He said no problem, led me around the block and then said he needed the money first and he'd be right back with the hash. He pressed a baggie full of "acid" into my hand as collateral. Twenty minutes later, he hadn't returned and I inspected the baggie and it was full of little pieces of (not blotter) paper.

I mean, did you try them? It probably was a scam, but acid doesn't HAVE to be on blotter paper.

Nah it was pretty obvious to me. Dude was hustling. I ended up meeting another kid down there who ran around all night selling "haighths" of weed I had brought from Humboldt, until I had made my money back.

World Games Inc. (A pyramid scheme originating in Australia, billed as selling stock in an online gambling site)
A few friends recommended that I joined. I probably would have if I wasn't already broke.

When i was a kid i've fallen into thoses fakes instagram accounts of celebrities asking you to call a number to get an iphone

Wanted to sell my ps4 cause I wanted something else, nearly fell for a scam on offerup.

I don't care what anyone says, the first time they encountered "You're the 1 millionth visitor" they clicked on it unless they'd heard about it before.

For most of us netizens though, it's so long ago that we consider everyone gullible who clicks on it while denying to ourselves that our first time is just further back than it is for most.

But those ads did not really do much besides being annoying. I've never heard of anyone who went through those ads and continued - because, 99% of the time, it redirected to some shady site that absolutely didn't play into the millionth customer shebang.

Right, this is of the "gotten close to falling for" type.

I mean, if one is gullible enough to click the ad might aswell check the porn behind it 🤷

Didn't fall for it but one time I was recruited to be a secret shopper. They mailed me a cheque for 6,000 dollars with instructions to deposit the money into my chequing account and use it to make a money transfer with Western Union.

Once I got over the initial shock of the money I did some googling and found out how the scam worked. The troubling thing is that I was communicating with my parents the whole time and they never once clued in that what was happening was suspicious.

How does the scam work?

I'm not entirely sure how cheques work being that I've not used one in about 15 years, but I'd imagine they give a cheque from an account with no money. Because cheques are awful the money will appear in your account for a time period by which you are given the illusion of getting legit money. They ask you to buy something like jewellery or gift cards and ask for it back at the end, maybe letting you keep a bit of it for yourself. A while goes by and the cheque bounces, which means you're then on the hook for the cost of everything you purchased and the scammer gets a ton of free items that they can then sell on.

so the check is bad, but it takes several days for the bank to notice apparently. and for some reason, when they do finally notice, it's your problem not theirs?

there are several ways this one could have worked, depending on the next step.

the typical scam is: the scammer sends a check for way more than they're supposed to, then they ask the victim to refund the difference, but the check was bad. by the time the victim figures out the check has bounced, the scammer's got the money that the victim "refunded".

in this case, likely the potential victim would either have been directed to a storefront that's affiliated with the scammer, where they can sell you $6,000 worth of junk. then the check bounces, and they have all the money you just spent.

or, they send you to real jewelry stores to buy real gold and diamonds, and you don't notice the check has bounced until after you've mailed them away.

99.99% it's a refund scam. The cheque was probably designed to bounce.

Almost gave my credit card to a "verification service" on grinder for "safety" on it.

A bank tried to sell me a pension fund contract. Luckily, I know my math and found out that it was so bad that I'd call it a scam.

Didn't fall for it, but I got hit with an attempt at a pig butchering scam a week or so ago.

It was fun. They texted, I acted like I knew them, and I think that they eventually got frustrated because I kept agreeing that I remembered them very well, and that it wasn't a 'wrong number', oopsie I sent a photo to the wrong person tee-hee.

I almost bought Bitcoin.

Ha! I mined bitcoin before I figured out it was a scam. That was in the early days, though, so mining bitcoin consisted of leaving my mid-range gaming machine on with the Bitcoin client running 24/7 for a couple of weeks until I lost interest and getting about 1/20th of a bitcoin out of it.

I still have it to this day. I suppose I could find some poor sucker willing to trade actual money for it. They could add it to whatever bag they're already holding.

I considered it, back in the early days. I was impressionable and thought whatever the weirdos on 4chan were talking about was at least interesting (like... 06 to 12 maybe.) One of my friends was mining 100 percent. I think he probably sold his coins long before it spiked, and I suspect that was how he funded his college education

I bought a premium airsoft gun at a outdoorsman show that advertised as >300 FPS. It was more like 30 FPS when I got it home. Really sucked, was like months worth of allowance and shoveling money.

Girlfriend will quit cigarettes for you.

It took me a while, but you're saying the girlfriend said she'd quit smoking for you, and the scam was that she lied?

Pretty much.

I see this is an unpopular comment but that happens.

My girlfriend was a smoker when I met her. She stopped for a time, but took it up again when visiting family.

She won't stop for me, but says she will try again on the date of her father's death.

She has four brain aneurysm but still smokes away.

On the plus side it keeps me busy and creative maintaining a system of smart switches, thermostats, motion detectors etc to run positive ventilation or vacuum when she enters the house or the smoking room.

It's just hard knowing that even though you're married, you take second place to a dead father and a pack of cig's.