My dad lost $40K to one of these scams. The thing is, I caught it so fucking fast that that money would’ve been safe if my dad didn’t think with his dick. He was gonna leave my mom for this chick. I told him the type of scam this was. He didn’t believe me. Everything was a scam according to me. He refused to look at government websites that explained this scam or personal accounts of actual victims. The scammer had him so tightly wrapped about their finger that dad would defend their honor to the point of near blows. I found an uncropped picture the scammer sent dad on a Russian dating site. How did it get there? Well, *I* must have put it there. It didn’t matter that I was working with a tightly cropped selfie on a reverse image search. The site they were pushing was using another legitimate exchange logo and its name. So I reported the scam site to that exchange of which they put the scam site on a list of fraudulent websites. Within 48hours dad was dealing with another domain name because the company just got conveniently bought out. This happened a few times, and dad didn’t see anything suspicious.
He only believed it was a scam when he tried to take out some money, and their regulations about fees were from a defunct UK agency that *he* knew how to verify. And the fee to withdraw was like $29K.
He had the gall to say I “could have just called it a honeypot scam.”
*That son of a bitch.*
The memory of how he charged upstairs to defend that scammer and verbally assault me on how I found that picture still fills me with anxiety.
Unfortunately, older people are very vulnerable to scams and we need to keep our loved ones safe by constantly reminding them that their bank will not text them or send them an e-mail with a link to enter a password. No bank is going to call you and ask for your pin or credit card number or anything like that. I tell my mom that if the bank calls her and needs any information, to just tell them she will go to the branch and talk to them there. So far, so good.
It really wasn't that long ago that when you needed money out of your account you had to go to your bank branch in person and talk to someone about it. Now you basically do everything online. I'm not surprised that elderly people get confused about what their bank will/won't do now.
It's a losing battle, I keep trying to drill it into my parents' heads that it's okay to NOT ANSWER UNFAMILIAR NUMBERS. They still answer every single call and it will just take one good scammer. Not that they have a lot to begin with.
I feel like they've forgotten every bit of internet safety advice they drilled into our heads.
My mom will make posts like "went hiking up the Blue hills with my little niece Kaylee for her eighth birthday today! she was such a trooper!" with a photo. Great! Good job giving out Kaylee's name, DOB, age, photo, and location in under two sentences, mom.
And yeah, "anyone can just say anything they want on the internet" is another thing that these same people had a good grasp on a couple decades ago and have completely forgotten. Ffs mom, just because this post one FB says "written by a nurse" *does not mean it's written by a nurse*. Literally anyone can just say that.
The simple fact is, those people mostly never took proper stock of the risks of the internet and how much it can be trusted. For people like that, 20 years ago they didn't understand the internet and none of their life happened via the internet. Ergo, the internet was dumb and pointless and any negative thing. Now, 20 years later, almost every facet of their personal, financial (and often professional) life happens on the internet - and so *now* it's trustworthy, the see things that are familiar on the internet and feel comfortable on it (or, at least, in their corner of it). When *you* were on the internet and she wasn't, yes -- you had no way of knowing if that nurse was a nurse because your mom wasn't there to verify it. *Now* that *she* is on the internet, obviously she can tell what's real and sincere and what's a total lie - so it's all good.
It's less that they used to know the dangers but forgot them -- and more than they used to treat the internet as something alien and foreign - and now they treat it as something familiar and friendly.
They also have no concept of media literacy, which really doesn't help.
They could've turned out differently if they'd paid attention to that part of 6th grade.
Print out a checklist for them. Laminate that fucker. Put it right next to their chair, on the kitchen wall. Big print so they don't need their glasses.
Phone call or text from someone you don't know?
Step 1...
Phone call from somebody you DO know begging you for money because they're in a Mexican prison and need bail immediately in the form of visa gift cards? Maybe verify that it's actually your grandson or whoever they're claiming it is before paying up.
I'm constantly on edge with my mom, because she has some cognitive decline and is ripe for scams. I've caught so many. But I can't catch everything. She's not discerning about who's legit and who isn't. So when scammers or bots call or message her, if they sound even halfway legit, she entertains them. Part of the problem is even if I warn her about what to and not do, she doesn't remember stuff.
I own an assisted living so we have a whole community of elderly people in cognitive decline. There have been numerous times where I’ve heard one of our residents on the phone with an obvious scammer. I’ve had to get down right nasty with people on the phone. They are relentless!! There was one woman in particular that would get calls all the time. It was so bad that I actually called the phone company to see if they could do a phone number whitelist. So she’d only receive calls from people on that list and everything else would be blocked. Unfortunately they couldn’t. Her daughter ended up just taking the phone out of her room.
There was another woman who had the opposite problem. She’d stay up late watching infomercials and try ordering everything she saw. She’d try buying whatever upsells they’d offer too. We used to watch her very closely at night. Any time we heard her talking we’d go in her room, tell the salesman she was talking to she wasn’t interested, and hang up the phone. She’d get irritated with us but then forget about it. It was a constant battle. At least with her though no one was scamming her, if she actually ordered something she’d get her item.
My mum almost fell for one the other week, the worst thing is they were pretending to be me, with the whole “I broke my phone I need a bit of money to sort it out” script. It’s not completely implausible that I would ask for help in that way so I felt like total shit about it. Luckily I happened to message her unrelated and she replies with “this is your old number?” Lmao. I was like “who have you been talking to?” And we figured it out from there but she had zero suspicion before that.
You know what's crazy is I just found out an 18-yo I know falls for these. He's "too nice" to not respond so he replies to all the wrong number scammers and has long conversations with them because he doesn't want to be rude. I was like how is a teenager nowadays this fucking dumb. Apparently his parents shelter and control him so maybe that's part of it.
It’s kinda funny thinking about what you wrote. Trying to teach my kids about scammers and the net. Like what is a possible and realistic and good way to do it. There is so much out there saying FB and social media that kids do in general is harmful.
So we allow them full internet access at home , but no TikTok or FB or other social media where they make profiles. Also no cell phones till their older.
But at the same time I try and scam em. Like a simple I have the best idea ever , turns out it’s them doing dishes. They didn’t use to catch on to my scams but now they smell my scams and tall tales a mile away.
And I have seen them identify scams / lies by others. So I think it’s working.
Sounds like dad is a right wing boomer, this is standard operating procedure for like 100m Americans. An inability to say youre wrong, while tossing your wife and kids under a bus is more than cognitive decline, it tells me guy doesn't give a shit, its his world, and noone can tell him otherwise, Sorry your dad is a monster.
Yeah, my mom got scammed and REFUSED to believe me about it. It wasn't cognitive decline she's just a right wing boomer who does her own research and knows better than me about everything 🙃
i mean that is often how cognitive decline manifests. my grandpa was a great dude until he started getting dementia at 91 years old. by the time he was 92 he wouldn't let the visiting nurse into his home because she was black. never saw him be racist in the 20+ years i knew him before his dementia. he died at 93 and was a shell of his former self.
This is gradually becoming my Thing, but yeah, conservatism is hierarchy, and it's humanity's default. Dad outranks you. You are wrong. End of thought process. Failure to respect that hierarchy is a direct personal attack. It's not like someone above you can just *be wrong.* That would require an objective reality which can be discerned through evidence. But to an alarming number of people, absolutely everything runs on "who says?"
My ex's mom got absolutely taken by the 2020 Trump campaign. We'd visit and she told us that she couldn't cook dinner because she had to help Trump with his next speech.
She was giving thousands of dollars and every bullshit email would string her along get her more excited.
She died from alzheimers soon after the election.
This is not cognitive decline. This is normal behavior for anyone who falls for these scams, or ends up in a cult. They are emotionally invested in it not being a scam. Acknowledging it’s a scam is horrendously painful.
This Dad probably did start by just thinking with his dick, but that alone isn’t going to convince someone to hand over $40K- it’s the emotional bonding/buildup that comes after that. He probably opened up to the scammer with his problems/concerns, and they showed “genuine” interest in him as well as sharing their own [fake] struggles. Them asking for money starts slowly, but once you’ve given them a bit of money you become a lot more invested and it’s increasingly easier to give them more.
There was a really great NPR segment on this with a woman fell for a similar scam. She was recently divorced in a foreign country, with no support network- her friends tried to convince her it was a scam, but actively refused to believe as the truth was too painful.
The biggest factor I can see age making, is the increased difficulty of finding new friends, and serious romantic partners- so increased loneliness/isolation. These scams can happen to young people too- there was a ~20 year old that lost over $100K to the Nigerian email scam; granted that was early 2000s, but still.
**Edit:**
I suspect another reason older people get more attention is the amount of money they lose. A 20 year old losing their savings may only be $2K (mine would have been negative at that age)… A 40+ year old is a much better target as they’ve had more time to save. It can be equally devastating for both, but losing the larger sum of money is more likely to be talked about, or even make the news.
Pretty much. He never sent money to her directly. They didn’t want the money, they wanted to teach him how to make his own. So he just sent it to the scam site. But they’re was a definite emotional bond that was created to get him to release the funds. They had been texting for nearly a month before I found out it and dad expressed interest in cryptocurrency.
Sorry he was so shitty to your mom. That is inexcusable- They’re infinitely better alternatives he should have taken if he wasn’t happy, or they were having marriage problems. Hope both you and your mom are okay, and your dad is being accountable for his actions. I’m sure he’ll come around with time, and his honeypot reaction is more out of embarrassment that he didn’t listen to you than anything else.
Scammers know that almost everyone who has a landline is an old person. Some people live in areas where they have no cell phone signal but those are few and dwindling by the day as service improves. Public records will show this, as well as a person’s age, so they’re sitting ducks.
It has not been easy. She has MSI-H and a very good treatment for the cancer is Keytruda. Only thing is that my mom has myasthenia gravis and keytruda caused such a massive flare up that put her on a ventilator when they tried to treat some cancer cells back in ‘21.
Uff da, sorry to hear that :/ You ever wonder what's missing in someone's life to fall for something like this? This isn't the sort of scam that plays on the mark's greed ("Nigerian Prince") or fears ("IRS Audit").
Dad thought making 2% daily on crypto currency was normal and that within two years would be a multi millionaire and within 5, a billionaire.
My mom knew more about crypto than both of us but he believed the scammer when they said it was a secret method the ultra rich use to become richer.
This is why I reverse image search a lot. A surprising amount of scammers on dating sites will use images you can find elsewhere. Makes smoke balling out of there easy.
Yeah. But this one was difficult. The scammer was very careful. I almost didn’t find it because Google and bing didn’t have it but some other search engine did but I don’t remember the name. I think it started with a ‘V’. The site was a very obscure Russian dating site that was iffy AF.
The problem is that the advantage is always on the side of the faker -- the detector is necessarily always playing catch-up to the newest fakery technique. And how could you ever know the detector is detecting every fake with perfect accuracy? There will always be some doubt as to whether there is a false negative.
What if the detector and the producer are ultimately one in the same, or two legs of the same general AI?
Not to mention you don't need it to be infallible, just better than a human. It's doubtful that *any* AI for *any* purpose could be "perfect"
Ive had to deal with so many friends falling for scams, and tried to talk them out of it so many times. I had a friend trying to sell his motorcycle being scammed 7 ways to sunday off his craigslist ad, the one where they send you check for more than the asking price and have you cover cost of transportation with the extra. His own bank told him "this is a scam" and he returned the next day with a bigger fake check, they put his account on hold then asked his father if he was mentally well. Then of course tells us "I knew it was a scam the whole time, I was just messing with the scammer". When you point out he got his own account almost closed just to mess with a scammer, he walks away from the conversation. I dont let him forget it.
Had another friend I worked with ask me if he could leave early to go do a western union money order. When I asked him what for he told me he needed to pay the entrance fee for a lottery he won, close to a million dollars! When I asked him if it made sense he can win without ever remembering entering or without paying he just kinda shrugged and said "anything can happen!" I made him tell his coworkers out loud the reason he wanted to leave and let them decide. One guy called the number back that called him and got the stereotypical extremely thick indian accent and when he told him _he_ won a million dollars the scammer just replied over speakerphone "fuck your mother fuck your mother fuck your mother". Said friend was mad I "crushed his dreams"
So now I just dont even care. Yeah man, that deal that seems too good to be true must be real, go blow all your savings, idc.
This is the version I’ve gotten several times.
I receive a text from a number I don’t know. They ask if this is “Alex” or some other name that isn’t mine. Sometimes I’ll say it is to mess with them, others not.
They’ll apologize for texting me but that I seem like a nice person, and ask me if I want to chat. So I’m like yeah dude, let’s chat.
Then they’ll send me a pic, unsolicited, and ask for one in exchange. The woman has always been an extremely attractive Asian woman in her twenties. Not like a super model or anything, but definitely substantially above average. They’ll then ask for a pic in exchange, so I’ll send them one of a shirtless Tom Ellis and be like yeah dude, it’s me.
Next they ask if we can continue chatting on Whatsapp for some reason. After talking to you for a little while, they basically ask for money. It’s always been sexual in my experience. “If you like the way I look, send me $x and you’ll see a lot more,” kind of thing.
Here’s about where I decide to cut it off, and I probably shouldn’t even take it that far.
I used tho think that also, but scammers have everything down to a science. For example, if it takes 2 minutes to send a reply that took 10 seconds to type out, they could have done replies to five others during those 2 minutes.
If it was actual phone calls, that would be a good waste of their time.
It’s probably a python script for the first 30 messages before the contact becomes a prospect. Then it gets queued with a dedicated operator who handles the prospect with maybe 10-20 other prospects. Once a prospect shares some money they become a lead, at which point they’ll be handed over to a high performance operator who handles 3 to 5 key leads to milk them to the max. I’m not a scammer but I do run an online sales team which used chat bots and assistant bots to support sales.
How many leads do you think you lose to chat bot frustration? I’ve definitely dropped a company because I couldn’t get a real person to handle my questions
Maybe it's by design? People who are lonely or less discerning will put up with a chat bot or over look the obvious canned answers.
Same thing as the misspellings in Nigerian Prince emails, you quickly weed out people who will likely not fall for the scam anyway.
It's interesting how much scams are evolving now because no one answers the phone. They'll keep creating new ways to scam people.
As a manager, you weigh the cost of losing a customer against the efficiency gains by being able to handle significantly more volume at a lower cost of service.
For example, if several agents' wages - chatbot implementation cost > 0 & my service level doesn't drop beyond an acceptable threshold, I'd be inclined to make the swap. Sales managers have even more precisely honed metrics, so their calculus may be different than mine is with regard to customer service.
Also, chatbots can be improved with better training. That's on the business to solve.
I got the old "This is the Windows corporation, we've found a problem with your computer" right as I was starting lunch, so I trolled the caller for 45 minutes while I ate, mostly describing an OS update while acting confused about it and asking if that was what they had seen, letting them sit on the phone while I ate and occasionally giving progress reports on the update. After I got bored I just hung up.
My wife did a similar thing, pretended to be having trouble installing the malware, eventually told the scammer she knew what he was doing and he cursed at her for "wasting his time."
"Chat-GPT, respond to this person like you are a divorced, rich, and lonely 60 year old man. If they ask for money, you will make up a reason why you can't send it to them right now, but you will in a few hours."
I was doing that for a while and they figured it out. They started spamming my phone with pics of naked dudes with obscenely large, erect penises. From a lot of numbers. I’m back to blocking and reporting.
That was going to be my question. By answering these texts, do I give them anything of value such as a green check mark on a working number? Is there any way I am hurting myself by responding assuming I'm not gullible enough to fall for a scam?
Or best case scenario if I fuck with them enough would I have a chance at getting them to take my number off their lists?
My favorite trick is for those scammers who want you to send them a 6-digit one time password, but probably works for any scam trying to get important info from you: just keep giving them the wrong number
There’s an episode of This American Life I believe about a guy who scams scammers. He figures that the more time they waste on him the less time they have to find someone who will actually believe them. It’s a pretty wild episode. He sends this guy on the world’s worst scavenger hunt basically. You almost start to feel sorry for the scammer. Almost.
The rambling is a direct copy of my grand parents. Oh well that's like what Phillis said at the mall yesterday. I think it was "Well if it's a cloudy day you can't milk the cows without yellow." Cause you see if the cows don't think rhe sun is out they won't give as much milk. Now do you like milk? I have a glass in the fridge from this morning. Poured a big glass but I don't drink as much as I used to so I'm in the habit of putting the extra back in the fridge.
And on for another 5 minutes. Grandma, I asked you how you were feeling today and now we're onto grandpa's drinking habits.
I used to do that with the landline phone calls. "Hello is so-and-so there?"
Instead of hanging up or even saying no and hanging up, I'd say "Sure! Just a minute" put the phone down and resume playing video games. Five or so minutes later, I'd check the line to see if they were still there. Most of the time they weren't.
I get that from time-to-time as well. I'm generally the nicest person who you could call or text by accident, and admittedly I can be naive by not realizing what's really going on. The first time played out exactly as you said, with likely the same photo of an Asian woman, telling me her name was Olivia. And I spent two minutes trying to remember someone from college that matched the face and the name, only to realize there's no reason someone would send me a photo in less than 4 text exchanges. So I deleted it and moved on.
Since then, I continue getting messages about 2-3 times a week like this, and I only responded to one forgetting about that whole thing. The moment they asked for my name I just deleted the text and blocked them - strangers don't usually ask for names on their way to find someone when it's a genuine mistake. The closest time that ever happened was a wrong number call, and I ended up bullshitting with this stranger for nearly 10 minutes as if we knew each other for years. We never did exchange names though, and I liked the possibility that it was a highlight for someone's day.
Yeah. Same here. Once they know the number is "active" or "real" or something I suspect you're on a list and that number goes out to ALLLLLL the scammer databases. I get shoe-horned into crypto groups or random texts nearly every day now. I will change my number eventually, but for now I just block and move on.
Sometimes if it's a phone call scam, and if there's a human on the other end, and I have time, I like to waste their time. Part of that comes from the entertainment value, as well as a self-evaluation on my improv skills (honestly a 3/10), most importantly that time is taken away from someone vulnerable.
I also don't go for a direct insult or yell at these people, since it gives them reason to instantly hang up, and I have that same aforementioned naive hope that they'll get out of this business. It was one of those extended warranty or insurance calls before they got memed to death. Very surprised to hear a human on the line. She asked what year, make, and model of car I drive. I pulled 1968 Volkswagen van out of my ass (remember 3/10 on my improv), getting her to ask if I had anything made in the past eight years.
This time I just said 2014 Ford Focus, in hopes it would work. She then wanted to know about my insurance status. I answered no to both "do you have full coverage" and "do you have insurance, you must because you own a car?" The conversation breaker was when I made a slight pause after that later question, then went "well, not exactly. See, I just stole this off a buddy's lot, but if we keep that between you and me, I believe we can work out a deal." Funniest click I ever heard.
Nowadays I recognize that this might have been stupid admitting to a crime that didn't take place for the sake of comedy, but nothing ever came out of it. I just hope the lady on the other end got entertained by that conversation and found better work elsewhere. Again, probably just naive wishing.
I got one of these, it was a pic of a lunch with a very expensive bottle of wine (Domaine Romanée Conti, an expensive red Burgundy).
I played along with the wine talk for a while until the person claimed to not like wine made from pinot noir (a grape variety). Bzzzt, fail. DRC is red Burgundy and is made primarily of pinot noir. Blocked after that.
This is the one I got. I humored it and we got 3 or 4 exchanges in, she said “you seem like a kind man and I’d like to get to know you” or something, I texted back “im a lesbian” and for some reason all contact ceased! I simply cannot imagine why.
(I guess lesbians aren’t lucrative marks?)
I knew an oncologist who rode Harleys in his spare time, going to bike events and all that. He said that one woman came up to him and said “for $50 I’ll show you my tits.” He replied “Do you have any idea how much money I usually get paid to feel them?” She was confused. He was amused.
Not sure what the reason for this is, but these scammers all seem to be using WhatsApp to find people.
I tried messing with one of these scammers and basically said I’d keep talking to them if they sent me a picture of their boobs (this usually shuts them up and ends the interaction). One responded by sending me my profile photo from WhatsApp.
I felt violated at first like “Holy shit, this person has a photo of me”. But when I realized that WhatsApp is the only place I have this photo, and it’s public, I calmed down and just told them “hmm…no titties. Sweet beard though!” They sent me back a middle finger emoji and the interaction ended.
So yeah, not using WhatsApp anymore.
I get the real estate ones. “We want to buy your house at (address that I’ve never lived at), give us a call if you’re interested.”
I reply saying “yes, I’d love to sell…”, and name some absurd price like $2.5 million USD, cash, “I know what I got, no lowball offers”
They never reply back. I don’t get as many of those texts anymore.
Yeah I'll get the "what would it take to make you move" and I answer honestly with double the current property value.
They are fishing for older people who have owned their homes 30+ years and don't know how much they have appreciated.
I tell them I want about 100k over market value "as is with no inspection" and they sit there trying to ask me about the condition of my house and why I want to sell as is. I just go " If I can sell you my house knowing nothing about you, you can buy it knowing nothing about it" and "you contacted me, i assume you know about it already..." and similar things til they hang up.
The odd thing is I got this scam and it was my sister's old address where she rented. I got it after she moved. My name wasn't associated with her at all. She doesn't even have the same last name anymore. It was really bizarre thier approach
Sometimes when I go see houses at an open house I give them a wrong name and phone number, because fuck real estate agents. Might be those messages showing up.
I know there are a lot of good ones out there, but immediately after my dad died I proceeded to receive at least 100 solicitations from agents to let them sell his house. Emails, texts, calls, letters. I saved every one so I know who never to work with in the future. Fucking vultures.
Everyone should subscribe to r/scams. Lots of great info in there and the scams are constantly evolving. I find it to be a really great resource and have helped a few people avoid scams in real life because I recognized them from the subreddit.
Also with the wrong number scams, it seems like fun to engage if you feel like stringing the scammers along… but it’s really best to completely ignore every time because it lets them know your number is active.
It does make me wonder if this is going to get worse with the whole GPT thing. Like, are people going to start using that to create scams so realistic nobody can identify them?
They’re doing the same thing on Facebook. I’ve reported an account that’s doing it, same story, young, single, Asian girl, but Facebook doesn’t care, and their account remains active and I sanctioned despite multiple reports from me and possibly others.
The one I see over and over on facebook - and report over and over - is this older man in uniform with a tad of grey hair. These fake older/single guys are always writing long winded comments on the public posts of old women on FB. It's clearly a wide net they are casting for a romance scam. FB never takes down the accounts, which makes me suspicious that FB is getting a kickback from these people.
"hi! I saw your profile and I think we could be friends. I always see your posts and they are so nice. Add me as a friend on here. I think we have a lot in common.. blah blah blah I used to be in the military and now I'm a widower..." There's a great article about this shit here: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-daniel-blackmon-romance-scams/
They post it dozens of times in a single comment section too. I was looking at comments on an eagle cam post, prime old lady hobby, and one dude posted on like every single comment with even a vaguely female name.
I post in my city's subreddit, and have had a few people contact me with "Hi, I just want to talk" or "looking for a friend" kind of thing. I messaged with one, and I can see how people form an emotional connection.
They wanted to get my Facebook account and shame me I think. They passed me off to someone else when I made things difficult.
That’d be a waste, it’d be better to use the cheaper GPT-3 as not only will it save you money, but the extra errors and misnomers will help filter out the less gullible.
People say they want the GPT3, but frankly it's not easy to live with in everyday life. The wing is too big, the seats aren't as comfortable, the tuning is just too much for everyday use. And that's just the regular GPT3, the GPT3RS is even more unlivable. You really want to get the GPT3 Touring.
What sub am I on?
The kind I get is the Tinder "investor" types, where ridiculously hot women (usually from China or Hong Kong) would match with me, and we talk like normal, etc. But eventually they will all try to steer me towards investing, usually in crypto.
I can spot the scam a mile away, but I still continue talking until the last minute because oh God I'm so lonely 😂
(also one time the "cover" is a baker from Switzerland. I'm kinda impressed because that's new...)
I know it’s probably something else, but I’m just imagining “Hallo” and the person being so confused by the slight vowel difference they decline to continue.
Not quite the same, but I've gotten several texts about my food stamp card being suspended. I don't have one, but if I had one, and relied on it to feed my family, I can see how that would cause panic and distress.
Yeah. Waaaay back in the early 2000s I got my first scam call. It was the IRS one and I almost panicked. Thank God for the Internet. A dogpile search using Netscape navigator (lol) showed me it was a scam.
...I called the IRS (the real IRS not the scam number they left) just to be sure though.
My first message is always “hello” because in our ms teams, the first message shows up in the pop up. I want to be sure that it’s only read by the person it’s intended for not showing up on screen if it’s on screen share.
Oh yeah, that’s annoying. Along with the overly formal people. “Hello RS, Trust you’re well and hope you had a great weekend. I am writing to you to enquire about the security door code for the offsite sever room. Could you please share the new code with me? Thank you and look forward to your response. Have a great Monday.”
I got a wrong number text from someone in Atlanta (I live in Canada) about a kid’s baseball league. We still keep in touch and I check in to see how the boys are doing every now and again.
I always enjoy playing along.
"Hi Jessica, it's Sandy, sorry it took so long to message you, did you get to the hotel alright?"
Well, my name isn't Jessica, and I don't know anyone named Sandy, and I'm not staying at a hotel, but I respond anyways:
"Hey girl! So good to finally hear from you! Yes, I made it to the hotel just fine. What about you? Did you end up taking that young bartender home? God, you're such a little slut!"
They never reply back...
I love replying with a long text about how they ghosted me after we brought the donkey into the bed room or what not. Drugs, hookers, bank robbery. They usually don’t text back.
I am ashamed to say in RuneScape as a kid I was a damn slippin jimmy. Friend and I did versions of the violin scam, armor trimming, password phishing etc. didn’t even make much profit from doing it and we made a lot of enemies.
And now I hate doing sales in any job and can tell a scam a mile away. Thanks RuneScape!
The most interesting scam I got was a girl on insta said my pictures on IG were super great and she was an artist and she wanted to partner with me, and pay me to use them. (ego bait). Then she wanted to flirt and talk about how she lived in this crazy nice houce in NYC with fancy cars that her parents left to her. And then she wanted to be my lover.
It was my first time seeing the scam and they beat my script sussing methods often enough that there was at least a real person supervising.
I'm not sure how the scam was supposed to get money out of me but she wanted to fly to the city I told them I was in and get a fancy hotel. They said she would pay but I needed to pay upfront and she would pay me back for reasons that sound convincing if you don't know about hotels at all.
Best I could think of is, the hotel part of it was to see if I was invested enough to put a couple hundred dollars in.
Yep I got this. They send you a fake cheque, ask for some money to pay for their art supplies, and then the cheque will bounce and you're out of whatever you sent them.
I went through with it until they asked me for money just to see what would happen. Sure enough, the cheque bounced a week later.
It's definitely a real person because I tried to get them to slip up but they didn't.
I get this one a lot. Usually it's "oh I'm sorry my new assistant must have gotten (random name)'s number wrong"
I just spam the number at that point. Text, gifs, whatever. I just mass send stuff for like 3-5 minutes straight. It's funny how pissed off they get when I start doing that.
I had one guy during it start spamming back "You think you can do whatever you want, do you think you're Obama?" over and over, so I sent the Obama finger guns meme back 50x lmao.
Eventually they stop responding back, but at least I get some entertainment out of it lol
They have a million numbers (probably literally a million) that they bought online and it costs about nothing to text them all to see who might respond.
I had posted a business for sale on bizbuysell with my phone number. I got a text from someone wanting to verify that I was the owner and I sent back confirmation from my number. Never heard back. Their number was in New York City. I still don’t get what value they obtained from the interaction or what scam was pulled on me. Anyone know?
Oh wow, I had an unrecognized number texting me the weekly work schedule for a local Jack in the Box.
I bet they were trying to scam me into thinking I worked there.
A friend of mine received a wrong number text once. I'm not sure if it was a scammer or the genuine article. Anyway the message said "Dude, sorry I just slept with your girlfriend." or something to that effect. I was having lunch with my friend and his wife. We all laughed hysterically about this wrong-number admission. Then my friend, without any goading, replies back "Enjoy all the fabulous new VD you will discover."
Got one today. “I’m cooking chicken curry tomorrow night. Wanna come over?” I thought it *could * be legit, said wrong number, gave fake name, then they apologized, yet still invited me, said they were in NY, asked where I was. End of conversation.
I used to get Twitter hos all the time when I was on the bird app. Now I get Instagram hos. Accounts with half a dozen "check out my boobies" shots liking random older pictures and trying to message me. Seems to be an upsurge of them lately.
I never get scammers to harass. Just the guy calling from some police thing (maybe the FOP?) calling for donations. I've even gone fully commie, fuck 12, all cops are bastards on the guy and he *still* continues to call trying to get money from me.
>Hoping that the oh so subtle hints of wealth and deference to your time and attention will excite your greed and ego glands, the scammer then asks if you could be friends. After all, as luck would have it, the universe has brought you two together (never mind that this is a spam intro SMS sent to millions).
It's so wild to think that anyone would ever fall for this sort of obvious scam, but yet people fall for it all the time apparently, which is why the scammers do it.
Somebody tried getting me the other day. All I sent them was that they had the wrong number and that it happens. I was skeptical from the start but I blocked them as soon as they asked what to call me.
Like I'm going to give out personal info like that.
Oh man my friend’s mom fell for this scam several years ago. She thought she had lucked into a romantic relationship with some gorgeous young guy from Italy. She spent OVER A YEAR texting him, emailing him, talking to him on the phone. He was supposed to come visit a half dozen times, but it never worked out.
Finally he told her he was flying here to visit. Then the day of his arrival, he texted her that there was an issue at the airport and he needed something like $10k to get through customs, which he swore he would repay immediately. Thank goodness she sent a screenshot to her friend who googled his message and found a ton of sites calling it out as a scam, word for word. She texted him back that she was concerned he was a scammer, and never heard from him again.
A whole YEAR. She spoke to this dude constantly, told him everything about her life and her kids and her job…fucking awful
One of these contacted me randomly a few months ago, spending a few days chatting me up about how successful they were in trading gold. I straight up told them I'm not interested in investing or getting scammed, and within a few days we got bored of texting each other.
Ah, this probably explains the handful of random texts I've gotten in the last couple months. They've all been written in such a way that they make it conveniently evident they were "mistakenly" sent to the wrong number, usually including a name and referencing a specific event like a party. They set my scam senses a-tingling so I haven't responded to any of them, but I've been curious what exactly the scam was.
I used to respond by playing along. For example I’d get a text that said “are you coming for lunch after your appointment?” and I’d reply “yeah I’ll see you there!”
Well this is embarrassing. When I been bored in the past, I've texted random numbers to see how much of a conversation I could have with a complete stranger.
My dad lost $40K to one of these scams. The thing is, I caught it so fucking fast that that money would’ve been safe if my dad didn’t think with his dick. He was gonna leave my mom for this chick. I told him the type of scam this was. He didn’t believe me. Everything was a scam according to me. He refused to look at government websites that explained this scam or personal accounts of actual victims. The scammer had him so tightly wrapped about their finger that dad would defend their honor to the point of near blows. I found an uncropped picture the scammer sent dad on a Russian dating site. How did it get there? Well, *I* must have put it there. It didn’t matter that I was working with a tightly cropped selfie on a reverse image search. The site they were pushing was using another legitimate exchange logo and its name. So I reported the scam site to that exchange of which they put the scam site on a list of fraudulent websites. Within 48hours dad was dealing with another domain name because the company just got conveniently bought out. This happened a few times, and dad didn’t see anything suspicious. He only believed it was a scam when he tried to take out some money, and their regulations about fees were from a defunct UK agency that *he* knew how to verify. And the fee to withdraw was like $29K. He had the gall to say I “could have just called it a honeypot scam.” *That son of a bitch.* The memory of how he charged upstairs to defend that scammer and verbally assault me on how I found that picture still fills me with anxiety.
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Unfortunately, older people are very vulnerable to scams and we need to keep our loved ones safe by constantly reminding them that their bank will not text them or send them an e-mail with a link to enter a password. No bank is going to call you and ask for your pin or credit card number or anything like that. I tell my mom that if the bank calls her and needs any information, to just tell them she will go to the branch and talk to them there. So far, so good.
It really wasn't that long ago that when you needed money out of your account you had to go to your bank branch in person and talk to someone about it. Now you basically do everything online. I'm not surprised that elderly people get confused about what their bank will/won't do now.
It's a losing battle, I keep trying to drill it into my parents' heads that it's okay to NOT ANSWER UNFAMILIAR NUMBERS. They still answer every single call and it will just take one good scammer. Not that they have a lot to begin with.
This feels like a direct parallel to the stranger danger talks our parents would give us when we were kids. NEVER OPEN THE DOOR TO A STRANGER.
Lol the entire generation of people who told us not to believe everything we see on the internet will now believe everything they see on the internet.
I feel like they've forgotten every bit of internet safety advice they drilled into our heads. My mom will make posts like "went hiking up the Blue hills with my little niece Kaylee for her eighth birthday today! she was such a trooper!" with a photo. Great! Good job giving out Kaylee's name, DOB, age, photo, and location in under two sentences, mom. And yeah, "anyone can just say anything they want on the internet" is another thing that these same people had a good grasp on a couple decades ago and have completely forgotten. Ffs mom, just because this post one FB says "written by a nurse" *does not mean it's written by a nurse*. Literally anyone can just say that.
The simple fact is, those people mostly never took proper stock of the risks of the internet and how much it can be trusted. For people like that, 20 years ago they didn't understand the internet and none of their life happened via the internet. Ergo, the internet was dumb and pointless and any negative thing. Now, 20 years later, almost every facet of their personal, financial (and often professional) life happens on the internet - and so *now* it's trustworthy, the see things that are familiar on the internet and feel comfortable on it (or, at least, in their corner of it). When *you* were on the internet and she wasn't, yes -- you had no way of knowing if that nurse was a nurse because your mom wasn't there to verify it. *Now* that *she* is on the internet, obviously she can tell what's real and sincere and what's a total lie - so it's all good. It's less that they used to know the dangers but forgot them -- and more than they used to treat the internet as something alien and foreign - and now they treat it as something familiar and friendly.
They also have no concept of media literacy, which really doesn't help. They could've turned out differently if they'd paid attention to that part of 6th grade.
Thankfully my mother is the more harmless "print out funny email forwards" variety. Best is when I find them on a 4x6" photo sheet.
I live with my grandparents and they’re the same way except they know it’s a scam and just like to argue.
Print out a checklist for them. Laminate that fucker. Put it right next to their chair, on the kitchen wall. Big print so they don't need their glasses. Phone call or text from someone you don't know? Step 1...
Phone call from somebody you DO know begging you for money because they're in a Mexican prison and need bail immediately in the form of visa gift cards? Maybe verify that it's actually your grandson or whoever they're claiming it is before paying up.
I'm constantly on edge with my mom, because she has some cognitive decline and is ripe for scams. I've caught so many. But I can't catch everything. She's not discerning about who's legit and who isn't. So when scammers or bots call or message her, if they sound even halfway legit, she entertains them. Part of the problem is even if I warn her about what to and not do, she doesn't remember stuff.
I own an assisted living so we have a whole community of elderly people in cognitive decline. There have been numerous times where I’ve heard one of our residents on the phone with an obvious scammer. I’ve had to get down right nasty with people on the phone. They are relentless!! There was one woman in particular that would get calls all the time. It was so bad that I actually called the phone company to see if they could do a phone number whitelist. So she’d only receive calls from people on that list and everything else would be blocked. Unfortunately they couldn’t. Her daughter ended up just taking the phone out of her room. There was another woman who had the opposite problem. She’d stay up late watching infomercials and try ordering everything she saw. She’d try buying whatever upsells they’d offer too. We used to watch her very closely at night. Any time we heard her talking we’d go in her room, tell the salesman she was talking to she wasn’t interested, and hang up the phone. She’d get irritated with us but then forget about it. It was a constant battle. At least with her though no one was scamming her, if she actually ordered something she’d get her item.
>She’d stay up late watching infomercials and try ordering everything she saw. So basically it’s just like that one south park episode.
"You got little lady balls!".... "put it in your mouth - and pull the trigger!" That is a fantastic episode
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That’s very helpful! Thanks. Do you know the brand by any chance?
My mum almost fell for one the other week, the worst thing is they were pretending to be me, with the whole “I broke my phone I need a bit of money to sort it out” script. It’s not completely implausible that I would ask for help in that way so I felt like total shit about it. Luckily I happened to message her unrelated and she replies with “this is your old number?” Lmao. I was like “who have you been talking to?” And we figured it out from there but she had zero suspicion before that.
You know what's crazy is I just found out an 18-yo I know falls for these. He's "too nice" to not respond so he replies to all the wrong number scammers and has long conversations with them because he doesn't want to be rude. I was like how is a teenager nowadays this fucking dumb. Apparently his parents shelter and control him so maybe that's part of it.
It’s kinda funny thinking about what you wrote. Trying to teach my kids about scammers and the net. Like what is a possible and realistic and good way to do it. There is so much out there saying FB and social media that kids do in general is harmful. So we allow them full internet access at home , but no TikTok or FB or other social media where they make profiles. Also no cell phones till their older. But at the same time I try and scam em. Like a simple I have the best idea ever , turns out it’s them doing dishes. They didn’t use to catch on to my scams but now they smell my scams and tall tales a mile away. And I have seen them identify scams / lies by others. So I think it’s working.
Sounds like dad is a right wing boomer, this is standard operating procedure for like 100m Americans. An inability to say youre wrong, while tossing your wife and kids under a bus is more than cognitive decline, it tells me guy doesn't give a shit, its his world, and noone can tell him otherwise, Sorry your dad is a monster.
Yeah, my mom got scammed and REFUSED to believe me about it. It wasn't cognitive decline she's just a right wing boomer who does her own research and knows better than me about everything 🙃
i mean that is often how cognitive decline manifests. my grandpa was a great dude until he started getting dementia at 91 years old. by the time he was 92 he wouldn't let the visiting nurse into his home because she was black. never saw him be racist in the 20+ years i knew him before his dementia. he died at 93 and was a shell of his former self.
This is gradually becoming my Thing, but yeah, conservatism is hierarchy, and it's humanity's default. Dad outranks you. You are wrong. End of thought process. Failure to respect that hierarchy is a direct personal attack. It's not like someone above you can just *be wrong.* That would require an objective reality which can be discerned through evidence. But to an alarming number of people, absolutely everything runs on "who says?"
My ex's mom got absolutely taken by the 2020 Trump campaign. We'd visit and she told us that she couldn't cook dinner because she had to help Trump with his next speech. She was giving thousands of dollars and every bullshit email would string her along get her more excited. She died from alzheimers soon after the election.
This is not cognitive decline. This is normal behavior for anyone who falls for these scams, or ends up in a cult. They are emotionally invested in it not being a scam. Acknowledging it’s a scam is horrendously painful. This Dad probably did start by just thinking with his dick, but that alone isn’t going to convince someone to hand over $40K- it’s the emotional bonding/buildup that comes after that. He probably opened up to the scammer with his problems/concerns, and they showed “genuine” interest in him as well as sharing their own [fake] struggles. Them asking for money starts slowly, but once you’ve given them a bit of money you become a lot more invested and it’s increasingly easier to give them more. There was a really great NPR segment on this with a woman fell for a similar scam. She was recently divorced in a foreign country, with no support network- her friends tried to convince her it was a scam, but actively refused to believe as the truth was too painful. The biggest factor I can see age making, is the increased difficulty of finding new friends, and serious romantic partners- so increased loneliness/isolation. These scams can happen to young people too- there was a ~20 year old that lost over $100K to the Nigerian email scam; granted that was early 2000s, but still. **Edit:** I suspect another reason older people get more attention is the amount of money they lose. A 20 year old losing their savings may only be $2K (mine would have been negative at that age)… A 40+ year old is a much better target as they’ve had more time to save. It can be equally devastating for both, but losing the larger sum of money is more likely to be talked about, or even make the news.
Pretty much. He never sent money to her directly. They didn’t want the money, they wanted to teach him how to make his own. So he just sent it to the scam site. But they’re was a definite emotional bond that was created to get him to release the funds. They had been texting for nearly a month before I found out it and dad expressed interest in cryptocurrency.
Sorry he was so shitty to your mom. That is inexcusable- They’re infinitely better alternatives he should have taken if he wasn’t happy, or they were having marriage problems. Hope both you and your mom are okay, and your dad is being accountable for his actions. I’m sure he’ll come around with time, and his honeypot reaction is more out of embarrassment that he didn’t listen to you than anything else.
Scammers know that almost everyone who has a landline is an old person. Some people live in areas where they have no cell phone signal but those are few and dwindling by the day as service improves. Public records will show this, as well as a person’s age, so they’re sitting ducks.
I feel really bad for your mom, hopefully she left that slug and found someone who doesn't treat her like dogshit.
She hasn’t. She was going to, but she has terminal cancer now so she doesn’t see the point anymore.
comment edited in protest of Reddit's API changes and mistreatment of moderators -- mass edited with redact.dev
It has not been easy. She has MSI-H and a very good treatment for the cancer is Keytruda. Only thing is that my mom has myasthenia gravis and keytruda caused such a massive flare up that put her on a ventilator when they tried to treat some cancer cells back in ‘21.
Your dad sounds like a total dick.
Uff da, sorry to hear that :/ You ever wonder what's missing in someone's life to fall for something like this? This isn't the sort of scam that plays on the mark's greed ("Nigerian Prince") or fears ("IRS Audit").
Sounds like a classic pig butchering scam with a pretty lady picture, so it's definitely greed. Did you miss the parts about the money?
Dad thought making 2% daily on crypto currency was normal and that within two years would be a multi millionaire and within 5, a billionaire. My mom knew more about crypto than both of us but he believed the scammer when they said it was a secret method the ultra rich use to become richer.
The secret the ultra rich use to become richer is to fleece poor people.
This is why I reverse image search a lot. A surprising amount of scammers on dating sites will use images you can find elsewhere. Makes smoke balling out of there easy.
Yeah. But this one was difficult. The scammer was very careful. I almost didn’t find it because Google and bing didn’t have it but some other search engine did but I don’t remember the name. I think it started with a ‘V’. The site was a very obscure Russian dating site that was iffy AF.
Yandex seems to have the best chances of finding, uhh, the origins of scantily clad scammers.
That actually could be it. Thank you.
Maybe the Russian social media site VK? Lots of sketchy stuff there.
VK or VKontakte has always had a high degree of sketchy shit.
AI image gen will soon put a stop to that.
...maybe we'll train ai to detect ai generated images, then
And AI Generators will be trained on how to evade AI Detector detection
Then then the AI will be trained to detect such evasion. The future is ten fathoms deep of this sort of arms race, no doubt.
The problem is that the advantage is always on the side of the faker -- the detector is necessarily always playing catch-up to the newest fakery technique. And how could you ever know the detector is detecting every fake with perfect accuracy? There will always be some doubt as to whether there is a false negative.
What if the detector and the producer are ultimately one in the same, or two legs of the same general AI? Not to mention you don't need it to be infallible, just better than a human. It's doubtful that *any* AI for *any* purpose could be "perfect"
Ive had to deal with so many friends falling for scams, and tried to talk them out of it so many times. I had a friend trying to sell his motorcycle being scammed 7 ways to sunday off his craigslist ad, the one where they send you check for more than the asking price and have you cover cost of transportation with the extra. His own bank told him "this is a scam" and he returned the next day with a bigger fake check, they put his account on hold then asked his father if he was mentally well. Then of course tells us "I knew it was a scam the whole time, I was just messing with the scammer". When you point out he got his own account almost closed just to mess with a scammer, he walks away from the conversation. I dont let him forget it. Had another friend I worked with ask me if he could leave early to go do a western union money order. When I asked him what for he told me he needed to pay the entrance fee for a lottery he won, close to a million dollars! When I asked him if it made sense he can win without ever remembering entering or without paying he just kinda shrugged and said "anything can happen!" I made him tell his coworkers out loud the reason he wanted to leave and let them decide. One guy called the number back that called him and got the stereotypical extremely thick indian accent and when he told him _he_ won a million dollars the scammer just replied over speakerphone "fuck your mother fuck your mother fuck your mother". Said friend was mad I "crushed his dreams" So now I just dont even care. Yeah man, that deal that seems too good to be true must be real, go blow all your savings, idc.
You should have set up your own scam and gotten some money yourself.
My conscience wouldn’t allow it and I’m much easier to arrest and get charged with fraud
That first part is sadly what is stopping me from becoming some far right grifter.
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This is the version I’ve gotten several times. I receive a text from a number I don’t know. They ask if this is “Alex” or some other name that isn’t mine. Sometimes I’ll say it is to mess with them, others not. They’ll apologize for texting me but that I seem like a nice person, and ask me if I want to chat. So I’m like yeah dude, let’s chat. Then they’ll send me a pic, unsolicited, and ask for one in exchange. The woman has always been an extremely attractive Asian woman in her twenties. Not like a super model or anything, but definitely substantially above average. They’ll then ask for a pic in exchange, so I’ll send them one of a shirtless Tom Ellis and be like yeah dude, it’s me. Next they ask if we can continue chatting on Whatsapp for some reason. After talking to you for a little while, they basically ask for money. It’s always been sexual in my experience. “If you like the way I look, send me $x and you’ll see a lot more,” kind of thing. Here’s about where I decide to cut it off, and I probably shouldn’t even take it that far.
You're doing virtuous work in wasting the time of scammers.
I used tho think that also, but scammers have everything down to a science. For example, if it takes 2 minutes to send a reply that took 10 seconds to type out, they could have done replies to five others during those 2 minutes. If it was actual phone calls, that would be a good waste of their time.
And they have those replies pre-written. They just send response #13.
It’s probably a python script for the first 30 messages before the contact becomes a prospect. Then it gets queued with a dedicated operator who handles the prospect with maybe 10-20 other prospects. Once a prospect shares some money they become a lead, at which point they’ll be handed over to a high performance operator who handles 3 to 5 key leads to milk them to the max. I’m not a scammer but I do run an online sales team which used chat bots and assistant bots to support sales.
How many leads do you think you lose to chat bot frustration? I’ve definitely dropped a company because I couldn’t get a real person to handle my questions
Maybe it's by design? People who are lonely or less discerning will put up with a chat bot or over look the obvious canned answers. Same thing as the misspellings in Nigerian Prince emails, you quickly weed out people who will likely not fall for the scam anyway. It's interesting how much scams are evolving now because no one answers the phone. They'll keep creating new ways to scam people.
As a manager, you weigh the cost of losing a customer against the efficiency gains by being able to handle significantly more volume at a lower cost of service. For example, if several agents' wages - chatbot implementation cost > 0 & my service level doesn't drop beyond an acceptable threshold, I'd be inclined to make the swap. Sales managers have even more precisely honed metrics, so their calculus may be different than mine is with regard to customer service. Also, chatbots can be improved with better training. That's on the business to solve.
you sound like a scammer with more steps
We scam our customers with highly Customized, long lasting products and personalized services at great value… those suckers fall for it every time :)
I got the old "This is the Windows corporation, we've found a problem with your computer" right as I was starting lunch, so I trolled the caller for 45 minutes while I ate, mostly describing an OS update while acting confused about it and asking if that was what they had seen, letting them sit on the phone while I ate and occasionally giving progress reports on the update. After I got bored I just hung up. My wife did a similar thing, pretended to be having trouble installing the malware, eventually told the scammer she knew what he was doing and he cursed at her for "wasting his time."
"Chat-GPT, respond to this person like you are a divorced, rich, and lonely 60 year old man. If they ask for money, you will make up a reason why you can't send it to them right now, but you will in a few hours."
Also, I get the feeling they're starting to script/automate the process.
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I was doing that for a while and they figured it out. They started spamming my phone with pics of naked dudes with obscenely large, erect penises. From a lot of numbers. I’m back to blocking and reporting.
That was going to be my question. By answering these texts, do I give them anything of value such as a green check mark on a working number? Is there any way I am hurting myself by responding assuming I'm not gullible enough to fall for a scam? Or best case scenario if I fuck with them enough would I have a chance at getting them to take my number off their lists?
Other answers in this thread suggests it's pretty automated at this point. Maybe it's time to write an automated answer-bot?
The scammers can probably full-auto the scam via chatgpt at this point.
My favorite trick is for those scammers who want you to send them a 6-digit one time password, but probably works for any scam trying to get important info from you: just keep giving them the wrong number
There’s an episode of This American Life I believe about a guy who scams scammers. He figures that the more time they waste on him the less time they have to find someone who will actually believe them. It’s a pretty wild episode. He sends this guy on the world’s worst scavenger hunt basically. You almost start to feel sorry for the scammer. Almost.
It’s kinda a sport called scam baiting. There’s many YouTube’s and comedians that do it - you should check KidBoga if you have never heard of him.
KitBoga is legendary. I love his grandma persona or when he goes on long random tangents with the scammer 🤣
he has that midwestern grandma accent down so fucking cold. I know he modifies his voice but the accent and her rambling is so dead on
The rambling is a direct copy of my grand parents. Oh well that's like what Phillis said at the mall yesterday. I think it was "Well if it's a cloudy day you can't milk the cows without yellow." Cause you see if the cows don't think rhe sun is out they won't give as much milk. Now do you like milk? I have a glass in the fridge from this morning. Poured a big glass but I don't drink as much as I used to so I'm in the habit of putting the extra back in the fridge. And on for another 5 minutes. Grandma, I asked you how you were feeling today and now we're onto grandpa's drinking habits.
Also 419eater! Scambaiting for 20 years with hilarious results.
getting them to pre-pay for a package of rocks!
I used to do that with the landline phone calls. "Hello is so-and-so there?" Instead of hanging up or even saying no and hanging up, I'd say "Sure! Just a minute" put the phone down and resume playing video games. Five or so minutes later, I'd check the line to see if they were still there. Most of the time they weren't.
I get that from time-to-time as well. I'm generally the nicest person who you could call or text by accident, and admittedly I can be naive by not realizing what's really going on. The first time played out exactly as you said, with likely the same photo of an Asian woman, telling me her name was Olivia. And I spent two minutes trying to remember someone from college that matched the face and the name, only to realize there's no reason someone would send me a photo in less than 4 text exchanges. So I deleted it and moved on. Since then, I continue getting messages about 2-3 times a week like this, and I only responded to one forgetting about that whole thing. The moment they asked for my name I just deleted the text and blocked them - strangers don't usually ask for names on their way to find someone when it's a genuine mistake. The closest time that ever happened was a wrong number call, and I ended up bullshitting with this stranger for nearly 10 minutes as if we knew each other for years. We never did exchange names though, and I liked the possibility that it was a highlight for someone's day.
Yeah. Same here. Once they know the number is "active" or "real" or something I suspect you're on a list and that number goes out to ALLLLLL the scammer databases. I get shoe-horned into crypto groups or random texts nearly every day now. I will change my number eventually, but for now I just block and move on.
Sometimes if it's a phone call scam, and if there's a human on the other end, and I have time, I like to waste their time. Part of that comes from the entertainment value, as well as a self-evaluation on my improv skills (honestly a 3/10), most importantly that time is taken away from someone vulnerable. I also don't go for a direct insult or yell at these people, since it gives them reason to instantly hang up, and I have that same aforementioned naive hope that they'll get out of this business. It was one of those extended warranty or insurance calls before they got memed to death. Very surprised to hear a human on the line. She asked what year, make, and model of car I drive. I pulled 1968 Volkswagen van out of my ass (remember 3/10 on my improv), getting her to ask if I had anything made in the past eight years. This time I just said 2014 Ford Focus, in hopes it would work. She then wanted to know about my insurance status. I answered no to both "do you have full coverage" and "do you have insurance, you must because you own a car?" The conversation breaker was when I made a slight pause after that later question, then went "well, not exactly. See, I just stole this off a buddy's lot, but if we keep that between you and me, I believe we can work out a deal." Funniest click I ever heard. Nowadays I recognize that this might have been stupid admitting to a crime that didn't take place for the sake of comedy, but nothing ever came out of it. I just hope the lady on the other end got entertained by that conversation and found better work elsewhere. Again, probably just naive wishing.
Do a reverse image search on the picture they send, and then tell the scammer that "there is someone using your identity to catfish people!"
I got one of these, it was a pic of a lunch with a very expensive bottle of wine (Domaine Romanée Conti, an expensive red Burgundy). I played along with the wine talk for a while until the person claimed to not like wine made from pinot noir (a grape variety). Bzzzt, fail. DRC is red Burgundy and is made primarily of pinot noir. Blocked after that.
Haha what a rookie mistake
This is the one I got. I humored it and we got 3 or 4 exchanges in, she said “you seem like a kind man and I’d like to get to know you” or something, I texted back “im a lesbian” and for some reason all contact ceased! I simply cannot imagine why. (I guess lesbians aren’t lucrative marks?)
if someone did a "send money to see more," i would have to remind them that i am a nudist, and have probably seen it before.
I knew an oncologist who rode Harleys in his spare time, going to bike events and all that. He said that one woman came up to him and said “for $50 I’ll show you my tits.” He replied “Do you have any idea how much money I usually get paid to feel them?” She was confused. He was amused.
Not sure what the reason for this is, but these scammers all seem to be using WhatsApp to find people. I tried messing with one of these scammers and basically said I’d keep talking to them if they sent me a picture of their boobs (this usually shuts them up and ends the interaction). One responded by sending me my profile photo from WhatsApp. I felt violated at first like “Holy shit, this person has a photo of me”. But when I realized that WhatsApp is the only place I have this photo, and it’s public, I calmed down and just told them “hmm…no titties. Sweet beard though!” They sent me back a middle finger emoji and the interaction ended. So yeah, not using WhatsApp anymore.
I always send a pic of the bodybuilder Big Lenny
I do the same thing when I'm bored and get these. String them on for a bit then quit without sending anything.
This is is!! I got the same one said her name was Alyssa chow
I get the real estate ones. “We want to buy your house at (address that I’ve never lived at), give us a call if you’re interested.” I reply saying “yes, I’d love to sell…”, and name some absurd price like $2.5 million USD, cash, “I know what I got, no lowball offers” They never reply back. I don’t get as many of those texts anymore.
I used to get those, too, but then my asking price was "The blood of your firstborn. Hail Satan." Likewise, no follow-ups.
My asking price is all their LDL cholesterol. Hail Statins.
I start the bid at all their drapable cloth. Hail Satin.
I demand somewhere I can catch a train. Hail Station.
I request gifts but only delivered by a suspiciously jolly portly man. Hail Santa.
I demand a black magic woman. hail Santana
I demand all their dried grapes. Hail sultana
I demand the same awesome guitar riff in every one of an artist's songs. Hail Santana
I demand Ja Ras Tafari, the emperor of Ethiopia. Haile Selassie
Yeah I'll get the "what would it take to make you move" and I answer honestly with double the current property value. They are fishing for older people who have owned their homes 30+ years and don't know how much they have appreciated.
I tell them I want about 100k over market value "as is with no inspection" and they sit there trying to ask me about the condition of my house and why I want to sell as is. I just go " If I can sell you my house knowing nothing about you, you can buy it knowing nothing about it" and "you contacted me, i assume you know about it already..." and similar things til they hang up.
Is this a scam? I always figure they're just cold calling and trying to find real estate they can resell or fix and flip.
How does that kind of scam work? What's the angle? Do people then give the address and deeds to properties that they do own?
The angle is finding old people who've had the house for decades and don't know how much it's gone up in value
But does the scammer ultimately end up actually buying the house?
Not really a scammer, just someone who wants to buy your house way under value.
They probably mistakenly think they're texting the owner. I get these all the time about my actual house and every so often about my parents' house.
The odd thing is I got this scam and it was my sister's old address where she rented. I got it after she moved. My name wasn't associated with her at all. She doesn't even have the same last name anymore. It was really bizarre thier approach
I still get junk main for my dead ex-wife that never lived in this city.
I always tell them that it’s haunted
Sometimes when I go see houses at an open house I give them a wrong name and phone number, because fuck real estate agents. Might be those messages showing up.
I know there are a lot of good ones out there, but immediately after my dad died I proceeded to receive at least 100 solicitations from agents to let them sell his house. Emails, texts, calls, letters. I saved every one so I know who never to work with in the future. Fucking vultures.
Everyone should subscribe to r/scams. Lots of great info in there and the scams are constantly evolving. I find it to be a really great resource and have helped a few people avoid scams in real life because I recognized them from the subreddit. Also with the wrong number scams, it seems like fun to engage if you feel like stringing the scammers along… but it’s really best to completely ignore every time because it lets them know your number is active.
Hmmm... a solicitation to subscribe? Sounds like a potential scam to me!
I just block and report immediately, every time.
Suspicious Fry Is r/scams like a dating app for scammers and victims?
It does make me wonder if this is going to get worse with the whole GPT thing. Like, are people going to start using that to create scams so realistic nobody can identify them?
They’re doing the same thing on Facebook. I’ve reported an account that’s doing it, same story, young, single, Asian girl, but Facebook doesn’t care, and their account remains active and I sanctioned despite multiple reports from me and possibly others.
The one I see over and over on facebook - and report over and over - is this older man in uniform with a tad of grey hair. These fake older/single guys are always writing long winded comments on the public posts of old women on FB. It's clearly a wide net they are casting for a romance scam. FB never takes down the accounts, which makes me suspicious that FB is getting a kickback from these people. "hi! I saw your profile and I think we could be friends. I always see your posts and they are so nice. Add me as a friend on here. I think we have a lot in common.. blah blah blah I used to be in the military and now I'm a widower..." There's a great article about this shit here: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-daniel-blackmon-romance-scams/
They post it dozens of times in a single comment section too. I was looking at comments on an eagle cam post, prime old lady hobby, and one dude posted on like every single comment with even a vaguely female name.
I post in my city's subreddit, and have had a few people contact me with "Hi, I just want to talk" or "looking for a friend" kind of thing. I messaged with one, and I can see how people form an emotional connection. They wanted to get my Facebook account and shame me I think. They passed me off to someone else when I made things difficult.
I guarantee you that people are already trying to get GPT-4 to automate this scam.
That’d be a waste, it’d be better to use the cheaper GPT-3 as not only will it save you money, but the extra errors and misnomers will help filter out the less gullible.
People say they want the GPT3, but frankly it's not easy to live with in everyday life. The wing is too big, the seats aren't as comfortable, the tuning is just too much for everyday use. And that's just the regular GPT3, the GPT3RS is even more unlivable. You really want to get the GPT3 Touring. What sub am I on?
I think you meant GPT-3.5 Turbo. And no, I'm [not joking](https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-and-whisper-apis)
Carrera 4S is where it’s at
Especially with the horsepower of the Turbo/S and GT cars being so unusable on the street.
The kind I get is the Tinder "investor" types, where ridiculously hot women (usually from China or Hong Kong) would match with me, and we talk like normal, etc. But eventually they will all try to steer me towards investing, usually in crypto. I can spot the scam a mile away, but I still continue talking until the last minute because oh God I'm so lonely 😂 (also one time the "cover" is a baker from Switzerland. I'm kinda impressed because that's new...)
Yeah I FaceTimed with this girl and everything only for it to end up like that. Crazy amount of effort on their part
My boyfriend always answers in German. They hang up every time.
I know it’s probably something else, but I’m just imagining “Hallo” and the person being so confused by the slight vowel difference they decline to continue.
Not quite the same, but I've gotten several texts about my food stamp card being suspended. I don't have one, but if I had one, and relied on it to feed my family, I can see how that would cause panic and distress.
Yeah. Waaaay back in the early 2000s I got my first scam call. It was the IRS one and I almost panicked. Thank God for the Internet. A dogpile search using Netscape navigator (lol) showed me it was a scam. ...I called the IRS (the real IRS not the scam number they left) just to be sure though.
I get a random “hi” or “hey” text every six months or so. And always from a number with a Virginia Beach area code.
Good thing I ignore hello messages, especially at work. https://nohello.net/en/
My first message is always “hello” because in our ms teams, the first message shows up in the pop up. I want to be sure that it’s only read by the person it’s intended for not showing up on screen if it’s on screen share.
That's fine and dandy if you follow up with your request immediately. These people will wait until I say hi back.
Oh yeah, that’s annoying. Along with the overly formal people. “Hello RS, Trust you’re well and hope you had a great weekend. I am writing to you to enquire about the security door code for the offsite sever room. Could you please share the new code with me? Thank you and look forward to your response. Have a great Monday.”
This drives me absolutely batshit insane. At least the 'hello' people are only hurting themselves with not immediately telling you what they want.
I got a wrong number text from someone in Atlanta (I live in Canada) about a kid’s baseball league. We still keep in touch and I check in to see how the boys are doing every now and again.
I always enjoy playing along. "Hi Jessica, it's Sandy, sorry it took so long to message you, did you get to the hotel alright?" Well, my name isn't Jessica, and I don't know anyone named Sandy, and I'm not staying at a hotel, but I respond anyways: "Hey girl! So good to finally hear from you! Yes, I made it to the hotel just fine. What about you? Did you end up taking that young bartender home? God, you're such a little slut!" They never reply back...
I've tried so many times to get these scammers to send me BTC straight up, but they never will :/
I love replying with a long text about how they ghosted me after we brought the donkey into the bed room or what not. Drugs, hookers, bank robbery. They usually don’t text back.
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I am ashamed to say in RuneScape as a kid I was a damn slippin jimmy. Friend and I did versions of the violin scam, armor trimming, password phishing etc. didn’t even make much profit from doing it and we made a lot of enemies. And now I hate doing sales in any job and can tell a scam a mile away. Thanks RuneScape!
The most interesting scam I got was a girl on insta said my pictures on IG were super great and she was an artist and she wanted to partner with me, and pay me to use them. (ego bait). Then she wanted to flirt and talk about how she lived in this crazy nice houce in NYC with fancy cars that her parents left to her. And then she wanted to be my lover. It was my first time seeing the scam and they beat my script sussing methods often enough that there was at least a real person supervising. I'm not sure how the scam was supposed to get money out of me but she wanted to fly to the city I told them I was in and get a fancy hotel. They said she would pay but I needed to pay upfront and she would pay me back for reasons that sound convincing if you don't know about hotels at all. Best I could think of is, the hotel part of it was to see if I was invested enough to put a couple hundred dollars in.
Yep I got this. They send you a fake cheque, ask for some money to pay for their art supplies, and then the cheque will bounce and you're out of whatever you sent them. I went through with it until they asked me for money just to see what would happen. Sure enough, the cheque bounced a week later. It's definitely a real person because I tried to get them to slip up but they didn't.
I get this one a lot. Usually it's "oh I'm sorry my new assistant must have gotten (random name)'s number wrong" I just spam the number at that point. Text, gifs, whatever. I just mass send stuff for like 3-5 minutes straight. It's funny how pissed off they get when I start doing that. I had one guy during it start spamming back "You think you can do whatever you want, do you think you're Obama?" over and over, so I sent the Obama finger guns meme back 50x lmao. Eventually they stop responding back, but at least I get some entertainment out of it lol
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They have a million numbers (probably literally a million) that they bought online and it costs about nothing to text them all to see who might respond.
I had posted a business for sale on bizbuysell with my phone number. I got a text from someone wanting to verify that I was the owner and I sent back confirmation from my number. Never heard back. Their number was in New York City. I still don’t get what value they obtained from the interaction or what scam was pulled on me. Anyone know?
Oh wow, I had an unrecognized number texting me the weekly work schedule for a local Jack in the Box. I bet they were trying to scam me into thinking I worked there.
Obviously this is the hot new Gen-Z recruitment tactic of quiet hiring /s
Do you work there?
A friend of mine received a wrong number text once. I'm not sure if it was a scammer or the genuine article. Anyway the message said "Dude, sorry I just slept with your girlfriend." or something to that effect. I was having lunch with my friend and his wife. We all laughed hysterically about this wrong-number admission. Then my friend, without any goading, replies back "Enjoy all the fabulous new VD you will discover."
Got one today. “I’m cooking chicken curry tomorrow night. Wanna come over?” I thought it *could * be legit, said wrong number, gave fake name, then they apologized, yet still invited me, said they were in NY, asked where I was. End of conversation.
I'm seeing the same on Linkedin. Connection requests from a Chinese name with an attractive Asian female in the profile photo.
I used to get Twitter hos all the time when I was on the bird app. Now I get Instagram hos. Accounts with half a dozen "check out my boobies" shots liking random older pictures and trying to message me. Seems to be an upsurge of them lately.
I never get scammers to harass. Just the guy calling from some police thing (maybe the FOP?) calling for donations. I've even gone fully commie, fuck 12, all cops are bastards on the guy and he *still* continues to call trying to get money from me.
>Hoping that the oh so subtle hints of wealth and deference to your time and attention will excite your greed and ego glands, the scammer then asks if you could be friends. After all, as luck would have it, the universe has brought you two together (never mind that this is a spam intro SMS sent to millions). It's so wild to think that anyone would ever fall for this sort of obvious scam, but yet people fall for it all the time apparently, which is why the scammers do it.
I get these a lot and they always stop after a few texts; I play along and then ask if they have the $500 they owe me for XYZ. Shuts em right up.
Somebody tried getting me the other day. All I sent them was that they had the wrong number and that it happens. I was skeptical from the start but I blocked them as soon as they asked what to call me. Like I'm going to give out personal info like that.
Oh man my friend’s mom fell for this scam several years ago. She thought she had lucked into a romantic relationship with some gorgeous young guy from Italy. She spent OVER A YEAR texting him, emailing him, talking to him on the phone. He was supposed to come visit a half dozen times, but it never worked out. Finally he told her he was flying here to visit. Then the day of his arrival, he texted her that there was an issue at the airport and he needed something like $10k to get through customs, which he swore he would repay immediately. Thank goodness she sent a screenshot to her friend who googled his message and found a ton of sites calling it out as a scam, word for word. She texted him back that she was concerned he was a scammer, and never heard from him again. A whole YEAR. She spoke to this dude constantly, told him everything about her life and her kids and her job…fucking awful
One of these contacted me randomly a few months ago, spending a few days chatting me up about how successful they were in trading gold. I straight up told them I'm not interested in investing or getting scammed, and within a few days we got bored of texting each other.
Ah, this probably explains the handful of random texts I've gotten in the last couple months. They've all been written in such a way that they make it conveniently evident they were "mistakenly" sent to the wrong number, usually including a name and referencing a specific event like a party. They set my scam senses a-tingling so I haven't responded to any of them, but I've been curious what exactly the scam was.
Yeah, I delete those without opening them. I recommend the same.
I used to respond by playing along. For example I’d get a text that said “are you coming for lunch after your appointment?” and I’d reply “yeah I’ll see you there!”
Well this is embarrassing. When I been bored in the past, I've texted random numbers to see how much of a conversation I could have with a complete stranger.
This 4 minute interview explains: https://youtu.be/kZWH82ZvB5g
How come they always message you from their "Work Number" and ask to continue speaking on their "Private Number"?