Category: scam

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People Share the Biggest Scams That Folks Still Fall For

People still get scammed ALL THE TIME.

Whether it’s by fake emails or texts or the old-fashioned way of someone knocking on your door to swindle you out of money, these scammers are EVERYWHERE.

So it’s best to be informed about what the hell they’re up to, right?

Here’s what AskReddit users had to say about scams that people still fall for.

1. Amway.

“I got caught up in Amway when I was a teenager. I was waiting tables and this super charismatic guy started working there. He got a bunch of us to go meet with his mentor and the guy had a house on the beach, which he was probably renting, and I remember him showing us this stupid model car saying he was going to get a real one some day by believing he would.

Well, I bought the little $75 starter kit, the one they sell you to demonstrate the products and use them yourself. They actually weren’t horrible. I even went to a meeting. It was at the meeting that I went “WTF did I get myself into?”

They were truly like a cult. It was scary. I think that experience is part of why I’m so antisocial and don’t like going to group things… I just have flashbacks to this cultish Amway meeting. All they needed was the summoning circle and robes, I swear.

So I just stopped going to meetings and didn’t contact them again. The guy and his mentor both harassed me for months with threatening phone calls.

Telling me I owed them money if I quit because the $75 was just a down payment on the products they gave me. I just ignored them and they finally went away.

First and last time getting into some mess like that.”

2. Praise the Lord!

“Jim Fucking Bakker.

A couple months back, Jim Bakker got sued by the state of Missouri for trying to sell a fake coronavirus cure. I guess stealing millions from his own church 30 years ago just wasn’t enough…

My nephew, who is around 22 or 23 now is a youth minister, when he first started doing minister training or whatever it’s called he went to a camp that Jim Bakker and his son own and trained there for like a year.

He’s so young that he probably hadn’t even heard of what the Bakkers are most famous for (being con artist pieces of shit) and I never talked about them around him because he was an adult choosing his own path. But man did I hate it.

To this day he’s still good friends with Jim’s son.”

3. Aggravating.

“I was in the insurance industry as an auto damages appraiser. The biggest one is the anti-insurance body shop that will “fight for you.” or that pans itself as “a quick fix shop” or that “pays your deductible”

No, they wont. Every one of those places is going to fuck you in the ass. Collision repair centers are absolutely, 100% in a symbiotic relationship with insurance companies, because SO FUCKING MUCH of their business comes form insurance jobs.

If the shop claims to hate insurance companies, run the fuck way, because if you use them, your life will get very aggravating, very quickly.”

4. This sounds great!

“Online reviews.

A huge percentage of them are written but the seller (if good) or by a competitor (if not).”

5. Total scammers.

“Door-to-door magazine sales. No that kid is not getting sent on a camping trip if you will just buy subscriptions to Boys Life and Wine Aficionado. Most of the time they are a traveling troop that goes city-to-city, pulling the same scam each time.

Honestly, just door-to-door sales in general are usually a scam. Don’t trust the guy trying to sell you a new roof, or a driveway resurface, or a spanking new Hoover vacuum at your front door. Need a new roof or driveway? Call your insurance company and get a list of reputable companies.

Even if you aren’t filing an insurance claim, they will happily give you the name of several companies that can be trusted.”

6. Poor guy.

“Had an older coworker who you just couldn’t believe. Have many stories to tell, but this is just one for this thread.

Coworker in his late 60’s fell for dating app scams SO MANY FUCKING TIMES. These women always needed money for something and he obliged. Then when they’d come “meet” him something else would come up.

He never talked to one of these women on the phone. Always text. Best excuse was “she has a text only phone” So a beeper? NO! A text only phone!

Anyways he sent one scammer 4 $500 Amazon gift cards during a shift.

Another one got $500 transferred, said she lost it, then got another $500 and he called her stupid.

Thought he was talking to a porn star and getting special pictures which he showed us. Other coworker looked her up, and found that same picture on google images. Guy getting scammed, got mad, found the actual porn star and messaged her. Then demanded he gets actual special pics, she has no clue wtf he’s talking about since he’s been talking to a scammer.

Wire transferred insane amounts of money once a week, from $5,000 – $7,000. Bank would say sir, you’re getting scammed. He’d tell em fucking send it or he’d take his business elsewhere.

Once he was finally broke and got nothing in return he found out he was getting scammed and called the FBI. Which reported it to our higher ups, which in turn got him fired for being a security risk.

While we don’t know the actual amounts our best guess placed it somewhere between $50,000 – $100,000.

We told him he was being scammed for months before this point.”

7. Very odd.

“Diamond rings.

You waste thousands of dollars just for the ring, and if you don’t, the idea is that you “don’t think she’s worth anything”. Annoys me so much. (This is coming from a 22 year old female).”

8. It’s a miracle!

“Faith healing.

Where people are suddenly cured from cancer, blindness, and can walk again through the power of God.”

9. Then, the real fun starts…

“Self Publishing.

It’s a vanity press with a new name. Everyone would love to get their name on a book, but instead of having to go through the process of finding a publisher who will sign you and pay you to print your books, they’ll just have you fork over the money to get published.

And then, the real fun starts. There’s a book fair in city X, and every major book publisher is going to be there. It’ll only cost you another $1500 to have your books on the table.

And a film studio might be interested. $5,000 to get them really interested.

Oh, and this guy will interview you on the radio. For $1600.

By the way, they won’t sell your books. That’s also your job.

They’re all scummy companies. Don’t ever hand money over to Xlibris or any other self publishing company. Your name might look nice in print, but it’s going to cost you a lot more than you’ll ever get from it.”

10. No need for it.

“Getting a new phone every year for 1200$ to then use it for the same 5 apps that everyone uses, which run perfectly fine on 200$ phones.”

11. These places are everywhere.

“Title loans/payday loans.

Please, just fucking don’t. Read the WHOLE DAMN THING if you’re really desperate. I’d rather just eat rice and beans for a week. Or just go to a credit union/bank/whatever and get cash advance on a new credit card and pay that bitch off before a month goes by.

You might fuck up your credit if you don’t pay, but you won’t get your car taken.”

12. Thoughts on this?

“The Mormon Church has $100 Billion despite being totally debunked over a century ago.

The whole religion is predicated under the notion that Joseph Smith Jr was able to translate the “Reformed Egyptian” on the plates. Now the plates themselves were (conveniently) lost, but we do have an example of the language itself thanks to the papyrus from which the Book of Abraham is supposed to have been translated from.

Unfortunately for the church, we have the Rosetta Stone, which instead reveals said papyrus to have nothing to do with Abraham, instead being a pagan funeral rite. What this means in practice is that Joseph Smith did not have the ability to translate said “reformed egyptian” and thus could not have translated the plates from which the Book of Mormon came.

This leads us to a few possible avenues, none of which prevent the religion from being false.

He genuinely found plates, but was unable to translate them, and either made up the translation or had delusions that he could.

The plates didn’t exist, which is my personal belief due to his character.”

13. This should get people talking.

“That raising children is a ‘joy’. Sure it’s necessary for our species to survive, but spending all your money to take care of you and someone else, spending the remaining time you have to help them turn into well adjusted human beings and ‘giving’ them everything to meet social expectations of what a good parent is, just so they can become adults and leave your exhausted mind and body in the socially sanctioned prison we call an ‘old age home’ to die REALLY DOES NOT SOUND LIKE A JOYFUL LIFE.”

14. That old classic.

“The old pyramid scheme still works despite being old and every trait of it being widely known.

Sometimes you can’t beat a classic.”

What do you think?

What are the big scams that people still fall for?

Talk to us in the comments and let us know what you think!

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A Lawyer Took to Twitter to Reveal the Incredibly Sophisticated Scam He Just Barely Avoided

The people behind phishing scams are getting more cunning in their tactics to steal access to financial institutions and banks. This is not good because once they get in, they’ll suck accounts dry, leaving hard working people without money and facing an uphill battle to restore their stability.

Even individuals with advanced degrees and high-profile occupations,  like lawyers, can find themselves engaging with these crooks. And that’s step one to getting hoodwinked.

Recently, attorney Pieter Gunst showed how he was a target of a phishing scam—one he labeled “most credible.” So credible, in fact, that he almost fell for it, until he finally caught on that something strange was happening.

Gunst tells us the scam started with a caller from his bank needing to verify if he was using his card in Miami. After confirming he was not in Florida attempting to use his card, the caller tells him they will block the transaction. The caller asks for Gunst’s member number. He provides it since it can’t be used for account access.

Next, the caller tells Gunst he should have received a verification pin by text. He reads out the pin to the caller. Then, he and the rep go over other transactions under the pretense of verification.

 

A major red flag here. The caller asks for Gunst’s actual account PIN to block the account and generate a fraud alert if it’s used again. Gunst instantly knew something was wrong—to be clear, a bank will never ask for your PIN. That’s your secret. They just don’t need that information for anything.

He ended the call and notified his bank that something fishy was going on. He also reset all his passwords and pins.

Gunst realized the scammer had used his member number to reset his password. Once the scammer did that, they went over past transactions to establish credibility. But when the caller asked for his account pin, Gunst knew his bank would never ask him to repeat that kind of private information over the phone (or ever).

People on Twitter were surprised at how well thought out the scam seemed…until the very end. How many would’ve realized what was going before it was too late? I’m betting a lot of people would fall for this.

The lesson? Never give out any personal identification numbers to anyone who calls you, even if they sound legitimate. Because they aren’t—again, a bank won’t ask for that info.

Or, you could do what one guy said, claiming since he was a millennial he never answers his phone anyway. So, problem solved.

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Beware! Scammers Are Sending out Fake Letters from the IRS

Be very careful, because IRS scammers have some new tricks up their sleeves!

Scammers have long impersonated the IRS to try to trick people into handing over their personal information or paying money. They often do this by calling people on the phone and asking about an overdue “tax bill.” The IRS very rarely calls people on the phone to ask for payment, which means many taxpayers are catching on to this scam.

But now, Forbes reports, some scammers are disguising themselves a bit more skillfully by sending letters instead. Unlike a phone call, it can be difficult for taxpayers to tell whether a letter is really from the IRS or not.

Photo Credit: iStock

One scam involves a letter about taxes that are owed to the “Bureau of Tax Enforcement.” The letter threatens an IRS lien or levy, which may make it sound legit. But there is no such thing as the Bureau of Tax Enforcement, and these letters are 100% a scam.

Other fake IRS letters include different warnings, like a notice that a warrant for arrest has been issued for a taxpayer because of unpaid taxes.

Sometimes these letters are made even more confusing and scary by the fact that they reference actual tax debts. This information is available to the public in some cases, though, so just because a letter includes factual info doesn’t mean it’s not a scam.

So, how can you tell that a letter really is from the IRS?

Photo Credit: iStock

First, it will usually arrive in a government envelope with the IRS seal. It will also include a notice or letter number, your truncated tax ID number, the tax year(s) in question, and IRS contact information. It will also include information about your rights as a taxpayer. The IRS will never threaten to arrest or deport you.

If in doubt, call the IRS directly at 1-800-829-1040.

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This Woman Went on a Tinder Dream Date, and Ended Up Getting Scammed out of $200,000

A lot of us have had bad dates, be it on Tinder or elsewhere, but few of those terrible dates probably compare to the experience Cecilie Fjellhoy had recently. The 29-year-old London resident went on a date with a guy who seemed absolutely dreamy… until he swindled $200,000 from her and vanished.

It all started when Cecilie matched with Simon Leviev. Simon told Cecilie that he was an Israeli millionaire and diamond dealer; he claimed that his nickname was the “Prince of Diamonds.”

Sure, that might sound like a scam immediately. But Simon took Cecilie on a private plane ride to Bulgaria as part of their first date, so his story kind of held water. He swept Cecilie off of her feet.

Photo Credit: iStock

“This was the first time where I felt like, ‘Oh my god I really like him. And it seems that he really likes me back as well,’” Cecilie told ABC News . “He’s texting and he’s calling and he seems to really want to get to know me, and I think I fell a bit for that.”

Eventually, Simon started claiming that he was in danger because of his line of work. He asked Cecilie to extend her line of credit to him so that nothing would be in his name and there wouldn’t be a paper trail. He even went so far as to send Cecilie videos of him and his “bodyguard” in the hospital after an “attack.”

Unfortunately, it was all a ruse.

Simon turned out to be Shimon Hyuat, a 28-year-old convicted Israeli con-man. He has a long history of defrauding women to fund his lifestyle, including the private plane that he used to woo Cecilie.

In the end, he took Cecilie’s money and disappeared. She was so heartbroken that she had to get psychiatric help. Meanwhile, Shimon is living it up in Panama, where he is denying allegations of defrauding Cecilie.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

So, is Cecilie still on Tinder? It’s unclear, but she is continuing to meet new people — with a lot more skepticism.

“[I’m] much, much less naive,” she said.

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People Reveal the Scams That Most Folks Don’t Even Know Exist

They say there’s a sucker born every minute, and thanks to the internet that number has only gone up exponentially.

We all know the infamous Nigerian prince emails, but it might do you good to read up on these scams that AskReddit users shared. You never know when someone will come at you with some shady business.

1. Try again next year

“School fundraisers. My kids school tells the kids they can win a grand prize (junk toy) if they have the winning ticket. They send forms home for the parents. You have to go to their website where you learn that you have to validate your email and give them 5 other emails of friends and family and after they validate those you can enter your ticket number to see if you won. It provides me a good time to talk with the kids about scams.

This year I told my 7 year old that I’m thinking of a number 1-100 and if he guesses right on the first try he can have the grand prize. He guessed wrong and I said he can try again next year.”

2. A common one

“This almost got me but it is pretty well known. They send you an Email saying that they need someone to buy things for them. They will pay like 13 an hour. They send you a check for like $3,000 tell you to put it in your bank. It has a wait time on it to go through in like 5 days. They than say they need you to send money to their wife or husband somewhere, and go to Walmart and do the money transfer thing.

Transfer like $2,700 to their wife who is stranded somewhere in Africa. The check “clears” in 2 days. you don’t do it the first day, but they harass you for the entire second day to try and have you send them the money. Of course the check doesn’t go through and the bank charges you for it, and if you fall for the scam you are out $2.7K. it is so common that in money transfer places they have pamphlet explaining the scam.”

3. No thanks

“Hey, we see you’re using an ad blocker. Please disable the blocker on your browser to be able to view or website”.

No thanks. I’ll just look up how to beat this difficult boss on one of a thousand other gaming websites.

Look, I get the websites are maintained by ads. I have no problem with that. But f*cking “popups” and other intrusive ads are bullshit. And not one single person in the world thinks they’re cool. Not even the dickheads who make them. And another reason I use an ad blocker? Because even with high speed internet I have to wait 30 seconds for your g*ddamn page to load because you have half a dozen videos embedded on it. This is one of the reasons I had to stop going to Cracked.com: the aggressive ads kept causing the browser on my work computer to crash.

And while we’re talking about scams on sh*tty websites: “Click this button to see the next slide” only to have to wait for an entire new page to load (with another 25 banner ads and popups) just so I can see one pic and a half a paragraph to find out what these celebrities from 80s sitcoms are up to.”

4. Not those teeth

“Delta dental told me 80% of fillings are covered so I would sign up. Got work done, wasn’t paid for, found out they cover 80% except all your back teeth.”

5. Haven’t heard that one yet

“Received an e-mail from “me”, threatening to release a split screen video of me pleasuring myself on one side, while the other side shows the porn video I was watching. But for the one time only, low price of $587 bitcoin, the video would be deleted. Closed off with “Best wishes!”. At least this was more entertaining than a Nigerian prince.”

6. Total scam

“If anyone calls and tells you they can get rid of your interest on your credit cards, or anything credit card related, it’s a scam. The only person who can really do that is your actual credit card company, and you can call them yourself to see if you qualify for any deals.

If anyone calls and says “The IRS is going to pursue legal action if you do not act now” it’s a scam. The IRS will not call you. They will send you official mail.

If you are sleuthing through ads on one of those bootleg TV sites and an ad comes up saying “your mac needs to be cleared of viruses!” it’s a scam.

These might be common knowledge, but I have a friend who fell for all of these.”

7. The spectrum

“First the mild end of the spectrum. It’s not legal to cold call people on the do not call list for sales. You can do so for surveys though. Some companies, most prolifically in my area Eagle Water, abuse this They call for a survey which is only 2 questions and they really don’t care about your answers. Afterward you’ll get a call back saying you’ve won something, where they try to get you to let someone from their sales team into your house for some dollar store piece of junk.

Recently they’ve also taken to sending out mail spam with the same general concept. Basically fake scratch-off tickets which always say you’ve won something, possibly even a jeep or other nonsense. It’s all just a scam to sell massively overpriced water filters though.

On the infuriating side of things some shady apps will claim you have to hold your finger on the home button for several seconds as some kind of login or scan. Then when your finger is held there they’ll try to process a large payment hoping you’ll accept it accidentally. Here is one such app.

One of the more successful scams, the baby formula scam. Someone with a child in a store will say they can’t afford formula for their baby, and they’ll even let you know they don’t want money. They’ll try to get you to buy baby formula, diapers, and things like that, then they’ll return all the items later for money.

Finally one of the worst scams which seems far more common than it should be and which has the potential to really screw someone. People will try to rent out properties they don’t own. Any listing for renting a property which seems too good to be true, often is. Really they just want your deposit.

I had to move for work at one point and didn’t really know the area at all. So I was just looking to rent for a bit before finding a more permanent arrangement. I picked up on the scam pretty quickly after contacting anyone, but there were so many of them that I ultimately gave up on that plan. I just became way too uncomfortable with the idea of giving money to someone for something I hadn’t seen when half of the listings seemed to be scams.”

8. Sketchy

“I’m a freshman in college looking for internships and someone messaged me on LinkedIn and said they would like the talk on the phone. I asked for the company name, company website, and what the internship was about but they said they’ll tell me everything over the phone. This was a bad mistake, if they’re reluctant to give the information when you ask then they’re hiding something. It turns out they wanted me to pay for this special program at her company.

I kept asking her what the name of the company was but she just brushed it off and continued talking about how she thinks I’d be a great entrepreneur. After the phone call, every time she messaged me on LinkedIn I would keep asking for the company website until she eventually sent it and I looked it up and it was a pyramid scheme.

I told her I wasn’t interested but she kept calling me so I blocked her number and she contacted me from at least 7 other numbers after that (I could tell because I can see the location of the phone calls and they all came from the same location). I regret giving her my phone number because I still get phone calls and I believe she gave my information to telemarketers because I’ve gotten calls from random numbers too which I haven’t before.”

9. Listen up

“Publishers Clearing House’s various sweepstakes.

Source: I spent almost three years working at their distribution center.

In a legal sense, they do the absolute bare minimum required to not be a “scam,” but that doesn’t mean they don’t screw a LOT of people.

First of all, there’s the legal definition of a contest vs. a sweepstakes. A contest can’t require an entry fee, purchase, etc. or have any kind of payment improve your odds of winning, while a sweepstakes can. PCH is TECHNICALLY a contest, but they do everything they can to hide the “no purchase necessary” disclaimer. You’re automatically entered with a purchase, which is fine, they just can’t REQUIRE it. They make this even less clear by using the terms “contest” and “sweepstakes” interchangeably in their literature.

So you probably think PCH just sells books and magazine subscriptions right? You’d be surprised. You know all those late-night infomercial products? Flex Seal, Slap Chop, the Thighmaster, and all those crappy CD compilations? Pretty much any “As Seen on TV” product is distributed by PCH (side note – the majority of these products are also available through regular retailers, despite what they’d have you believe). The infomercials aren’t exactly forthcoming about this, and when you order any of that stuff off a TV ad, you end up on the PCH contest/mailing list. That wouldn’t be so bad, except…

Regardless of what you buy, being put on the PCH mailing list is actually a subscription service. This is yet another thing they purposely avoid telling you. You buy one thing from them, and every month after that they’re going to send out some other product that they “think you’ll love,” and automatically bill you for it.

Now of course there’s a returns process and a way to cancel your subscription (and technically there’s a way to opt out of subscribing when you make a purchase in the first place, but again, you have to know that because they aren’t going to tell you), but as you might expect, it’s purposely as convoluted as possible to discourage people from canceling. Oh, but you get another contest entry every month that way, so that’s cool, right? Well…

You know how you get that cute contest entry form with your package? I bet it was like a peel-and-stick bingo card or a scratch-off lotto ticket kind of thing? I bet it said you were pre-selected as a finalist for the contest! That’s exciting right? Well no, because every single one of those inserts they send out is exactly the same.

Everyone is a “finalist,” and back to the “no purchase necessary” thing, they conveniently package the contest form with an insert that lists other products, to make it look like you have to order more stuff to get entered in the (non-existent) “next round” or whatever. The golden rule we had to follow packaging products was to NEVER accidentally put two contest inserts in a package – can’t let people catch on that they’re all the same, and therefore meaningless!

It’s a pyramid scheme, except there isn’t actually even a pyramid, they just want you to think there is! When all is said and done, they just randomly select a winner the way any other luck-of-the-draw contest does.

So how do they get away with all this and not have angry people show up at their HQ? This is the best part – the return address on the packages they send out is fake! The warehouse IS in St. Cloud, MN, but the street address flat-out doesn’t exist and the zip code is one that isn’t assigned anywhere in the United States. They have a special arrangement in place with the post office so their workers all know where stuff sent to that address is actually supposed to go. The same is true of their customer service address in NY -both use a fake “Winners Circle” street name.

Also, said warehouse is listed as “Office of the PCH Controller” or something like that on the envelope, but nobody from PCH actually works there (I never met a single PCH employee the entire time I was there, although SUPPOSEDLY they show up to tour the place every once in a while…)! It’s a third-party distribution center whose only client is PCH, and in turn is the only place PCH distributes through. There’s no PCH signage on the building, it’s purposely as nondescript as possible.

So yeah, people do win and the Prize Patrol shows up and all that. But pretty much everybody who doesn’t win is getting screwed, or at least deceived.”

10. Avoid them

“Activated Charcoal products: They are more harmful than good.

That activated charcoal toothpaste…it’s nothing but an abrasive powder that will slowly erode away your enamel. It will leave you with whiter teeth but weaker ones

That activated charcoal lemonade…all that will do is actually absorb the essential nutrients…this is why doctors use them in case of poisonings. The activated charcoal would absorb the poisonous compounds to a certain degree…

EDIT: I am referring here to the AC products that are being ingested or used for toothpaste etc.

AC is widely used in many other applications like water filters etc where they work great.

They are just not recommended at all to be ingested.”

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The USSR renamed its rocket base Baikonur in 1961…

The USSR renamed its rocket base Baikonur in 1961 to keep the Soviet space program a secret. Residents of the original Baikonur, hundreds of km away, took advantage of the resulting confusion by ordering many valuable supplies for themselves before the scam was discovered. 00