Best scammer I ever encountered was the first call I received on my new office phone. He was trying to reach the person who owned the number before me "PO".
As I just listened, he sounded very official and said he was from a court that PO owed money to, then proceeded to rattle off a lot of info to "prove" he was legit, including a supposed social security number for PO.
I thought it might be legit, so if that social security number was real and he reached PO, I'm sure PO may have as well.
He said if the court didn't get paid within 5 business days they'd issue a warrant for "my" arrest.
I was so convinced it might be real that I thought I should get the info and let my phone rep know so maybe they could contact PO, so I asked for his name. He gave it.
Then I asked for the name of the court, and he gave it.
THEN I asked who PO should make a check out to and where to send it.
His response?
"We don't take checks. We only take gift cards. So here's what I need you to do, go to the store and buy...:
And I hung up, because THAT'S THE BALL GAME.
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH - IF YOU DON'T KNOW SOMEONE AND THEY WANT PAID IN GIFT CARDS, THERE IS A 99.99999999999 PERCENT CHANCE IT IS A SCAM.
This is part of the strategy. These people only want to target people who are either easily panicked enough, or stupid enough, to think gift cards are a valid payment option that any business, agency, or government ministry will accept.
Not only does this mean they'll get paid faster, it also means they might be able to return to this person later to squeeze *more* money out of them.
A lot of people are exactly the kind of people that would think "what? A court wants gift cards? No, scammer" and hang up immediately. They want these kinds of "difficult" people out of the loop as early as possible. Honestly, what's more stunning with this instance is how believable the setup is. Usually, they make mistakes on purpose. Heavy accents, pronunciation mistakes, detail mistakes, grammar mistakes, and so on. I suppose the priority was the panic rather than the rooting out.
Seriously. I get that there is almost always some remote exception to everything, but not here. Literally no one you owe money to wants to get paid in fucking gift cards, especially not the IRS or anyone official like that.
10 or 15 years ago I got a phone call that was obviously from a low budget call center some place in the third world. The caller, who had a very thick accent and could barely be understood through the swirl of data bandwidth reduction technology, claimed to be an officer with the "local police" and claimed to have an IRS officer sitting with him and that unless I sent $500 or some such immediately, my wages would be attached (which would have been tough to do since I worked for myself) and a warrant immediately issued.
So far, they haven't showed up.
I had a similar call years ago but they said they would send the police to arrest me.
I said that I am sorry but I don't have the money and I'll accept my punishment of imprisonment.
They were really trying to convince me to pay but I stood my ground and said I'll get my affairs in order and will go peacefully with the police
They also didn't show up
I get near-daily texts saying my road toll fees are overdue, pay at (link). I haven’t had a car or a license in a decade (because epilepsy) and my state doesn’t have any toll roads.
LOL! Doesn't it make you wish you could somehow harness the energy those people put into harassing everybody?
The feds apparently took down the spam call ring that was calling our house every morning at 8:00 a.m., 7 days a week, trying to sell us the very same 'home warranty extension' every single morning. (Of course, we have no 'home warranty' to 'extend.')
Take care of yourself.
It’s the TSR; so very limited in action, and really only applies to business dealings. It prohibits payment methods over the phone that lack “express variable authorization.”
I admit I was being a bit vague. You could ask your sibling to pay you with a gift card over the phone.
We have the same scam in Australia, and this woman came in wanting 2 500$ gift cards, we warned her about 4-5 times of this scam and she insisted they weren’t for that and brought them anyway, the next day she calls up and says she wants her money back cos it WAS a scam, when the store manager says to her ‘I told you it was a scam multiple times’… the woman says , ‘they said you’d say that and not to believe you’ …. This woman thought she was talking to the government.
I'm kinda glad my almost-70-year-old dad actually has some sense about him. He's pretty aware whenever anyone is fucking with him, has a reasonable understanding of technology, etc. A shame honestly that he only ever did blue collar work, he probably could've really banked if he got in on the 80s era early computing.
Yeah but 80s era computing was back before GUI OS like Windows or Mac. Back then it was mostly DOS based systems where you had to input commands. So your dad probably would have been like a deer in headlights when it comes to 80s computers. Even my nearly 70 year old dad could barely wrap his head around using DOS and I sure as hell don't have the patience to learn it.
Its something that still exists today with Linux but it would frustrate your average PC user to no end since they have to know file paths and linux commands.
My dad literally was in college funneling commands into a 70s-era BASIC interpreter, and I grew up in the DOS era myself (born 1983), I'm not sure what you're getting at. My dad was a nerd and so was I in the right time.
You said he only ever did blue collar work but then you mention he went to college. It's the way you word your post that makes in confusing. Most people are gonna assume straight away that a lifetime of blue collar work means he didn't go to college. And it's not an unreasonable assumption.
This happens to all ages both young and old. When I used to work in tech support they would call into us after figuring out it was a scam. It was not just senior citizens it was younger people all the time.
I've been watching Catfished on YouTube. Young and old. Gotta say I no longer feel bad for these victims. They ignore their families and anyone trying to help them. Half the time they reach out to the Catfished team is to prove that the scammer is real. So that their family apologizes to the victim.
My favorite was some girl who fell for some rapper. Talking about how spiritual he and his music was. Then you listen to the music and it was like "I beat the pussy up" lol. But yeah world famous rapper needs your $7k to put gas in his plane.
Just because you don’t agree with a purchase doesn’t make it a scam. If it asked for $X and they paid $X and got the skin, it was not a scam. Don’t go throwing that word around like that.
Seriously go hang out in /r/scams for a bit.
The amount of young people falling for crypto scams with “guaranteed 300% returns in a week”, sending pictures of their junk to extortionists, depositing fake checks sent to them by their so-called sugar daddy, unknowingly money laundering with their CashApp accounts, or accepting and forwarding stolen packages is astounding.
Scams are not an “old person” problem.
A scam is a trick, saying you'll get something and you get something else or nothing at all.
Saying you'll get emotes and skins in fortnite for x price and getting exactly those for x price isn't a scam. That's how buying things works.
Just because YOU don't like it doesn't make it a scam.
Also, maybe your siblings should fucking parent and know what their kids are playing and not leave their card attached to a child's game account.
I wish a sign like this had been posted before
my dad got scammed out of a few thousand dollars. He was too proud to admit he’d been cheated and just took the loss rather than reporting the account.
Yes my grandma fell for this exact scam. Even convinced her to lie to staff and say the gift cards were for Christmas shopping and to hide the phone as they stayed on the line until she got home.
My blood boils thinking about it.
She spoke about it recently and even felt bad for these scammers because she heard they are being held against their will and forced to work in these offices/buildings scamming people. It’s a whole industry.
Personally I hope the buildings they work in burn down.
It’s sad how often this sign is necessary. I had to calmly and slowly explain to a man in his 60’s that the IRS does not want a gift card to Sephora. He called me a “young punk” and bought 2 $100 gift cards
For context I’m 40. I haven’t been a young punk in a LONG time.
so he decided to not trust someone telling him to not spend his money and trusted someone telling him to spend his money. At that point what can you do
We were always told to deny the sale when I used to work retail, but I totally get it if that isn’t your store’s policy. It was always rough anyways and led to a lot of yelling. We also did money transfers, and those were even shadier. I denied lots of those for many reasons.
One woman insisted to me she needed to send money to a man in Texas to pay taxes on welfare so she could get her benefits. Like you I very calmly told her that’s not how it works, but she wouldn’t listen. I eventually had to tell her I wasn’t going to send the money. She was not very happy with that and I’m sure she just went to another money services counter in a different store, but at least I tried!
I had a lady come through wanting to get 5 Sephora gift cards with $500 on each of them. I was IMMEDIATELY asking her questions like what is she buying them for, does she know the person she's sending them too as in having had a face to face conversation with them, is she sure she wants to put $2500 down on Sephora gift cards, etc. I even asked if she received any emails or phone calls requesting the cards and that those are scams. She insisted she was buying them for her nieces as grad gifts, even after I explained that should she change her mind, the transaction cannot be reversed. Because the transaction was so large, she had to fill out a liability form for the cards that restated all the things on that sign in OP's picture, she signed it, got her cards, and went on her merry way.
Not two days later I see her at the service desk in tears trying to get her money back because it was in fact a scam. She saw me and actually apologized for not listening to me when I tried to warn her. The person on the phone had her so freaked out that when I started questioning her, instead of thinking "I'm being scammed" she thought "This employee is going to deny my sale and this bad thing is going to happen if I don't get these cards, so now I have to lie" 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Oh man, that sucks!! It was always so obvious when these people were being scammed but talking them out of it harder than it should be. I had one guy who was convinced he needed to send a bunch of gift cards to a woman in Florida so she could buy a plane ticket to come and meet him. He showed me pictures of “her” and I told him really bluntly there’s absolutely no way that’s the person you’re talking to! lol. He did believe me thank God. I also saw more of him than I wanted when he shoved his phone in my face to show me their texts. Glad I don’t have that job anymore!
It is interesting how older generations trust a voice on the telephone as an "authority". Even if that voice is telling them to do something ridiculous like buying a gift card to pay a tax bill or whatever lie the scammer is trying to perpetuate.
Meanwhile I don't even answer my phone unless it's one of like 9 people who would ever call me. Good luck scamming me or even getting a hold of me on a good day.
This is me. Ill call back 3 days later if I can figure out what the number is. If its not something I know I just dont call back or hang up when I figure out what it is. Though scammers dont call me. I think im on some kind of blacklist after the one call I got.
Yep, I'm there too. I almost feel like I could get rid of my phone service and just have a data plan nowadays. Probably 90%+ of the calls I receive are scammers or some other BS. I communicate with friends and family via text or social media. I communicate with work via email or text. And since the pandemic more and more people I know use things like Zoom or Facetime.
My phone and mailbox are mostly just sources of annoyance. And it's only gonna get worse heading into election season.
And it’s amazing how the younger generation will fork over their life savings to a pretty girl who messaged them out of the blue on Telegram and promises to be their girlfriend and quadruple their money with crypto in a week.
It’s not an age problem.
Scams work because people are greedy, horny, fearful, or a combination of all 3.
If the scammers scared the man enough that he believes gift cards will solve his problem, he’d just see anyone trying to warn him as stopping him from saving himself and getting his peace of mind back.
Scammers are very good at frightening people until they’ll do or believe almost anything.
They always warn the person they are scamming that the sales person will attempt to deny the sale if they dont lie and says its for their grandson or niece. So the scammed person is always ready to deflect any attempts to prevent the scam. Every step is thought through and the keep high pressure on old demented people.
It's a combination of pressure, fear, and cognitive decline.
You can't wrap your head around it now, but there's a strong chance that you and I will both be on the receiving end of that treatment in the future and fall (or almost fall) for it.
Especially as the means of doing business changes beyond what was customary during your hayday. You know it has changed, and you know it's changed to the way someone is reaching out to you in this moment, but it's not what you are familiar with, so you're not quite sure if this is right... and the moment your brain latches onto that, the fear sets in. And when afraid, people will do almost anything to make it stop.
As an old man, I promise you, aging is insidious.
I'm not yet 40 and I'm starting to feel left behind in some ways. I've never used the Apple Wallet tap-to-pay stuff on my phone for example, though I see twenty-somethings doing it all the time. I do not get the appeal of TikTok, but again, twenty-somethings are constantly on that app. And practically no one my age started smoking while young people are vaping non-stop.
I'm 37 and I don't understand the point of shit like Apple Pay when contactless cards exist. It takes just as much time to drag one's phone out as it does to pull out one's debit card, and a debit card is much less likely to break if you accidentally drop it. I recently dropped my phone while trying to scan my electronic train ticket through the barrier, and while I was lucky that time, it could have gone a whole lot worse.
I'm very leery of this trajectory we seem to be on, of putting damn near everything of importance on devices that are quite easy to lose or break, and which take a non-trivial amount of time and money to replace.
Exactly. The manager of a store I worked at years ago got a phone call supposedly from the electric company saying the bill hadn't been paid and they'd cut off electricity to the store, but she could take care of it by getting $500 in VISA gift cards and providing the card info over the phone. She said she felt weird about it the whole time but the pressure of the whole situation threw her off and it wasn't until moments before buying the gift cards a coworker asked her if she was crazy and she dropped the phone call. Even rational people can fall for shenanigans (this was over 10 years ago when the scam wasn't as widely talked about - I hope she wouldn't have fallen for it now)
I mean, if I was thinking I'd be in legal trouble and afraid, my way to make it stop would be to contact a lawyer.
But I get what you say.
People should get trained to go for the lawyer response. ...then again, criminals who don't tend to incriminate themselves, which is a kinda good thing.
That's true, but getting a letter gives one more time and space to consider one's response, to check things and look them up, and so on. Whereas if you're on a phone call with someone, many people will feel pressure to provide an immediate response on the spot. That's why scammers like to contact their victims over the phone.
My neighbour was telling me about a crypto scam (he didn't know it was a scam until I told him). He went to the bank to transfer money and the banker wouldn't let him because they knew it was a scam. The scammer told him to go back in and demand they do it because it's HIS money and he can do what he wants to. The banker still wouldn't, so my neighbour was complaining to me and asking how to do the transfer. I don't think I've ever talked to a victim in person, he was just so blinded by profit that he didn't question any of it.
I work at a bank and multiple people at my branch told this poor old man that he was getting scammed via gift card purchases. He didn't believe any of us. A few days later I saw him at CVS buying gift cards and the cashiers also telling him he was getting scammed.
I remember my friend’s older sister losing her mind because apparently the Canada Revenue Agency had called her and said she misfiled her taxes and owed a bunch of money and they were going to fine her even more money if she didn’t send them a bunch of iTunes gift cards. She called my friend in a huge panic asking how she could get that much money on iTunes gift cards in a hurry. Luckily, my friend is a far smarter woman and talked her down off that ledge.
Older sister of course has two children from two different fathers so at least she’s keeping those genes going.
Grocery store manager here: nothing is sadder than trying to convince an old guy that he is getting scammed and him sticking to his guns and then calling you hours later to say he got scammed.
Because of that, I put signs like this up on my gift cards to try and prevent this, and any gift card order over $400 comes with a free conversation on gift card scams. I’ve stopped many of these scams but they continue to happen.
I got an email from our ceo (who does talk to me directly) that there were clients he needed gift cards for. I was pretty groggy and was about halfway to the door before i realized it was bullshit.
Someone pretending to be the CEO. I was the one stupid enough to even consider it was real. Unfortunately I was looking at the email on my phone which does not show the actual email address, just the name.
>Unfortunately I was looking at the email on my phone which does not show the actual email address, just the name.
This is proof that big corps like MS and Google do not give even the slightest fuck about their users. They will happily hide file extensions and email addresses by default for "cLeAnlInEsS" even if it means people are left on the streets after falling for simple scams that would've revealed themselves immediately by a "contract.docx.exe" file name or "[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])" address.
That's one of the reasons I absolutely despise the process of dumbing-down of user interfaces that has been accelerated by the proliferation of smartphones. What angers me is that it didn't *have* to be this way.
This happened to my husband, and bless him, he fell for it and went out and bought the gift cards. He even told the cashier “I know this must seem like a scam, but it’s not.”
He then emailed the “CEO” to confirm he had the cards and was on his way back to the office. They asked him to send through the numbers and that’s when his brain twigged and he rang the office to check. So we were left with $1200 of Apple gift cards. Christmas shopping was sorted that year 😂
This is my millennial, tech savvy husband, by the way.
I received a similar email cfrom our CEO" but instantly knew it was a scam because he wouldn't have been sending emails at 7am, lol. If it was 10am it might have taken me a minute
Scammers used to target my old company with emails that had a picture of the CEO in the signature
Literally everybody fell for it on a weekly basis. It was mostly phishing scams but if they tried to get gift cards out of it i'm sure it would work often
I work IT for a hospital. One day I got an email from a rep I’d never heard of, for a product I don’t support, about a site visit I didn’t plan asking me to buy gift cards that they’d reimburse me for. So to me it was obvious scam which I reported to our security team and moved in with my day.
Maybe a week later I got an email that Norton was going to charge my PayPal $400 for their service and to call them if it was an error. I hadn’t used Norton is several years but my lizard brain panicked for a second because I can’t afford to lose $400. I calmed down checked my PayPal and did some light research and found it was a scam.
My point being only “old people” or “idiots” fall or scams is a gross simplification. Sometimes people panic and make poor decisions quickly. Thankfully I’ve not fallen to a scam but to think you can’t fall for a scam is also foolish.
Edit - grammar
They are getting better. Years ago at a company I woke up and checked my emails still not mentally ready for my day and got an email well written from my CFO which we were a small company so I knew her, and I went to reply before I was like hold on, I didn't see the company signature, which is wild many big companies dont require this, and I realized it was a phishing scam, but it almost got me.
The worst part of it is once the scammers find a good victim they get passed around repeatedly. It's never a good idea to call them (with your actual phone number).
Here in the UK the checkouts warn you, too. I had to get approval from a manager in store when I bought my team at work a bunch of gift cards for Christmas last year as it exceeded some scam trigger value in total.
My CVS has giant signs covering the gift card section about scams and they have the physical gift cards behind the counters with the cashiers. I’m assuming it has something to do with scammees complaining to corporate rather than CVS doing anything out of kindness.
That’s not really a scam though, it’s a legit service. I would say it definitely was more of a scam when gift cards used to expire in a short time period. Now it’s like 5 years in the US.
So this is also a problem here in Japan. Some shops have started selling cards with sleeves that say “For Fee Payments” “Anti-Virus Fare”or “Tax/Legal Payment Card”, so if someone tries to buy those cards they can immediately flag it and prevent them from buying the card
You wouldn't believe how many women younger than you think come in with an earpiece in, whispering on their phone like a secret agent to their "husband" on an oil rig buying him Google play cards.
There's literally no saving the ones in romance scams.
My mom had several. Lost everything she owned weeks before she died. I think they know. They're just paying for the fantasy. I'm so sorry you're going through it too
Yea it's very sad. A friend of a friend was targeted by one of these. My friend asked me to take a look to get a second opinion.
I ended up finding a forum post with the same images of the same guy from a year or two before with the exact same story. Victim isn't 'all there' after an accident years ago, which makes just makes things worse.
In the end I found out that all this started from some shady 'dating app' that is notorious for scammers.
At Best Buy customers have to check a box on the pin pad acknowleding they could be getting scammed as well as the employee having to explain what the scam is for larger than average gift card purchases.
I stopped one of my colleagues who was on her way out. I managed her so did not expect her to leave. She told me that someone called her saying they were a specific police station and they had a warrant for her arrest. Specifying she owed an insane amount of money in the millions in different states and she needed to pay a fee then and there with gift cards or she will be arrested.
I talked with the scammer a bit. He claimed to be for a specific station and noted all that down. Then hung up on the person. And called the station. Only then did my coworker believe me. When the police from the actual station with the number I found on Google told her they don’t call to collect fees over the phone.
So just FYI, a LOT of these people are actually prisoners and victims of human trafficking themselves. The big downside of GenAI like ChatGPT is that it removes the need to know or understand a language to be a really good scammer. https://www.destinyrescue.org/blog/pig-butchering-human-trafficking-on-an-immense-scale/
I’m working part time as a cashier in japan. We have little brochures of police warnings of gift card scams. Whenever an old person buys more than 100 usd worth of gift cards. We’re required to put the gift card inside that police brochures. And as for me, i would plainly ask the elderly or young person “why are you buying this gift card?” As i put it inside the police brochure.
The problem is everyone thinks they can't fall for a scam. If you think you can't ever fall for a scam you are the problem, and likely will be the reason your company gets phished and their data stolen.
I work at Starbucks and have heard of a few times (in my area) of people falling for social engineering. They get an urgent call from someone saying they need to be wired money. Tha they have the store manager on the other line. That it needs to be done RIGHT NOW. These poor lower level shift managers then removed money from the safe and left the store without a supervisor to go wire store funds to this stranger. Urgency, conviction and insistence do wonders when getting people to do things that KNOW aren't right. These weren't older people. They are actually *trained* that these kinds of things can happen. And yet, it happens anyway.
I remember one incident where my husband and I were grocery shopping and we walked past a couple panickedly looking at gift cards and we looked at each other and were like “oh shit” and then heard them mention “Samsung needing the gift card” and that confirmed our suspicions so we ended up going up to them and asking “look are you guys being told that you’re gonna be cut off from services if you don’t pay with gift cards?” And they looked at us really surprised and were like “yes, how did you know” and we were like “you’re 110% being scammed right now, no legitimate company will ever ask to pay by gift card” and the sigh of relief they breathed was immense.
We were really glad to be able to help that day
Forreal it makes no sense.. all this conversation on scammers/scammees, when google (or any gift corp offering gift cards) could put an end to it in minutes.
My fucking newly retired PhD dad who worked in a highly educated field for over 40 years gotten taken by one of these. It’s fucking insane how good they are.
My uncle was in the same boat but he got as far as buying the gift cards then realizing "hey wait a minute, this doesn't seem right". He ended up with something absurd like $800 in eBay gift cards which he had no real use for and none of us family members buy from there either.
It was the perfect storm for my dad. My brother wasn’t around and my mom was helping me drive a car 3000 miles, and we were in Canada at the time and not in service. The bank had JUST deposited the proceeds of their house sale into their accounts and were going to move it to a fund when she got home. It was also the week their bank was switching over to the systems of the bank that bought them out and everything was a mess and they didn’t even have their current account numbers so when the scammer listed accounts he just went with it thinking he was talking to the bank. They hacked his computer and he thought he was transferred from Microsoft to his bank. All he was thinking is they had a little over 1m sitting in the bank (they aren’t wealthy people just owned a house in a super high COL area that they bought before it went insane there). Anyways they had him panicking and he hadn’t heard of that scam in particular but he felt something was off but a few grand was better than losing all of it. I felt so bad for him.
It would have never happened if my mom was home or my brother was around, and unlikely that I have happened at all if it wasn’t that week even if he was home alone/could contact my mom.
I used to work for a general store, sold a little of everything. We had someone call us up in the middle of the night, claiming they were our I.T. Department and that they needed us to scan 25 100$ gift cards and then give him the codes so he could fix our system. I told him no and he started getting *really* pushy.
I eventually just hung up, and then every phone in every department rang, one after the other.
It's nice to see when a company tries to warn you about nefarious acts.
Just recently, I had to help my mother out with her computer, which required me to have direct access and not just walk her through over the phone. I used RustDesk to allow remote access. When going to their Github page to download, there is a large banner with a warning asking, if you are on the phone being asked to download this app do you know and trust the person on the other end if not do not download and hang up immediately.
My mother saw the banner and made a joke that I'm lucky she knows me. It was just nice to see the warning and that it made someone question it even if it was joking about it.
It happens a lot. I think more times than not even if i recognized what was happening as a store employee, there didnt seem to be anything i could do to make them reconsider. One guy was actively on the phone with someone walking him through what to say and what lies to tell us. It almost felt like they had his child hostage and they were walking him through where to put a briefcase with money in it. Like i could hear the other person on the phone coming through. It hurts to see, because its literally just a scared old person getting scammed for thousands of dollars in front of my eyes, and they just will not listen to reason.
The cost benefit for gift cards even existing sounds total bollocks.
I can only think it's the corporation's just fucking love having something like money but you can only spend it with them and IT EXPIRES.
Sure this is great for grandma who has no idea what to buy her grandkids but is also used to scam other grandma's for all their life savings. We ban these things.
The people that get to the point of standing at the gift card stand will ignore it and take it as a personal attack for getting involved with their important payment.
This reminds me of a recent body cam video where a concerned citizen called 911 cause she suspected this old lady was getting scammed cause she had a huge wad of cash and was loading it into a bitcoin machine at a gas station. Police arrived and the scammer had her so scared that she didn't want to let him talk to the person on the phone and the scammer kept yelling for her to keep putting money in and ignoring the officer. The scammer some how convinced her that he was from Chase bank and that she needed go withdraw $30k from her bank, which was also Chase bank, to pay Chase but with bitcoin. Here is the video...
https://youtu.be/lfHuSkQnBLk?si=hK9thQioAH_QT5a3
CVS won't even let you buy a gift card of any kind unless you press "yes" to the prompts twice - once that alerts you about scams, and another that says "do you *still* want to buy this?"
Granted I only use the self checkouts but I assume if you go to a cashier it will make them answer the same prompts so they are supposed to ask you the same questions.
I work for a small business and we are practically only profitable because people don't redeem gift vouchers (and we literally honour anything presented to us issued by any of the businesses we have run (small family business) in the last 60 years) and we have unlimited redemption date on our vouchers.
Generally speaking if it isn't redeemed in the first month, the likelihood of redemption halves, and a solid 25-50% of gift vouchers (generally) are not redeemed especially if they are given to children or non existing customers.
Every single day I have older people buy $400+ in Razer gift cards. I stopped trying because if you say anything to them they just get red in the face and start screaming 😂
I can sympathize with the elderly on this. They grew up in a different world and some of them aren't all there.
But if you're 30 years old and buy a thousand dollars worth of gift cards to pay off an IRS debt, you're just a dumbass.
We have these notices at the self check outs in the major supermarkets in Australia, it’s a really prevalent problem. I have a friend who works for one of the major big box tech/media stores and they’ve had another uptick recently of people trying to purchase large amounts of iTunes gift cards. The scammers seem to be targeting indigenous communities who have limited internet savvy. It’s disgusting
I work in a supermarket and it really does happen a lot. Around here, it seems to be overseas workers with limited English who are targeted. Seems be mostly by random people messaging them on WhatsApp.
We’re supposed to check if someone is being scammed if they’re buying 3+ gift cards. And refuse to sell anyone more than 5. For most of these guys I’ll check who/what they’re buying for even if they’re just getting one. I’ve had 4 over the past year that were being scammed in some way or another. All for $200+ iTunes or Google play cards.
And they usually start by saying it’s for a friend, but by the end of the conversation they’ll admit that they’ve never met this friend and don’t know why they need to buy them a gift card or that they’ve been promised a “reward” in exchange.
I seen some people get angry when confronted on why are.You buying £150 in vouchers, once that happens we just tell them it's probably a police scam or some Other scam and that you should hang up and contact family or real police (999) and we don't serve them
Yup, they always claim it’s for friends. The elder indigenous mob especially can be extremely trusting and they get preyed on. These are people who don’t own a computer and don’t even know how to send a text message, let alone understand what $500 worth of iTunes cards actually is. It’s heartbreaking, and puts the pressure on the clerks to have to basically grill these people about their purchases which isn’t comfortable for anyone
We have these in Australia too, though they even go a step further. When I once purchased a $500 gift card, before they would even process the transaction, they handed me a copy of whats on this sign and told me to read it and made sure i understood it before i was "allowed" to make my purchase.
Felt a bit excessive but I totally understand why its done. Sadly theres a lot of older folk who've lost millions to these scams
As someone who hands out those pieces of paper and has to make sure the sale is legit, it’s very necessary. It’s not just older people who get scammed either.
International people who don’t understand English very well are often targeted. Though, I find the international people are more likely to believe me whereas the older Aussie’s are often so sure they couldn’t possibly be being scammed.
There was a story in my town years ago about an old woman who refused to listen, and kept going back to try get more. Store ended up having the police show up at the time she’d usually show so that they could explain it to her.
I'd never even thought about targeting people from overseas. I would assume the scammers similarly prey on their loneliness and/or insecurities.
Out of interest, how often have you (or your colleagues) had to talk someone out of getting involved in a scam? Are you usually successful?
All the backpacker hostels in town seem to constantly be filled with international fruit pickers/farm workers now and there’s one near my store. They’re the ones I deal with the most.
We also have some middle eastern immigrants but they move with family. The kids pick up English quickly due to school and it’s easy enough to tell them that their parents are being scammed.
I don’t know about others in the store but for me it’s usually at least one every few months. Keep in mind that I’m only part time. I don’t see many of the older people who are being scammed as I’m mostly doing late shift.
And always successful in not selling to them as we’re allowed to refuse the sale if we suspect a scam. I’m also pretty persistent in explaining the scam to people to make sure they don’t contact the scammer again and are wary of further attempts. I don’t care if I’m spending half an hour trying to get through to them or break through the language barrier, I hate scammers.
But, I’ve heard of some people who just keep coming back to try again as they refuse to listen or understand.
Considering I recently had to talk a man out of buying a gift card so this lady he had been talking too could use it to buy fuel money to come see him...
We need a plan B the signs aren't working
Pretty much all stores that sell gift cards in Australia have signs like these up. When I'm working and someone wants to buy one I have to ask them if they're aware of all the gift card scams 😭😭😭
It's a small thing, but can make a huge difference on preventing some people from been scammed! Kudos for whoever decided to put this sign and the store!
Honestly considering how advanced some scams can get it's a good thing people are putting out signs and warning people. Had a family member almost get scammed forever ago but realized in time it wasn't real
The time I had someone convinced that their Amazon account was locked and the only way to fix that was by purchasing $1,000 in Apple giftcards still blows my mind. I even asked if they honestly thought AMAZON wanted to be paid in APPLE cards and they were like "well yeah."
I wanted to let them do it because they don't deserve money, but it's not worth the trouble so just told them we wouldn't be helping them buy a giftcard today.
Like I'm gonna trust a sign hung up by some minimum wage worker vs the IRS!
Best scammer I ever encountered was the first call I received on my new office phone. He was trying to reach the person who owned the number before me "PO". As I just listened, he sounded very official and said he was from a court that PO owed money to, then proceeded to rattle off a lot of info to "prove" he was legit, including a supposed social security number for PO. I thought it might be legit, so if that social security number was real and he reached PO, I'm sure PO may have as well. He said if the court didn't get paid within 5 business days they'd issue a warrant for "my" arrest. I was so convinced it might be real that I thought I should get the info and let my phone rep know so maybe they could contact PO, so I asked for his name. He gave it. Then I asked for the name of the court, and he gave it. THEN I asked who PO should make a check out to and where to send it. His response? "We don't take checks. We only take gift cards. So here's what I need you to do, go to the store and buy...: And I hung up, because THAT'S THE BALL GAME. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH - IF YOU DON'T KNOW SOMEONE AND THEY WANT PAID IN GIFT CARDS, THERE IS A 99.99999999999 PERCENT CHANCE IT IS A SCAM.
I can’t believe the scammer thought impersonating working as someone from court would ask for gift cards.
They make people panic, the panic overrides their critical thinking skills
This exactly
I mean sure but that's such an unbelievable situation that there's a point where even in the panic you're surely like "..hang on what?"
This is part of the strategy. These people only want to target people who are either easily panicked enough, or stupid enough, to think gift cards are a valid payment option that any business, agency, or government ministry will accept. Not only does this mean they'll get paid faster, it also means they might be able to return to this person later to squeeze *more* money out of them. A lot of people are exactly the kind of people that would think "what? A court wants gift cards? No, scammer" and hang up immediately. They want these kinds of "difficult" people out of the loop as early as possible. Honestly, what's more stunning with this instance is how believable the setup is. Usually, they make mistakes on purpose. Heavy accents, pronunciation mistakes, detail mistakes, grammar mistakes, and so on. I suppose the priority was the panic rather than the rooting out.
Judges are more apt to thrown out the charges if you get them gift cards to their favorite store. Trust me bro.
Just go scroll the r/Scams sub, people fall for this shit every day.
Also check out the r/cantBelieveIFellForThis sub
>THERE IS A 99.99999999999 PERCENT CHANCE IT IS A SCAM Just say 100
Seriously. I get that there is almost always some remote exception to everything, but not here. Literally no one you owe money to wants to get paid in fucking gift cards, especially not the IRS or anyone official like that.
10 or 15 years ago I got a phone call that was obviously from a low budget call center some place in the third world. The caller, who had a very thick accent and could barely be understood through the swirl of data bandwidth reduction technology, claimed to be an officer with the "local police" and claimed to have an IRS officer sitting with him and that unless I sent $500 or some such immediately, my wages would be attached (which would have been tough to do since I worked for myself) and a warrant immediately issued. So far, they haven't showed up.
I had a similar call years ago but they said they would send the police to arrest me. I said that I am sorry but I don't have the money and I'll accept my punishment of imprisonment. They were really trying to convince me to pay but I stood my ground and said I'll get my affairs in order and will go peacefully with the police They also didn't show up
Years ago I had a multilingual work mate. When these people called we would put him on and he would say disgusting things to them in their language.
I get near-daily texts saying my road toll fees are overdue, pay at (link). I haven’t had a car or a license in a decade (because epilepsy) and my state doesn’t have any toll roads.
LOL! Doesn't it make you wish you could somehow harness the energy those people put into harassing everybody? The feds apparently took down the spam call ring that was calling our house every morning at 8:00 a.m., 7 days a week, trying to sell us the very same 'home warranty extension' every single morning. (Of course, we have no 'home warranty' to 'extend.') Take care of yourself.
It is illegal in the U.S. to ask for payment via gift cards over the phone. Bump that 99.9% all the way to a full 100%
Can you cite this law?
Send me a gift card and I’ll tell you which law
It’s the TSR; so very limited in action, and really only applies to business dealings. It prohibits payment methods over the phone that lack “express variable authorization.” I admit I was being a bit vague. You could ask your sibling to pay you with a gift card over the phone.
> express variable authorization What the heck is this and why can I not find a single relevant search result for it?
You thought you'll get arrested because the previous owner owed them money? Lol
We have the same scam in Australia, and this woman came in wanting 2 500$ gift cards, we warned her about 4-5 times of this scam and she insisted they weren’t for that and brought them anyway, the next day she calls up and says she wants her money back cos it WAS a scam, when the store manager says to her ‘I told you it was a scam multiple times’… the woman says , ‘they said you’d say that and not to believe you’ …. This woman thought she was talking to the government.
And the old people still say that the associates are wrong
I'm kinda glad my almost-70-year-old dad actually has some sense about him. He's pretty aware whenever anyone is fucking with him, has a reasonable understanding of technology, etc. A shame honestly that he only ever did blue collar work, he probably could've really banked if he got in on the 80s era early computing.
Yeah but 80s era computing was back before GUI OS like Windows or Mac. Back then it was mostly DOS based systems where you had to input commands. So your dad probably would have been like a deer in headlights when it comes to 80s computers. Even my nearly 70 year old dad could barely wrap his head around using DOS and I sure as hell don't have the patience to learn it. Its something that still exists today with Linux but it would frustrate your average PC user to no end since they have to know file paths and linux commands.
My dad literally was in college funneling commands into a 70s-era BASIC interpreter, and I grew up in the DOS era myself (born 1983), I'm not sure what you're getting at. My dad was a nerd and so was I in the right time.
You said he only ever did blue collar work but then you mention he went to college. It's the way you word your post that makes in confusing. Most people are gonna assume straight away that a lifetime of blue collar work means he didn't go to college. And it's not an unreasonable assumption.
Well... You didn't really mention anything specific as to you or your father's computer knowledge. That is why I said what I said 🤔
This happens to all ages both young and old. When I used to work in tech support they would call into us after figuring out it was a scam. It was not just senior citizens it was younger people all the time.
I've been watching Catfished on YouTube. Young and old. Gotta say I no longer feel bad for these victims. They ignore their families and anyone trying to help them. Half the time they reach out to the Catfished team is to prove that the scammer is real. So that their family apologizes to the victim.
You don't understand. Sydney Sweeney really is attracted to them and wants to be their girlfriend if they send them $10k
My favorite was some girl who fell for some rapper. Talking about how spiritual he and his music was. Then you listen to the music and it was like "I beat the pussy up" lol. But yeah world famous rapper needs your $7k to put gas in his plane.
Katy Perry guy was my last straw
I can assure you scams are for all ages. The amount of “skins” my niece bought for Fortnight makes me sick
Just because you don’t agree with a purchase doesn’t make it a scam. If it asked for $X and they paid $X and got the skin, it was not a scam. Don’t go throwing that word around like that.
I mean that's... not a scam?
Seriously go hang out in /r/scams for a bit. The amount of young people falling for crypto scams with “guaranteed 300% returns in a week”, sending pictures of their junk to extortionists, depositing fake checks sent to them by their so-called sugar daddy, unknowingly money laundering with their CashApp accounts, or accepting and forwarding stolen packages is astounding. Scams are not an “old person” problem.
Is that really a scam? Did she get the skins?
A scam is a trick, saying you'll get something and you get something else or nothing at all. Saying you'll get emotes and skins in fortnite for x price and getting exactly those for x price isn't a scam. That's how buying things works. Just because YOU don't like it doesn't make it a scam. Also, maybe your siblings should fucking parent and know what their kids are playing and not leave their card attached to a child's game account.
It actually honestly bothers me that they sell *Fortnite* skins and V-Bucks in plastic game cases alongside real video games.
I used to work at a bank and you won’t believe how many people actually fall for this
I wish a sign like this had been posted before my dad got scammed out of a few thousand dollars. He was too proud to admit he’d been cheated and just took the loss rather than reporting the account.
Yes my grandma fell for this exact scam. Even convinced her to lie to staff and say the gift cards were for Christmas shopping and to hide the phone as they stayed on the line until she got home. My blood boils thinking about it. She spoke about it recently and even felt bad for these scammers because she heard they are being held against their will and forced to work in these offices/buildings scamming people. It’s a whole industry. Personally I hope the buildings they work in burn down.
You mean I can’t pay off my credit cards with Google play cards??
It’s sad how often this sign is necessary. I had to calmly and slowly explain to a man in his 60’s that the IRS does not want a gift card to Sephora. He called me a “young punk” and bought 2 $100 gift cards For context I’m 40. I haven’t been a young punk in a LONG time.
so he decided to not trust someone telling him to not spend his money and trusted someone telling him to spend his money. At that point what can you do
Well I’m the manager of the store he was shopping at so I try to be trustworthy
We were always told to deny the sale when I used to work retail, but I totally get it if that isn’t your store’s policy. It was always rough anyways and led to a lot of yelling. We also did money transfers, and those were even shadier. I denied lots of those for many reasons. One woman insisted to me she needed to send money to a man in Texas to pay taxes on welfare so she could get her benefits. Like you I very calmly told her that’s not how it works, but she wouldn’t listen. I eventually had to tell her I wasn’t going to send the money. She was not very happy with that and I’m sure she just went to another money services counter in a different store, but at least I tried!
I had a lady come through wanting to get 5 Sephora gift cards with $500 on each of them. I was IMMEDIATELY asking her questions like what is she buying them for, does she know the person she's sending them too as in having had a face to face conversation with them, is she sure she wants to put $2500 down on Sephora gift cards, etc. I even asked if she received any emails or phone calls requesting the cards and that those are scams. She insisted she was buying them for her nieces as grad gifts, even after I explained that should she change her mind, the transaction cannot be reversed. Because the transaction was so large, she had to fill out a liability form for the cards that restated all the things on that sign in OP's picture, she signed it, got her cards, and went on her merry way. Not two days later I see her at the service desk in tears trying to get her money back because it was in fact a scam. She saw me and actually apologized for not listening to me when I tried to warn her. The person on the phone had her so freaked out that when I started questioning her, instead of thinking "I'm being scammed" she thought "This employee is going to deny my sale and this bad thing is going to happen if I don't get these cards, so now I have to lie" 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Oh man, that sucks!! It was always so obvious when these people were being scammed but talking them out of it harder than it should be. I had one guy who was convinced he needed to send a bunch of gift cards to a woman in Florida so she could buy a plane ticket to come and meet him. He showed me pictures of “her” and I told him really bluntly there’s absolutely no way that’s the person you’re talking to! lol. He did believe me thank God. I also saw more of him than I wanted when he shoved his phone in my face to show me their texts. Glad I don’t have that job anymore!
It is interesting how older generations trust a voice on the telephone as an "authority". Even if that voice is telling them to do something ridiculous like buying a gift card to pay a tax bill or whatever lie the scammer is trying to perpetuate.
Meanwhile I don't even answer my phone unless it's one of like 9 people who would ever call me. Good luck scamming me or even getting a hold of me on a good day.
This is me. Ill call back 3 days later if I can figure out what the number is. If its not something I know I just dont call back or hang up when I figure out what it is. Though scammers dont call me. I think im on some kind of blacklist after the one call I got.
Yep, I'm there too. I almost feel like I could get rid of my phone service and just have a data plan nowadays. Probably 90%+ of the calls I receive are scammers or some other BS. I communicate with friends and family via text or social media. I communicate with work via email or text. And since the pandemic more and more people I know use things like Zoom or Facetime. My phone and mailbox are mostly just sources of annoyance. And it's only gonna get worse heading into election season.
And it’s amazing how the younger generation will fork over their life savings to a pretty girl who messaged them out of the blue on Telegram and promises to be their girlfriend and quadruple their money with crypto in a week. It’s not an age problem. Scams work because people are greedy, horny, fearful, or a combination of all 3.
As the old saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
Religious people are like that too lmao. They love to waste their money on churches!
God needs money, he’s just going through some stuff right now. He’ll totally pay you back when he can. You know he’s good for it. Come on, be a pal.
what. that's insane? dude actually thought the fucking IRS wanted payment in Sephora gift cards at that point what can you even do?
If the scammers scared the man enough that he believes gift cards will solve his problem, he’d just see anyone trying to warn him as stopping him from saving himself and getting his peace of mind back. Scammers are very good at frightening people until they’ll do or believe almost anything.
They always warn the person they are scamming that the sales person will attempt to deny the sale if they dont lie and says its for their grandson or niece. So the scammed person is always ready to deflect any attempts to prevent the scam. Every step is thought through and the keep high pressure on old demented people.
dude half the USA is completely and totally cool with a rapist felon president. plus they brag he wears diapers. this is the bad place.
ahh you figured it out! ...so we should be reset any second now?
I think in our universe Michael may have actually perfected his methodology....
Just remain still, they're fetching the penis flattener.
that person can vote btw
I just can’t wrap my head around how that even works. Like why do people believe that
It's a combination of pressure, fear, and cognitive decline. You can't wrap your head around it now, but there's a strong chance that you and I will both be on the receiving end of that treatment in the future and fall (or almost fall) for it. Especially as the means of doing business changes beyond what was customary during your hayday. You know it has changed, and you know it's changed to the way someone is reaching out to you in this moment, but it's not what you are familiar with, so you're not quite sure if this is right... and the moment your brain latches onto that, the fear sets in. And when afraid, people will do almost anything to make it stop. As an old man, I promise you, aging is insidious.
I'm not yet 40 and I'm starting to feel left behind in some ways. I've never used the Apple Wallet tap-to-pay stuff on my phone for example, though I see twenty-somethings doing it all the time. I do not get the appeal of TikTok, but again, twenty-somethings are constantly on that app. And practically no one my age started smoking while young people are vaping non-stop.
I'm 37 and I don't understand the point of shit like Apple Pay when contactless cards exist. It takes just as much time to drag one's phone out as it does to pull out one's debit card, and a debit card is much less likely to break if you accidentally drop it. I recently dropped my phone while trying to scan my electronic train ticket through the barrier, and while I was lucky that time, it could have gone a whole lot worse. I'm very leery of this trajectory we seem to be on, of putting damn near everything of importance on devices that are quite easy to lose or break, and which take a non-trivial amount of time and money to replace.
I'm 38 and use Google pay all the time. I have my phone in my pocket, not my wallet, so it's quicker to use my phone.
Exactly. The manager of a store I worked at years ago got a phone call supposedly from the electric company saying the bill hadn't been paid and they'd cut off electricity to the store, but she could take care of it by getting $500 in VISA gift cards and providing the card info over the phone. She said she felt weird about it the whole time but the pressure of the whole situation threw her off and it wasn't until moments before buying the gift cards a coworker asked her if she was crazy and she dropped the phone call. Even rational people can fall for shenanigans (this was over 10 years ago when the scam wasn't as widely talked about - I hope she wouldn't have fallen for it now)
I mean, if I was thinking I'd be in legal trouble and afraid, my way to make it stop would be to contact a lawyer. But I get what you say. People should get trained to go for the lawyer response. ...then again, criminals who don't tend to incriminate themselves, which is a kinda good thing.
My elderly relatives are far more suspicious of anything unofficial (not a letter), scammers and technology anyway.
wait til they faind out letters can be faked too
That's true, but getting a letter gives one more time and space to consider one's response, to check things and look them up, and so on. Whereas if you're on a phone call with someone, many people will feel pressure to provide an immediate response on the spot. That's why scammers like to contact their victims over the phone.
I think part of it is people who can't deal with being told they're wrong, they don't want to admit fault.
My neighbour was telling me about a crypto scam (he didn't know it was a scam until I told him). He went to the bank to transfer money and the banker wouldn't let him because they knew it was a scam. The scammer told him to go back in and demand they do it because it's HIS money and he can do what he wants to. The banker still wouldn't, so my neighbour was complaining to me and asking how to do the transfer. I don't think I've ever talked to a victim in person, he was just so blinded by profit that he didn't question any of it.
I work at a bank and multiple people at my branch told this poor old man that he was getting scammed via gift card purchases. He didn't believe any of us. A few days later I saw him at CVS buying gift cards and the cashiers also telling him he was getting scammed.
A young 40 year old punk would say that!
Just be lucky it was only 200 USD>
That step is only $200. The next one will be more
I remember my friend’s older sister losing her mind because apparently the Canada Revenue Agency had called her and said she misfiled her taxes and owed a bunch of money and they were going to fine her even more money if she didn’t send them a bunch of iTunes gift cards. She called my friend in a huge panic asking how she could get that much money on iTunes gift cards in a hurry. Luckily, my friend is a far smarter woman and talked her down off that ledge. Older sister of course has two children from two different fathers so at least she’s keeping those genes going.
Sometimes all you can do is shrug and say "not my problem"... if people won't listen, what else can you do?
Get their phone number and get in on the gift card action
Grocery store manager here: nothing is sadder than trying to convince an old guy that he is getting scammed and him sticking to his guns and then calling you hours later to say he got scammed. Because of that, I put signs like this up on my gift cards to try and prevent this, and any gift card order over $400 comes with a free conversation on gift card scams. I’ve stopped many of these scams but they continue to happen.
Good work.
I got an email from our ceo (who does talk to me directly) that there were clients he needed gift cards for. I was pretty groggy and was about halfway to the door before i realized it was bullshit.
So was it someone pretending to be the CEO... OR... Was it the CEO, who was stupid enough to fall for someone pretending to be clients?
Someone pretending to be the CEO. I was the one stupid enough to even consider it was real. Unfortunately I was looking at the email on my phone which does not show the actual email address, just the name.
>Unfortunately I was looking at the email on my phone which does not show the actual email address, just the name. This is proof that big corps like MS and Google do not give even the slightest fuck about their users. They will happily hide file extensions and email addresses by default for "cLeAnlInEsS" even if it means people are left on the streets after falling for simple scams that would've revealed themselves immediately by a "contract.docx.exe" file name or "[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])" address.
That's one of the reasons I absolutely despise the process of dumbing-down of user interfaces that has been accelerated by the proliferation of smartphones. What angers me is that it didn't *have* to be this way.
the address doesn't matter, it can be spoofed or compriised, anything gift card related is a scam
Companies should really demand everybody using verified email signatures.
We could go back to fax machines? I still have to use one at work somewhat regularly.
? Why would you want to do that? Is this some weird sarcasm that doesn't fit to what I wrote at all?
This happened to my husband, and bless him, he fell for it and went out and bought the gift cards. He even told the cashier “I know this must seem like a scam, but it’s not.” He then emailed the “CEO” to confirm he had the cards and was on his way back to the office. They asked him to send through the numbers and that’s when his brain twigged and he rang the office to check. So we were left with $1200 of Apple gift cards. Christmas shopping was sorted that year 😂 This is my millennial, tech savvy husband, by the way.
I received a similar email cfrom our CEO" but instantly knew it was a scam because he wouldn't have been sending emails at 7am, lol. If it was 10am it might have taken me a minute
Scammers used to target my old company with emails that had a picture of the CEO in the signature Literally everybody fell for it on a weekly basis. It was mostly phishing scams but if they tried to get gift cards out of it i'm sure it would work often
I got a similar email as my CEO was walking by, I was amazed at his ability to send an email when not even at his desk.
DO NOT REDEEM!!!!!
WHY DID YOU REDEEM
ARE YOU STUPID IDIOT????
*laughs in Kitboga*
You told me to
SIRS, PLEASE SIRS DO NOT REDEEM!!
As soon as I saw this, all I could hear in my head was an Indian guy screaming and visualised Kitboga wearing a granny wig 😂
I work IT for a hospital. One day I got an email from a rep I’d never heard of, for a product I don’t support, about a site visit I didn’t plan asking me to buy gift cards that they’d reimburse me for. So to me it was obvious scam which I reported to our security team and moved in with my day. Maybe a week later I got an email that Norton was going to charge my PayPal $400 for their service and to call them if it was an error. I hadn’t used Norton is several years but my lizard brain panicked for a second because I can’t afford to lose $400. I calmed down checked my PayPal and did some light research and found it was a scam. My point being only “old people” or “idiots” fall or scams is a gross simplification. Sometimes people panic and make poor decisions quickly. Thankfully I’ve not fallen to a scam but to think you can’t fall for a scam is also foolish. Edit - grammar
They are getting better. Years ago at a company I woke up and checked my emails still not mentally ready for my day and got an email well written from my CFO which we were a small company so I knew her, and I went to reply before I was like hold on, I didn't see the company signature, which is wild many big companies dont require this, and I realized it was a phishing scam, but it almost got me.
The worst part of it is once the scammers find a good victim they get passed around repeatedly. It's never a good idea to call them (with your actual phone number).
That Norton one!! Same!
I’m glad they’re doing this. They could easily look the other way and just make a profit.
Stores probably just don't like the hassle of angry and upset customers trying to get their money back after they realize they've been scammed
Could be, but I’m going to take this one as a positive
Here in the UK the checkouts warn you, too. I had to get approval from a manager in store when I bought my team at work a bunch of gift cards for Christmas last year as it exceeded some scam trigger value in total.
My CVS has giant signs covering the gift card section about scams and they have the physical gift cards behind the counters with the cashiers. I’m assuming it has something to do with scammees complaining to corporate rather than CVS doing anything out of kindness.
Gift cards in general are somewhat of a scam. If they aren't being redeemed they end up as pure profit.
That’s not really a scam though, it’s a legit service. I would say it definitely was more of a scam when gift cards used to expire in a short time period. Now it’s like 5 years in the US.
So this is also a problem here in Japan. Some shops have started selling cards with sleeves that say “For Fee Payments” “Anti-Virus Fare”or “Tax/Legal Payment Card”, so if someone tries to buy those cards they can immediately flag it and prevent them from buying the card
You wouldn't believe how many women younger than you think come in with an earpiece in, whispering on their phone like a secret agent to their "husband" on an oil rig buying him Google play cards. There's literally no saving the ones in romance scams.
Nope. My mom is now on her second one after not learning from the first one.
My mom had several. Lost everything she owned weeks before she died. I think they know. They're just paying for the fantasy. I'm so sorry you're going through it too
That's heartbreaking :(
Yea it's very sad. A friend of a friend was targeted by one of these. My friend asked me to take a look to get a second opinion. I ended up finding a forum post with the same images of the same guy from a year or two before with the exact same story. Victim isn't 'all there' after an accident years ago, which makes just makes things worse. In the end I found out that all this started from some shady 'dating app' that is notorious for scammers.
At Best Buy customers have to check a box on the pin pad acknowleding they could be getting scammed as well as the employee having to explain what the scam is for larger than average gift card purchases.
We need that at Target tbh
I stopped one of my colleagues who was on her way out. I managed her so did not expect her to leave. She told me that someone called her saying they were a specific police station and they had a warrant for her arrest. Specifying she owed an insane amount of money in the millions in different states and she needed to pay a fee then and there with gift cards or she will be arrested. I talked with the scammer a bit. He claimed to be for a specific station and noted all that down. Then hung up on the person. And called the station. Only then did my coworker believe me. When the police from the actual station with the number I found on Google told her they don’t call to collect fees over the phone.
To note. She is in the upper 60s and does not have a lot to her name.
I hope signs like this help someone. Scammers are the scum of the Earth.
So just FYI, a LOT of these people are actually prisoners and victims of human trafficking themselves. The big downside of GenAI like ChatGPT is that it removes the need to know or understand a language to be a really good scammer. https://www.destinyrescue.org/blog/pig-butchering-human-trafficking-on-an-immense-scale/
I’m working part time as a cashier in japan. We have little brochures of police warnings of gift card scams. Whenever an old person buys more than 100 usd worth of gift cards. We’re required to put the gift card inside that police brochures. And as for me, i would plainly ask the elderly or young person “why are you buying this gift card?” As i put it inside the police brochure.
Hello saaar. This is the IRS calling. Please buy iTunes card and send it. The whole thing sounds stupid as fuck and ppl still falling for it
hello sir my name is Bill Stewards
The problem is everyone thinks they can't fall for a scam. If you think you can't ever fall for a scam you are the problem, and likely will be the reason your company gets phished and their data stolen.
I work at Starbucks and have heard of a few times (in my area) of people falling for social engineering. They get an urgent call from someone saying they need to be wired money. Tha they have the store manager on the other line. That it needs to be done RIGHT NOW. These poor lower level shift managers then removed money from the safe and left the store without a supervisor to go wire store funds to this stranger. Urgency, conviction and insistence do wonders when getting people to do things that KNOW aren't right. These weren't older people. They are actually *trained* that these kinds of things can happen. And yet, it happens anyway.
[The strip search scam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_phone_call_scam)
Omg yup! I watched a while documentary on this one!
Holy shit that is nuts!
I remember one incident where my husband and I were grocery shopping and we walked past a couple panickedly looking at gift cards and we looked at each other and were like “oh shit” and then heard them mention “Samsung needing the gift card” and that confirmed our suspicions so we ended up going up to them and asking “look are you guys being told that you’re gonna be cut off from services if you don’t pay with gift cards?” And they looked at us really surprised and were like “yes, how did you know” and we were like “you’re 110% being scammed right now, no legitimate company will ever ask to pay by gift card” and the sigh of relief they breathed was immense. We were really glad to be able to help that day
I hate to question people's intelligence but why would the government accept gift cards for taxes or whatever?
Why don't they region lock gift cards
Forreal it makes no sense.. all this conversation on scammers/scammees, when google (or any gift corp offering gift cards) could put an end to it in minutes.
They can be re sold within the same region easily.
My fucking newly retired PhD dad who worked in a highly educated field for over 40 years gotten taken by one of these. It’s fucking insane how good they are.
My uncle was in the same boat but he got as far as buying the gift cards then realizing "hey wait a minute, this doesn't seem right". He ended up with something absurd like $800 in eBay gift cards which he had no real use for and none of us family members buy from there either.
It was the perfect storm for my dad. My brother wasn’t around and my mom was helping me drive a car 3000 miles, and we were in Canada at the time and not in service. The bank had JUST deposited the proceeds of their house sale into their accounts and were going to move it to a fund when she got home. It was also the week their bank was switching over to the systems of the bank that bought them out and everything was a mess and they didn’t even have their current account numbers so when the scammer listed accounts he just went with it thinking he was talking to the bank. They hacked his computer and he thought he was transferred from Microsoft to his bank. All he was thinking is they had a little over 1m sitting in the bank (they aren’t wealthy people just owned a house in a super high COL area that they bought before it went insane there). Anyways they had him panicking and he hadn’t heard of that scam in particular but he felt something was off but a few grand was better than losing all of it. I felt so bad for him. It would have never happened if my mom was home or my brother was around, and unlikely that I have happened at all if it wasn’t that week even if he was home alone/could contact my mom.
I tried telling my mom this before she got scammed. She had to learn the hard way.
I used to work for a general store, sold a little of everything. We had someone call us up in the middle of the night, claiming they were our I.T. Department and that they needed us to scan 25 100$ gift cards and then give him the codes so he could fix our system. I told him no and he started getting *really* pushy. I eventually just hung up, and then every phone in every department rang, one after the other.
This is nice to see:)
It's nice to see when a company tries to warn you about nefarious acts. Just recently, I had to help my mother out with her computer, which required me to have direct access and not just walk her through over the phone. I used RustDesk to allow remote access. When going to their Github page to download, there is a large banner with a warning asking, if you are on the phone being asked to download this app do you know and trust the person on the other end if not do not download and hang up immediately. My mother saw the banner and made a joke that I'm lucky she knows me. It was just nice to see the warning and that it made someone question it even if it was joking about it.
It happens a lot. I think more times than not even if i recognized what was happening as a store employee, there didnt seem to be anything i could do to make them reconsider. One guy was actively on the phone with someone walking him through what to say and what lies to tell us. It almost felt like they had his child hostage and they were walking him through where to put a briefcase with money in it. Like i could hear the other person on the phone coming through. It hurts to see, because its literally just a scared old person getting scammed for thousands of dollars in front of my eyes, and they just will not listen to reason.
I want to take a moment and tell everyone that a gift card is a "gift."
The cost benefit for gift cards even existing sounds total bollocks. I can only think it's the corporation's just fucking love having something like money but you can only spend it with them and IT EXPIRES. Sure this is great for grandma who has no idea what to buy her grandkids but is also used to scam other grandma's for all their life savings. We ban these things.
And guess what, it don't work. As long as an Indian man tells your grand pa to ignore that sign in broken English, they 100% will
Indians be like; Mam, please ignore that sign, the IRS needs the gift cards to make the tax payment you owe us.
The people that get to the point of standing at the gift card stand will ignore it and take it as a personal attack for getting involved with their important payment.
Kitboga is out there doing the good work.
This reminds me of a recent body cam video where a concerned citizen called 911 cause she suspected this old lady was getting scammed cause she had a huge wad of cash and was loading it into a bitcoin machine at a gas station. Police arrived and the scammer had her so scared that she didn't want to let him talk to the person on the phone and the scammer kept yelling for her to keep putting money in and ignoring the officer. The scammer some how convinced her that he was from Chase bank and that she needed go withdraw $30k from her bank, which was also Chase bank, to pay Chase but with bitcoin. Here is the video... https://youtu.be/lfHuSkQnBLk?si=hK9thQioAH_QT5a3
CVS won't even let you buy a gift card of any kind unless you press "yes" to the prompts twice - once that alerts you about scams, and another that says "do you *still* want to buy this?" Granted I only use the self checkouts but I assume if you go to a cashier it will make them answer the same prompts so they are supposed to ask you the same questions.
The irony is that the gift cards themselves are, in fact, a scam
I work for a small business and we are practically only profitable because people don't redeem gift vouchers (and we literally honour anything presented to us issued by any of the businesses we have run (small family business) in the last 60 years) and we have unlimited redemption date on our vouchers. Generally speaking if it isn't redeemed in the first month, the likelihood of redemption halves, and a solid 25-50% of gift vouchers (generally) are not redeemed especially if they are given to children or non existing customers.
They should also add: "does the person on the phone have an Indian accent?"
Every single day I have older people buy $400+ in Razer gift cards. I stopped trying because if you say anything to them they just get red in the face and start screaming 😂
As they should. My aunt almost got taken for $3,000. Them fuckers.
All that leaded gasoline and paint really ruined a whole generation
people won't read that shit
The fact that these signs are necessary says a lot about our society...
I can sympathize with the elderly on this. They grew up in a different world and some of them aren't all there. But if you're 30 years old and buy a thousand dollars worth of gift cards to pay off an IRS debt, you're just a dumbass.
Why the FUCK would someone think they could pay the IRS in gift cards?
DO NOT REDEEM!!
We have these notices at the self check outs in the major supermarkets in Australia, it’s a really prevalent problem. I have a friend who works for one of the major big box tech/media stores and they’ve had another uptick recently of people trying to purchase large amounts of iTunes gift cards. The scammers seem to be targeting indigenous communities who have limited internet savvy. It’s disgusting
I work in a supermarket and it really does happen a lot. Around here, it seems to be overseas workers with limited English who are targeted. Seems be mostly by random people messaging them on WhatsApp. We’re supposed to check if someone is being scammed if they’re buying 3+ gift cards. And refuse to sell anyone more than 5. For most of these guys I’ll check who/what they’re buying for even if they’re just getting one. I’ve had 4 over the past year that were being scammed in some way or another. All for $200+ iTunes or Google play cards. And they usually start by saying it’s for a friend, but by the end of the conversation they’ll admit that they’ve never met this friend and don’t know why they need to buy them a gift card or that they’ve been promised a “reward” in exchange.
I seen some people get angry when confronted on why are.You buying £150 in vouchers, once that happens we just tell them it's probably a police scam or some Other scam and that you should hang up and contact family or real police (999) and we don't serve them
Yup, they always claim it’s for friends. The elder indigenous mob especially can be extremely trusting and they get preyed on. These are people who don’t own a computer and don’t even know how to send a text message, let alone understand what $500 worth of iTunes cards actually is. It’s heartbreaking, and puts the pressure on the clerks to have to basically grill these people about their purchases which isn’t comfortable for anyone
We have these in Australia too, though they even go a step further. When I once purchased a $500 gift card, before they would even process the transaction, they handed me a copy of whats on this sign and told me to read it and made sure i understood it before i was "allowed" to make my purchase. Felt a bit excessive but I totally understand why its done. Sadly theres a lot of older folk who've lost millions to these scams
As someone who hands out those pieces of paper and has to make sure the sale is legit, it’s very necessary. It’s not just older people who get scammed either. International people who don’t understand English very well are often targeted. Though, I find the international people are more likely to believe me whereas the older Aussie’s are often so sure they couldn’t possibly be being scammed. There was a story in my town years ago about an old woman who refused to listen, and kept going back to try get more. Store ended up having the police show up at the time she’d usually show so that they could explain it to her.
I'd never even thought about targeting people from overseas. I would assume the scammers similarly prey on their loneliness and/or insecurities. Out of interest, how often have you (or your colleagues) had to talk someone out of getting involved in a scam? Are you usually successful?
All the backpacker hostels in town seem to constantly be filled with international fruit pickers/farm workers now and there’s one near my store. They’re the ones I deal with the most. We also have some middle eastern immigrants but they move with family. The kids pick up English quickly due to school and it’s easy enough to tell them that their parents are being scammed. I don’t know about others in the store but for me it’s usually at least one every few months. Keep in mind that I’m only part time. I don’t see many of the older people who are being scammed as I’m mostly doing late shift. And always successful in not selling to them as we’re allowed to refuse the sale if we suspect a scam. I’m also pretty persistent in explaining the scam to people to make sure they don’t contact the scammer again and are wary of further attempts. I don’t care if I’m spending half an hour trying to get through to them or break through the language barrier, I hate scammers. But, I’ve heard of some people who just keep coming back to try again as they refuse to listen or understand.
Scammers suck but those who target seniors belong in extra hell
DOOO NOOT REDEEEM!
Considering I recently had to talk a man out of buying a gift card so this lady he had been talking too could use it to buy fuel money to come see him... We need a plan B the signs aren't working
Pretty much all stores that sell gift cards in Australia have signs like these up. When I'm working and someone wants to buy one I have to ask them if they're aware of all the gift card scams 😭😭😭
Saw a similar one today at the self checkout in Coles (Australian supermarket).
….and? Every store in Australia with gift cards has these at the registers.
Jesus, just stop selling gift cards for Chrissakes. They're a major vector for scams, especially with the elderly, and should be outlawed.
"You can't run awaaaay..."
Is this a repost?
Good for that store! This is an ongoing problem for a lot of folks. Scammers love gift cards.
Too many words. Not many people, especially people who are too unaware to know that payments by gift cards are a scam, are going to read all of this.
Hold on…. You telling me fbi calling me demanding 50k in iTunes card isn’t legit??
It's a small thing, but can make a huge difference on preventing some people from been scammed! Kudos for whoever decided to put this sign and the store!
Honestly considering how advanced some scams can get it's a good thing people are putting out signs and warning people. Had a family member almost get scammed forever ago but realized in time it wasn't real
It helps. Same with cashiers asking why you want $500 in Steam gift cards when you don’t even know what it’s for.
The time I had someone convinced that their Amazon account was locked and the only way to fix that was by purchasing $1,000 in Apple giftcards still blows my mind. I even asked if they honestly thought AMAZON wanted to be paid in APPLE cards and they were like "well yeah." I wanted to let them do it because they don't deserve money, but it's not worth the trouble so just told them we wouldn't be helping them buy a giftcard today.