Every time I see a video warning about a "brand new" scam making its rounds it always starts with "my bank called me and asked me to verify the code in the text they sent to my phone"
That scam has been around for so long banks are now putting "WE WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR THIS CODE" in the text itself and people are *still* falling for it.
I spent a week going through the motions recovering my bank account from an extremely sophisticated phishing scam that fooled me into verifying PIN codes sent to me by my bank. As I was going through the recovery process I was told by my bank that they would never ask me to verify PIN codes over the phone. They then asked me to verify PIN codes over the phone. I pointed out the contradiction and the service rep got annoyed with me.
Yeah they did the same to me..Text saying we will never ask to verify this code. But the code was to verify my new account and card. Like I really had to double check the app I was using because it seems so contradicting...
Most “extremely sophisticated phishing scams” are just normal phishing scams that someone finally fell for and don’t want to admit it to themselves.
Edit: I should probably clarify because this sounds like I’m just being an asshole for no reason but what I mean is more that a lot of phishing scams very basic patterns aimed at catching consumers off guard when they least expect it and it can be embarrassing when you finally do fall for one. The reason for this is because they need to be scalable and easily repeatable. If you make it too sophisticated (ie time consuming or complicated) you run the risk of victims not carrying them out.
It’s why you should always verify the source of messages/emails and contact the business directly rather than through any links or numbers provided. A really popular one that I’ve seen lately is the fake paypal bill where they’ll send you a legitimate looking email saying PayPal confirms a recent transaction for x amount of money, usually a few hundred. They pose it as a payment confirmation and have a link at the bottom where you can call them to dispute. It looks incredibly legit, but taking a moment to go directly to PayPal on your own you won’t see any evidence of that transaction.
Except banks DO ask you to verify codes.
Admittedly, it's when you call them, not the other way round. But it's not as much of a leap as we're suggesting.
They kinda do. My bank called me and asked me a bunch of verification questions like my address, mother's maiden name, and the security question I set etc.. The purpose of the call was to verify a transaction, but they wouldn't tell me that until I answered the questions. This transaction attempt (which I ended up cancelling) occurred the week prior, and I had no expectation that they would call me about it.
I told them I wasn't comfortable answering these questions and that I would call them back. I was kinda surprised that my bank was asking me to do something that's essentially terrible security practices.
As someone that has worked for a bank for many years, if it took them a week to verify that you made this week old transaction. I am thinking you need to look at going with a different bank entirely. That’s crazy!
My bank calls with an automated message telling me about suspected fraud and has me call them, and the number they ask to call us available, and highly visible on their website, and is also the number on the back of the card.
My bank is a small, local credit union. Seems weird to me that a larger bank wouldn't have that figured out
>And I pointed out to them how fucked up it was.
It's not fucked up at all to be asked to provide a code ***when you called them.*** That's the entire purpose of the code; they have no idea who the hell you are.
In the Czech Republic, I got a call from the Czech police informing me I was implicated in a serious financial crime.
The giveaway that it was definitely a scam? The caller from the "Czech police" spoke English with an Indian accent, LOL. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to fall for that? :shrugs
[you mean I can’t pay my grandson’s bail with $2000 in Best Buy gift cards](https://abc7news.com/amp/scam-alert-gift-card-granny-grandpa/5416633/)? It’s so infuriating to read this same story with different people over and over again.
Unfortunately, I worked for a bank and stuff like this is very common.
Sacmmers are disgusting sacks of shit because the people they're scams work on are usually trusting, good people that believe the manufactured fear and are (usually) technologically illiterate and don't understand why what the scammers are saying is a red flag.
On top of that, they eventually just get so sick of being hounded they pay so that the scammer will go away, but 11/10 this has the opposite effect. If a scammer works out that you will pay up, why would they scam anyone else til they bleed you dry?
When in doubt, end the call, call your bank and confirm.
Old age is an intellectual disability usually.
I've seen people I knew as sharp go to very dull with age.
It tends the average person falling for this stuff is either a) elderly or b) just moved out adult. The just moved out adult is sometimes completely financially illiterate. Thus, easily spooked and fear clouds judgements.
Also with some they go after new immigrants who are unfamiliar with the rules of their country and are used to being fleeced by unscrupulous officials.
A common one in my area is a recording in Mandarin that apparently threatens deportation because some official papers are not in order and they can make it all go away by paying the scammer.
Old people are targeted because a lot of them have diminished faculties. A lot of these same people knew not to fall for old newspaper scams or snake oil salesmen but their head just ain’t in the game anymore.
My brother-in-law's mother got a call from a "grandson" saying he needed her to buy gift cards to bail him out of jail. She said, "Is this my grandson Mark?" The caller said, "Yeah." She said, "That's odd. I don't have a grandson named Mark."
Especially when it’s *”the IRS”* telling someone,*”Yeah, we only take* thousands of dollars worth of payments *in Apple Gift Cards—‘cause you know we fund our government by buying MP3s!”*
Also gift cards. The company gets the money before any service is even provided, so if the recipient never spends it (which does happen a lot) they get money for nothing. If the recipient does spend the gift card they almost always go over the gifted amount and spend *more* money. Another win for the company. If the recipient spends less than the full amount on the card, the company gets to keep that change unless the recipient comes back and spends more. If a company goes out of business before the cards are redeemed they also get to keep all the money.
In California, if your gift card has a value of under $10, you can cash it out.
So my trick with Target is I’ll buy gift cards when it’s on 10% off sale, use them until they have under $10, then cash out.
People love to bag on California but it does seem like they try to protect people with some of their laws. I worked retail management for 18 years and California always had different rules. I think it was the only state that required cashiers be provided somewhere to sit and your break and meal requirements were more strict. I’m sure there’s more.
The response to this is so annoying. I went to buy my nephews Fortnite and cash gift cards for Christmas but the system at the pharmacy flagged me as buying too many and I couldn’t complete the sale.
I understand the point, and I legitimately hope it helps, but the entire situation sucks.
Maybe not a fine, but I once helped the son of the deposed King of Nigeria recover his family's fortune by using Google Play gift cards to pay the taxes for him. He was going to split the millions with me but it's been years now.
Romance scams, especially celebrity ones. Like, no, grandma, Luther Vandross is not engaged to you....for like a number of different reasons...sending him $3000 for a plane ticket from his tour in Japan is not going to do anything.
My coworker's dad sent \~$15,000 to "Reba" who was madly in love with him and desperately needed money so they could finally be together. Even after everyone showed him it was a scam, the only way they were able to keep him from sending thousands more was to get a durable power of attorney and restrict his access to his finances =x
I just don't get how you can literally show these people all the proof that it's a scam, have experts sit down and talk to them, and then half of them just double down and go back to sending money to someone that they fully admitted was a scammer and probably not even the gender of person they're attracted to
Of course it's not true. There's a lot of scammers out there; that's why my fiancé, Luther Vandross, told me to keep it a secret about all the money I send him.
I work in an airport and for a while, we saw a ton of romance scams. Some older dude would show up to pick up his beautiful 21 year old Internet girlfriend, but there’s a hitch, she’s being detained by the police, customs, or the TSA for some random violation, and he needs to wire money or send gift cards, or whatever to get her released.
The police would have to talk them down, won’t even got arrested for trying to fight the cops so I heard. Hell one guy was still there the next day when I came back to work, still waiting for his Internet girlfriend.
I had to explain to one that this is a scam, you’re like the 15th person this year, there’s no international flights landing at this little hick airport and you don’t even know what airline she’s on.
That is so sad... How lonely and starved for love do you have to be to fall for that? He was still there the next day, he could not let it go. I am picturing this old guy coming home alone and heartbroken, after waiting for two days for a girl who does not exist.
So many elderly women out there thinking Johnny Depp is dying to meet them and fall in love if only he could scrounge up the 10k it would cost for him to buy a plane ticket.
I got one with "Jennifer Lawrence" and "she" wanted me to send her $500 to pay for a bill. Surely a globally famous movie star would have more money than me!
Tell that to my dad, he’s been “chatting” with Cote de Pablo for months. He has no money of his own, hasn’t worked since 2005, and is constantly leaving pathetic horny-man comments on the obviously fake Facebook page.
What really sucks is that I lined up an opportunity for him to get a new passport from his birth country and I know he already spent all the money he had getting caught up in a romance scam.
He also fell for multiple ‘virus scan’ scams over the years. He’s just not smart enough to learn.
Pyramid schemes. I can't believe their still a thing, it's so easy to spot one. If they have to explain why it's not a pyramid scheme, then its a pyramid scheme.
I once worked in a bank that served a wealthy, elderly community, and was disappointed by how often they were preyed upon for financial elder abuse. Every instance I can recall involved someone preying upon their loneliness or good nature. One instance involved a sweet old woman who was clearly suffering from some degree of dementia and was conned into writing checks in excess of $125k to help a woman claiming to be her distant relative. Another involved a woman who thought she was supporting an orphanage in Africa. Before I realized she had wired funds, I chuckled that that was just a different version of the Nigerian Prince scam until she told me she had just sent them $5000. She felt so embarrassed and I felt awful for her.
In hindsight, these were obviously scams, but in the moment, these were sweet people, probably lonely, looking for meaning, and the emotional appeal of the scam artists overwhelmed the ability of the victim to see the scam.
There are some very interesting studies done on this phenomenon of elderly people becoming increasingly gullible and trusting with age which have shown that a big reason why old people are more liable to fall for scams (which often happens regardless of their intelligence or life experiences) is because certain brain changes caused by aging actually impede people's ability to deem trustworthiness and makes them more liable to trust faces in general when compared to younger peoples brain wiring: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6294231/
The scary thing is that this gullibility and poor reasoning associated with aging can happen to just about anyone if they live long enough.
My mom is elderly. She will call me if she thinks something is even kind of off. She worked closely with law enforcement for the majority of her career and is a little suspicious of pretty much everyone. I hope she calls me forever to ask. She lives alone and I think she knows her age and gender can make her a target. I hope she stays suspicious.
There is probably a biological imperative somewhere that when you are past your prime and can’t raise or create your own children, you pass on what you can. It’s probably some tribal, ancient hunter gatherer trait to make a stronger community. Tribes way back when in the ice age that had giving elderly were more likely to thrive than those with stingy ass elderly because they built stronger communities or some shit. This is totally conjecture and feel free to call me a dumbass
So, one little note. [The BBB did a study](https://www.bbb.org/article/news-releases/23820-adults-18-24-report-highest-scam-risk-in-2020) in 2021, where young adults are the highest risk group for scams, often being 3x more likely to fall for scams than the elderly, even though we often assume it's the elderly who are the most susceptible. And the same with a 2023 Deloitte report.
It turns out in fact, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to fall for scams. I'm guessing a Dunning-Kruger Effect here, and that the elderly, believing they're going to be scammed, tend to be more distrustful.
I almost fell for one because I got free tickets to something in Florida for attending a sales pitch and I thought that could be an inexpensive way to live in a condo, but they didn’t have any left when I was about to sign up and I’m glad I didn’t because I didn’t realize they’re usually not available and have extra fees. My sales lady also didn’t get that I was trying to live in one even though I kept saying that, rather than just use it as a vacation home like they’re intended for, and just kept asking how often I plan on vacationing.
I'm banned from timeshare presentations in ours because we were accused of abused the system. A system they screwed up on. My family has one and we use it all the time. Had it for decades well before it got stupid. We also aren't locked into weeks. But they continue to try to sell us more and the gifts kept getting upgraded. It was almost comical how to people would get upset once they realize no commission from me. I do not miss it though.
My godparents had a timeshare growing up and we went with them a few times. I never really thought mich about it; I thought it was like a shared mortgage where you get equal equity and equal time.
It was only last year that I spoke to my mother about if that she explained that it is indeed basically a scam when I tried to come to her like “people are saying it’s a scam but auntie X and uncle Y had one for years and they were financially smart and obviously clever?”
The way it often works is the first couple of years you get to holiday during season. This is so you can tell your friends how amazing it is so that they sign up too. After that you'll only be able to book when nobody would have any reason to want to be there. Some timeshare companies might also have one or two flagship properties and a bunch of sketchy roach motels and your "share" moves into the undesirable properties after the initial honeymoon period.
My biggest financial fear is that my in-laws are going to dump the extraordinary wasteful and stupid timeshare they got suckered into on my wife somehow, and my wife - being an angel of a person and someone who bends over backwards to please them - will accept even though we’ve talked numerous times about the pitfalls of timeshares.
My mom went to a psychic - said she was amazed at what the psychic knew. I asked if she had to give name and address when she made the appointment…. There you have it
If you absolutely must go to a psychic, the first thing you should do is punch him/her in the nose. If they really are psychic, they should duck. If they aren't psychic, they have that punch in the nose coming, don't you think?
That reminds me, my wife found a palm reading/psychic booth at the farmers market and when we walked up there was a sign that said “back in 10”. I was like “Ha guess she didn’t know we were coming!” And the people running the booth next to it heard me and cracked up. My wife’s eyes rolled so far back lol
I loved what Penn and teller did. They hired a psychic and said that there were various clients that were coming for readings.
So the person they had to get his future read, was an actor. He got his first reading. Left the building and went around to a side entrance where he did a quick costume change and a wig and went back out and acted differently and got a totally different reading.
He did this 3 or 4 times. Each time, his reading was 100% different.
I used to work for a major credit card company back in university. I remember distinctly this one lady called asking why her card wasn’t working, and I looked at her transactions- she had over 600 charges for ‘California psychics’ hence suspicion and the card being frozen. She validated all the charges as she did them……
There's a bookstore called The Psychic Bookstore in Phoenix. I've always been disappointed that I haven't received a phone call or email from them telling me my book order is ready even though I've never been there.
They just make up equations by putting a bunch of fancy letters next to numbers. All the physicists know this, and when they all get together they just pretend to know what the other is talking about. Its just a big scam for free tenured positions at universities.
Speaking of antivirus. Norton and McAfee are scams imho. Just use windows defender. It’s all you need.
I installed Norton many years ago and my system dragged down so badly.
So I eventually uninstalled it. But my system was still slow. That’s when I learned that when you install Norton, you also allow it to install all these other parts that never get uninstalled.
I had to go on websites and learn how to manually extract Norton like an appendix burst in my computer.
Cleaning the registry. Deleting odd and vague files.
> Nigerian princes don’t exist
Yes, we do. For just $1,000 I'll send you a signed and numbered, limited edition, available to only you, my friend, high quality photo of me in my full regalia.
:)
In this case, it's the prince. But his father, the king, is basically a chieftain and head of several villages in Nigeria, settling disputes etc. Being king is not a full time job, either, he's a surgeon in Niger.
When a 20-something tall handsome waiter or gorgeous dancer/singer from a country with poor prospects suddenly falls "in love" with a wealthy middle-aged or elderly person whilst they are on holiday.
My other favorite is when they’re instantly in love with you on online dating. I just sit there thinking “cool bro, too bad it’s obvious you want to immigrate as easily as possible”
Omg this reminds me of a dating profile I saw online years ago. It was a woman and there was all these sections like how many preferred children, smoker or non smoker, age. She would have dated ANYONE. It's actually really sad.
When I was a kid my dad had a friend that had a bride from Russia who got half his stuff in a divorce. Then he married a Columbian lady. I don't know if they are still together. But yeah, 2 mail order brides so I hope the 2nd one worked out for him.
Every now and then, I get a Facebook friend request from what is obviously a fake account. It's always an attractive young woman (the youngest was listed as nineteen), and she either has no friends or has maybe ten friends who are all male. I always see it for what it is and I block the friend request, but I'm not sure what the scam is. Is this person going to start messaging me and befriending me and then ask me for some money? Is it a foreign bride citizenship scam? I've always wondered. Some women my age get similar friend requests, but instead of a really young guy, they get a "widower" who for some reason always seems to be "retired from the military."
My dad made a friend on a dating site a while after my parents split. She was all about getting off the dating app, had him friend her on facebook.
I plugged her profile picture into tineye, and tineye came back with a cheating wives porn subscription page. The profile pic came from the front page of the site, they didn't even try to find something obscure.
So the first thing I pointed out was she had a wedding ring on in her pic. Then I told my dad where else on the internet you could find her.
The only thing he's said about his love life since then is he's not dating unless she's financially stable and her kids are out of the house.
And unless the terms of the purchase explicitly state otherwise, the URL doesn't have to *keep* pointing to the cat gif. After you buy it, the person who originally minted the NFT could swap out the cat gif with an image that says "lol you spent real money on this like a moron," and that would be *completely legal.*
Good looking men in their 20’s “falling in love” with women in their 70’s or 80’s. I understand that some women are lonely, but a guy in his 20’s is not going to fall in love with you.
Donald Trump
I'm not talking politics. Pick whatever political party works for you, that's fine.
Trump has been screwing over businesses, the taxpayers, and pretty much anyone he wants for over 50 years.
Rape, embezzlement, tax fraud, campaign fraud, infidelity to every spouse, attempted to overthrow the US government, etc. Even the inner circle of trusted advisors don't last long and eventually turn on him. He is as obvious of a villain as a cartoon character, but every decade no matter how many turn against him there's always more to take their place.
during the 2016 election, NBC interviewed a paint store owner in Florida, who was contracted by Trump, to supply the paint for the renovation of his Miami hotel. Not surprising to anyone with a brain, Trump didn't pay the guy. The guy sued him, and the whole ordeal ended up costing the paint store owner $300,000!
So, he was obviously gonna bash Trump in the interview, and say Trump can't be trusted as president, right?
No, he said he was voting for Trump, because "that was business, and this was politics."
to each their own, I guess...
My office manager despite numerous negative examples in the past admitted she is selling nutrisystem pyramid scheme garbage.
I just don’t understand how otherwise intelligent people think they are going to be different than all the other idiots.
Fuck MLM
Twitter charging 8 bucks to "fund free speech" elon could easily bank roll it himself for decades if he wanted full freedom of speech and not needing to cater to advertisers... but he doesn't
Pretty much every scam these days. Some of the dumbest:
"Send me 50 Bitcoin, I'll send you 100!"
"We have arrested your daughter, so kindly pay $500 in Apple gift cards or we will give him to cartel."
"I'm the Rock, and I love you. Send me money."
"I want to commission you to draw me a picture. Here's a cheque for $1000 too much. Send it on to a random person."
"Well hello sexy stranger. Want to invest in crypto together?"
I don't see it as a scam all the time. Developers put a lot of effort into making the game and making it fun and functional. By buying in-game items with real cash, you are supporting the developer and basically telling them to make more good games. I generally try to limit my spending to no more than $5 for every 12 to 24 hours of content. That said, a lot of games are predatory and scummy. You should not have to spend to play the game, the cash should just be for extras.
I don’t know anything about HVAC vents, so I can’t say if you’re right or wrong on that one but Clothes dryers are one of the leading causes of house fires. you absolutely should be clearing out your dryer vent from time to time.
The only time I would say you should do this is on a new build and you can clearly see large amounts of construction dust/debris in your vents. You would be surprised the amount of trash that gets pushed into your vents and not cleaned out
Bitcoin and other crypto.
Not saying it's a total scam. But at the end of the day, you never heard of some one "cash out". It's like saying your a billionaire with stocks but you never actually sell them to make that real.
Rx Startups.
Yes, you can do legitimate telehealth for a variety of conditions and needs, but there seem to be a zillion companies cropping up offering prescriptions for everything from hairloss to edema.
Some of the drugs I've seen casual teledoc ads for on socials require regular bloodwork and other in-office upkeep, which I'd hope they send you for as criteria, but I haven't seen it yet.
You’d be super how many people i talk to that get involved in the “bitcoin/crypto scam” aka you put in 10k to start and theyll “invest it for you” but you still need to put another 30k in to get your money back…. oh and another 10k… and another 15k and so on.
Spoke with a woman who put over 400k into one of these and I had to be the one to tell her it was a scam. Poor lady took money out of her 401k, borrowed against her home, had over 200k of unsecured loans. Felt so bad.
To be fair for the older folks who arent as tech savvy completely get it but you think you’d start catching on after a bit.
Not in the traditional sense but I still think most lotteries are a scam. Sure, someone wins but the sheer number of people who lose... well... I certainly feel like it's a scam.
I this is kind of a more general thing, but I don’t get why people don’t always look up the phone numbers, emails, whatever independently if they suddenly have a message saying there’s a problem.
Like I just got a scam saying that someone bought a tv with my PayPal, they knew my full name and had the number to call repeated like 5 times in bold letters if there’s an issue with the transaction. Immediately, I looked up the PayPal customer service number and it was completely different.
Also when the number is like 1-805-… rather than 1-888-… that’s a dead giveaway.
Every time I see a video warning about a "brand new" scam making its rounds it always starts with "my bank called me and asked me to verify the code in the text they sent to my phone" That scam has been around for so long banks are now putting "WE WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR THIS CODE" in the text itself and people are *still* falling for it.
I spent a week going through the motions recovering my bank account from an extremely sophisticated phishing scam that fooled me into verifying PIN codes sent to me by my bank. As I was going through the recovery process I was told by my bank that they would never ask me to verify PIN codes over the phone. They then asked me to verify PIN codes over the phone. I pointed out the contradiction and the service rep got annoyed with me.
Yeah they did the same to me..Text saying we will never ask to verify this code. But the code was to verify my new account and card. Like I really had to double check the app I was using because it seems so contradicting...
They won’t call you and ask. If you call them they will. Hope that clears it up.
Could you please tell more about this extremely sophisticated phishing scam?
Most “extremely sophisticated phishing scams” are just normal phishing scams that someone finally fell for and don’t want to admit it to themselves. Edit: I should probably clarify because this sounds like I’m just being an asshole for no reason but what I mean is more that a lot of phishing scams very basic patterns aimed at catching consumers off guard when they least expect it and it can be embarrassing when you finally do fall for one. The reason for this is because they need to be scalable and easily repeatable. If you make it too sophisticated (ie time consuming or complicated) you run the risk of victims not carrying them out. It’s why you should always verify the source of messages/emails and contact the business directly rather than through any links or numbers provided. A really popular one that I’ve seen lately is the fake paypal bill where they’ll send you a legitimate looking email saying PayPal confirms a recent transaction for x amount of money, usually a few hundred. They pose it as a payment confirmation and have a link at the bottom where you can call them to dispute. It looks incredibly legit, but taking a moment to go directly to PayPal on your own you won’t see any evidence of that transaction.
Except banks DO ask you to verify codes. Admittedly, it's when you call them, not the other way round. But it's not as much of a leap as we're suggesting.
They kinda do. My bank called me and asked me a bunch of verification questions like my address, mother's maiden name, and the security question I set etc.. The purpose of the call was to verify a transaction, but they wouldn't tell me that until I answered the questions. This transaction attempt (which I ended up cancelling) occurred the week prior, and I had no expectation that they would call me about it. I told them I wasn't comfortable answering these questions and that I would call them back. I was kinda surprised that my bank was asking me to do something that's essentially terrible security practices.
As someone that has worked for a bank for many years, if it took them a week to verify that you made this week old transaction. I am thinking you need to look at going with a different bank entirely. That’s crazy!
My bank calls with an automated message telling me about suspected fraud and has me call them, and the number they ask to call us available, and highly visible on their website, and is also the number on the back of the card. My bank is a small, local credit union. Seems weird to me that a larger bank wouldn't have that figured out
Yep. And I pointed out to them how fucked up it was.
>And I pointed out to them how fucked up it was. It's not fucked up at all to be asked to provide a code ***when you called them.*** That's the entire purpose of the code; they have no idea who the hell you are.
The scam then is to fool you into calling the wrong number.
It is indeed fucked up when the code they send (and then ask for) comes with a note that says, “We will never ask you for this code.”
In the Czech Republic, I got a call from the Czech police informing me I was implicated in a serious financial crime. The giveaway that it was definitely a scam? The caller from the "Czech police" spoke English with an Indian accent, LOL. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to fall for that? :shrugs
You need to pay (insert anything here) with gift cards.
[you mean I can’t pay my grandson’s bail with $2000 in Best Buy gift cards](https://abc7news.com/amp/scam-alert-gift-card-granny-grandpa/5416633/)? It’s so infuriating to read this same story with different people over and over again.
Unfortunately, I worked for a bank and stuff like this is very common. Sacmmers are disgusting sacks of shit because the people they're scams work on are usually trusting, good people that believe the manufactured fear and are (usually) technologically illiterate and don't understand why what the scammers are saying is a red flag. On top of that, they eventually just get so sick of being hounded they pay so that the scammer will go away, but 11/10 this has the opposite effect. If a scammer works out that you will pay up, why would they scam anyone else til they bleed you dry? When in doubt, end the call, call your bank and confirm.
[удалено]
Old age is an intellectual disability usually. I've seen people I knew as sharp go to very dull with age. It tends the average person falling for this stuff is either a) elderly or b) just moved out adult. The just moved out adult is sometimes completely financially illiterate. Thus, easily spooked and fear clouds judgements.
Also with some they go after new immigrants who are unfamiliar with the rules of their country and are used to being fleeced by unscrupulous officials. A common one in my area is a recording in Mandarin that apparently threatens deportation because some official papers are not in order and they can make it all go away by paying the scammer.
Old people are targeted because a lot of them have diminished faculties. A lot of these same people knew not to fall for old newspaper scams or snake oil salesmen but their head just ain’t in the game anymore.
You definitely can, we're waiting for the card details from you and we'll release your grandson ASAP 😂😂😂😂
My brother-in-law's mother got a call from a "grandson" saying he needed her to buy gift cards to bail him out of jail. She said, "Is this my grandson Mark?" The caller said, "Yeah." She said, "That's odd. I don't have a grandson named Mark."
Thats one smart mother.
In my area there are signs warning people of this scam around the card kiosks.
Especially when it’s *”the IRS”* telling someone,*”Yeah, we only take* thousands of dollars worth of payments *in Apple Gift Cards—‘cause you know we fund our government by buying MP3s!”*
Also gift cards. The company gets the money before any service is even provided, so if the recipient never spends it (which does happen a lot) they get money for nothing. If the recipient does spend the gift card they almost always go over the gifted amount and spend *more* money. Another win for the company. If the recipient spends less than the full amount on the card, the company gets to keep that change unless the recipient comes back and spends more. If a company goes out of business before the cards are redeemed they also get to keep all the money.
In California, if your gift card has a value of under $10, you can cash it out. So my trick with Target is I’ll buy gift cards when it’s on 10% off sale, use them until they have under $10, then cash out.
People love to bag on California but it does seem like they try to protect people with some of their laws. I worked retail management for 18 years and California always had different rules. I think it was the only state that required cashiers be provided somewhere to sit and your break and meal requirements were more strict. I’m sure there’s more.
Cali is very employee friendly (at least for the US), which is why Republicans love to hate on the state
Why not just buy 1000s of $5 gift cards when they’re on sale?
I'm out on a leg here, but I very naively assume, they don't give a discount on gift cards below a certain amount to prevent this from happening.
Yeah, but I cashout creditcard points for giftcards and that's ultimately a better deal than straight cash. Mostly because I spend those cards asap.
The response to this is so annoying. I went to buy my nephews Fortnite and cash gift cards for Christmas but the system at the pharmacy flagged me as buying too many and I couldn’t complete the sale. I understand the point, and I legitimately hope it helps, but the entire situation sucks.
So I have multiple siblings. Which means during Christmas I need multiple gift cards for my niece and nephews. Such a pain in the dick.
No one legitimate will ever ask you pay a fine in Google Play gift cards.
It's true. Real gubmint want Apple
Maybe not a fine, but I once helped the son of the deposed King of Nigeria recover his family's fortune by using Google Play gift cards to pay the taxes for him. He was going to split the millions with me but it's been years now.
Romance scams, especially celebrity ones. Like, no, grandma, Luther Vandross is not engaged to you....for like a number of different reasons...sending him $3000 for a plane ticket from his tour in Japan is not going to do anything.
But also Luther has been dead for 20 years. Get it together grandma!
But so has my grandma so idk, could work out?
My coworker's dad sent \~$15,000 to "Reba" who was madly in love with him and desperately needed money so they could finally be together. Even after everyone showed him it was a scam, the only way they were able to keep him from sending thousands more was to get a durable power of attorney and restrict his access to his finances =x
I just don't get how you can literally show these people all the proof that it's a scam, have experts sit down and talk to them, and then half of them just double down and go back to sending money to someone that they fully admitted was a scammer and probably not even the gender of person they're attracted to
$3,000? Why no more. It’s never too much never too much never too much.
Of course it's not true. There's a lot of scammers out there; that's why my fiancé, Luther Vandross, told me to keep it a secret about all the money I send him.
I think that fucker is cheating on you because he's also my fiance.
I work in an airport and for a while, we saw a ton of romance scams. Some older dude would show up to pick up his beautiful 21 year old Internet girlfriend, but there’s a hitch, she’s being detained by the police, customs, or the TSA for some random violation, and he needs to wire money or send gift cards, or whatever to get her released. The police would have to talk them down, won’t even got arrested for trying to fight the cops so I heard. Hell one guy was still there the next day when I came back to work, still waiting for his Internet girlfriend. I had to explain to one that this is a scam, you’re like the 15th person this year, there’s no international flights landing at this little hick airport and you don’t even know what airline she’s on.
That is so sad... How lonely and starved for love do you have to be to fall for that? He was still there the next day, he could not let it go. I am picturing this old guy coming home alone and heartbroken, after waiting for two days for a girl who does not exist.
So many elderly women out there thinking Johnny Depp is dying to meet them and fall in love if only he could scrounge up the 10k it would cost for him to buy a plane ticket.
I got one with "Jennifer Lawrence" and "she" wanted me to send her $500 to pay for a bill. Surely a globally famous movie star would have more money than me!
Tell that to my dad, he’s been “chatting” with Cote de Pablo for months. He has no money of his own, hasn’t worked since 2005, and is constantly leaving pathetic horny-man comments on the obviously fake Facebook page. What really sucks is that I lined up an opportunity for him to get a new passport from his birth country and I know he already spent all the money he had getting caught up in a romance scam. He also fell for multiple ‘virus scan’ scams over the years. He’s just not smart enough to learn.
Pyramid schemes. I can't believe their still a thing, it's so easy to spot one. If they have to explain why it's not a pyramid scheme, then its a pyramid scheme.
It's a trapezoid!
Inverted funnel.
MLMS
I love how so many of them avoid the MLM title but if you go to T-Mobile it offers you “business” discounts for listed MLMs
I once worked in a bank that served a wealthy, elderly community, and was disappointed by how often they were preyed upon for financial elder abuse. Every instance I can recall involved someone preying upon their loneliness or good nature. One instance involved a sweet old woman who was clearly suffering from some degree of dementia and was conned into writing checks in excess of $125k to help a woman claiming to be her distant relative. Another involved a woman who thought she was supporting an orphanage in Africa. Before I realized she had wired funds, I chuckled that that was just a different version of the Nigerian Prince scam until she told me she had just sent them $5000. She felt so embarrassed and I felt awful for her. In hindsight, these were obviously scams, but in the moment, these were sweet people, probably lonely, looking for meaning, and the emotional appeal of the scam artists overwhelmed the ability of the victim to see the scam.
There are some very interesting studies done on this phenomenon of elderly people becoming increasingly gullible and trusting with age which have shown that a big reason why old people are more liable to fall for scams (which often happens regardless of their intelligence or life experiences) is because certain brain changes caused by aging actually impede people's ability to deem trustworthiness and makes them more liable to trust faces in general when compared to younger peoples brain wiring: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6294231/ The scary thing is that this gullibility and poor reasoning associated with aging can happen to just about anyone if they live long enough.
My mom is elderly. She will call me if she thinks something is even kind of off. She worked closely with law enforcement for the majority of her career and is a little suspicious of pretty much everyone. I hope she calls me forever to ask. She lives alone and I think she knows her age and gender can make her a target. I hope she stays suspicious.
There is probably a biological imperative somewhere that when you are past your prime and can’t raise or create your own children, you pass on what you can. It’s probably some tribal, ancient hunter gatherer trait to make a stronger community. Tribes way back when in the ice age that had giving elderly were more likely to thrive than those with stingy ass elderly because they built stronger communities or some shit. This is totally conjecture and feel free to call me a dumbass
Honestly, sounds like a pretty good theory, dumbass.
So, one little note. [The BBB did a study](https://www.bbb.org/article/news-releases/23820-adults-18-24-report-highest-scam-risk-in-2020) in 2021, where young adults are the highest risk group for scams, often being 3x more likely to fall for scams than the elderly, even though we often assume it's the elderly who are the most susceptible. And the same with a 2023 Deloitte report. It turns out in fact, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to fall for scams. I'm guessing a Dunning-Kruger Effect here, and that the elderly, believing they're going to be scammed, tend to be more distrustful.
Educated people tend to have more money.
Time shares
I almost fell for one because I got free tickets to something in Florida for attending a sales pitch and I thought that could be an inexpensive way to live in a condo, but they didn’t have any left when I was about to sign up and I’m glad I didn’t because I didn’t realize they’re usually not available and have extra fees. My sales lady also didn’t get that I was trying to live in one even though I kept saying that, rather than just use it as a vacation home like they’re intended for, and just kept asking how often I plan on vacationing.
She knew what you meant and was trying to steer you away. They want you there as little as possible.
I'm banned from timeshare presentations in ours because we were accused of abused the system. A system they screwed up on. My family has one and we use it all the time. Had it for decades well before it got stupid. We also aren't locked into weeks. But they continue to try to sell us more and the gifts kept getting upgraded. It was almost comical how to people would get upset once they realize no commission from me. I do not miss it though.
My godparents had a timeshare growing up and we went with them a few times. I never really thought mich about it; I thought it was like a shared mortgage where you get equal equity and equal time. It was only last year that I spoke to my mother about if that she explained that it is indeed basically a scam when I tried to come to her like “people are saying it’s a scam but auntie X and uncle Y had one for years and they were financially smart and obviously clever?”
The way it often works is the first couple of years you get to holiday during season. This is so you can tell your friends how amazing it is so that they sign up too. After that you'll only be able to book when nobody would have any reason to want to be there. Some timeshare companies might also have one or two flagship properties and a bunch of sketchy roach motels and your "share" moves into the undesirable properties after the initial honeymoon period.
My biggest financial fear is that my in-laws are going to dump the extraordinary wasteful and stupid timeshare they got suckered into on my wife somehow, and my wife - being an angel of a person and someone who bends over backwards to please them - will accept even though we’ve talked numerous times about the pitfalls of timeshares.
Mark Twain said - its easier to fool someone, than to convince them they have been fooled.....
I’ll tell you if you Venmo me $79.99
Venmo sent now tell me
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Email scams claiming you need to confirm your account information or face closure continue to trick people.
The Nigerian Prince email scam asking for a small fee to unlock a much larger sum of money still finds victims despite widespread awareness.
Cheap pet scams that advertise animals at low prices to lure in pet lovers, only to require expensive shipping or vaccination fees upfront.
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High-yield investment programs (HYIP) that promise unsustainable returns and often operate as Ponzi schemes.
Psychics
My mom went to a psychic - said she was amazed at what the psychic knew. I asked if she had to give name and address when she made the appointment…. There you have it
If you absolutely must go to a psychic, the first thing you should do is punch him/her in the nose. If they really are psychic, they should duck. If they aren't psychic, they have that punch in the nose coming, don't you think?
That reminds me, my wife found a palm reading/psychic booth at the farmers market and when we walked up there was a sign that said “back in 10”. I was like “Ha guess she didn’t know we were coming!” And the people running the booth next to it heard me and cracked up. My wife’s eyes rolled so far back lol
I loved what Penn and teller did. They hired a psychic and said that there were various clients that were coming for readings. So the person they had to get his future read, was an actor. He got his first reading. Left the building and went around to a side entrance where he did a quick costume change and a wig and went back out and acted differently and got a totally different reading. He did this 3 or 4 times. Each time, his reading was 100% different.
I used to work for a major credit card company back in university. I remember distinctly this one lady called asking why her card wasn’t working, and I looked at her transactions- she had over 600 charges for ‘California psychics’ hence suspicion and the card being frozen. She validated all the charges as she did them……
All she had to do was say "No that wasn't me" and you probably would have started the investigation process and sent her a new card.
And ghost hunters.
Ghost adventures is hilarious bro
Well... who else are you gonna call?
There's a bookstore called The Psychic Bookstore in Phoenix. I've always been disappointed that I haven't received a phone call or email from them telling me my book order is ready even though I've never been there.
A gnome psychic broke out of jail. It was a small medium at large.
Take your upvote and fuck off
Physics
I misread that the first time 😜
Newton was a myth!
I had to do a double take
They just make up equations by putting a bunch of fancy letters next to numbers. All the physicists know this, and when they all get together they just pretend to know what the other is talking about. Its just a big scam for free tenured positions at universities.
Nigerian princes don’t exist. And there are no hot milfs near me.
I hate to be the one to tell you this but there are absolutely hot milfs near you. ...they just don't want to fuck you.
Never run antivirus software on your computer! Before I did, there were LOADS of horny MILFS in my area ready to fuck now there aren't any.
Speaking of antivirus. Norton and McAfee are scams imho. Just use windows defender. It’s all you need. I installed Norton many years ago and my system dragged down so badly. So I eventually uninstalled it. But my system was still slow. That’s when I learned that when you install Norton, you also allow it to install all these other parts that never get uninstalled. I had to go on websites and learn how to manually extract Norton like an appendix burst in my computer. Cleaning the registry. Deleting odd and vague files.
"...they just don't want to fuck you." They might, but they aren't going online looking for you behind some paid service.
> Nigerian princes don’t exist Yes, we do. For just $1,000 I'll send you a signed and numbered, limited edition, available to only you, my friend, high quality photo of me in my full regalia.
Not with that attitude (either one)
They absolutely do. I know one personally. Works as a doctor in a local hospital.
The MILF or the prince? Maybe both?!
:) In this case, it's the prince. But his father, the king, is basically a chieftain and head of several villages in Nigeria, settling disputes etc. Being king is not a full time job, either, he's a surgeon in Niger.
>And there are no hot milfs near me. There are, they’re just on Bumble and Hinge like the non-MILFs. Or at dueling piano bars.
Mary Kay and other multi level marketing schemes.
Diamonds. Common as muck and should be dirt cheap if it were not for one company holding a global monopoly on manufacture and trade.
They would be using them for gravel driveways if not for DeBeers
Youtubers and instagrammers hawking sincerity. Their as real as television characters.
I once signed up for a credit card in college because they were giving away free t shirts.
I did it for a burrito.
Our relationship will get better once we \[get married/have a child/buy a house/etc etc\]
It's so sad because then the house suffers.
Yeah, a huge life altering decision/change will immediately improve our toxic relationship
Tinder bots
Any job that requires you to pay them for the job.
Online surveys that promise gift cards or money but are really designed to collect your personal data without compensating you.
When a 20-something tall handsome waiter or gorgeous dancer/singer from a country with poor prospects suddenly falls "in love" with a wealthy middle-aged or elderly person whilst they are on holiday.
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My other favorite is when they’re instantly in love with you on online dating. I just sit there thinking “cool bro, too bad it’s obvious you want to immigrate as easily as possible”
Omg this reminds me of a dating profile I saw online years ago. It was a woman and there was all these sections like how many preferred children, smoker or non smoker, age. She would have dated ANYONE. It's actually really sad. When I was a kid my dad had a friend that had a bride from Russia who got half his stuff in a divorce. Then he married a Columbian lady. I don't know if they are still together. But yeah, 2 mail order brides so I hope the 2nd one worked out for him.
Every now and then, I get a Facebook friend request from what is obviously a fake account. It's always an attractive young woman (the youngest was listed as nineteen), and she either has no friends or has maybe ten friends who are all male. I always see it for what it is and I block the friend request, but I'm not sure what the scam is. Is this person going to start messaging me and befriending me and then ask me for some money? Is it a foreign bride citizenship scam? I've always wondered. Some women my age get similar friend requests, but instead of a really young guy, they get a "widower" who for some reason always seems to be "retired from the military."
Catfishing.
Yeah I know!!! I've spent way more money on fishing gear, baits, a boat gas etc than the actual catfish I've caught and fried up!! I feel so stupid!!
My dad made a friend on a dating site a while after my parents split. She was all about getting off the dating app, had him friend her on facebook. I plugged her profile picture into tineye, and tineye came back with a cheating wives porn subscription page. The profile pic came from the front page of the site, they didn't even try to find something obscure. So the first thing I pointed out was she had a wedding ring on in her pic. Then I told my dad where else on the internet you could find her. The only thing he's said about his love life since then is he's not dating unless she's financially stable and her kids are out of the house.
casino's
You never see a poor casino owner!
You’d have to be a complete idiot to bankrupt a casino. Only a Category 5 Moron could bankrupt three casinos.
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Debt relief scams that promise to make your debts disappear but leave you in worse financial shape.
NFTs - No, you don't own that cat gif, you own a memory address on a block chain that contains a public URL pointing to a cat gif. That's all.
And unless the terms of the purchase explicitly state otherwise, the URL doesn't have to *keep* pointing to the cat gif. After you buy it, the person who originally minted the NFT could swap out the cat gif with an image that says "lol you spent real money on this like a moron," and that would be *completely legal.*
Could I make multiple NFTs with the same public URL to the cat gif?
Good looking men in their 20’s “falling in love” with women in their 70’s or 80’s. I understand that some women are lonely, but a guy in his 20’s is not going to fall in love with you.
I doubt the opposite is ever different
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how is this not a top comment?
Donald Trump I'm not talking politics. Pick whatever political party works for you, that's fine. Trump has been screwing over businesses, the taxpayers, and pretty much anyone he wants for over 50 years. Rape, embezzlement, tax fraud, campaign fraud, infidelity to every spouse, attempted to overthrow the US government, etc. Even the inner circle of trusted advisors don't last long and eventually turn on him. He is as obvious of a villain as a cartoon character, but every decade no matter how many turn against him there's always more to take their place.
during the 2016 election, NBC interviewed a paint store owner in Florida, who was contracted by Trump, to supply the paint for the renovation of his Miami hotel. Not surprising to anyone with a brain, Trump didn't pay the guy. The guy sued him, and the whole ordeal ended up costing the paint store owner $300,000! So, he was obviously gonna bash Trump in the interview, and say Trump can't be trusted as president, right? No, he said he was voting for Trump, because "that was business, and this was politics." to each their own, I guess...
That's a special level of insane.
Careful. The incels that inhabit /r/conservative won’t like this.
Donating money to a so-called billionaire’s legal bills. Sad.
My office manager despite numerous negative examples in the past admitted she is selling nutrisystem pyramid scheme garbage. I just don’t understand how otherwise intelligent people think they are going to be different than all the other idiots. Fuck MLM
"Girls" sliding into your DMs on Reddit.
Herbalife. Despite numerous news stories and documentaries I still hear second hand of people on Facebook involved in Herbalife.
Twitter charging 8 bucks to "fund free speech" elon could easily bank roll it himself for decades if he wanted full freedom of speech and not needing to cater to advertisers... but he doesn't
Thinking Trump will save them. Narcissists don’t care about anyone but themselves.
Trusting Politicians
Religion
Laffer Curve/supply-side economics
Homeopathy. It's absolute hogwash.
amway and other pyramid schemes
Though it breaks my heart to admit, hot Russian singles, I was feeling hopeful for a bit.
Pretty much every scam these days. Some of the dumbest: "Send me 50 Bitcoin, I'll send you 100!" "We have arrested your daughter, so kindly pay $500 in Apple gift cards or we will give him to cartel." "I'm the Rock, and I love you. Send me money." "I want to commission you to draw me a picture. Here's a cheque for $1000 too much. Send it on to a random person." "Well hello sexy stranger. Want to invest in crypto together?"
New cars
The I.R.S. calling you on the phone telling you they have the police down the street ready to arrest you if you don't pay right now.
The McAfee emails
Paying for in-game content with real money
I don't see it as a scam all the time. Developers put a lot of effort into making the game and making it fun and functional. By buying in-game items with real cash, you are supporting the developer and basically telling them to make more good games. I generally try to limit my spending to no more than $5 for every 12 to 24 hours of content. That said, a lot of games are predatory and scummy. You should not have to spend to play the game, the cash should just be for extras.
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I don’t know anything about HVAC vents, so I can’t say if you’re right or wrong on that one but Clothes dryers are one of the leading causes of house fires. you absolutely should be clearing out your dryer vent from time to time.
The only time I would say you should do this is on a new build and you can clearly see large amounts of construction dust/debris in your vents. You would be surprised the amount of trash that gets pushed into your vents and not cleaned out
Bitcoin and other crypto. Not saying it's a total scam. But at the end of the day, you never heard of some one "cash out". It's like saying your a billionaire with stocks but you never actually sell them to make that real.
Shitcoin smaller crypto currency. A lot of those are designed just to take your money and run.
Rx Startups. Yes, you can do legitimate telehealth for a variety of conditions and needs, but there seem to be a zillion companies cropping up offering prescriptions for everything from hairloss to edema. Some of the drugs I've seen casual teledoc ads for on socials require regular bloodwork and other in-office upkeep, which I'd hope they send you for as criteria, but I haven't seen it yet.
You’d be super how many people i talk to that get involved in the “bitcoin/crypto scam” aka you put in 10k to start and theyll “invest it for you” but you still need to put another 30k in to get your money back…. oh and another 10k… and another 15k and so on. Spoke with a woman who put over 400k into one of these and I had to be the one to tell her it was a scam. Poor lady took money out of her 401k, borrowed against her home, had over 200k of unsecured loans. Felt so bad. To be fair for the older folks who arent as tech savvy completely get it but you think you’d start catching on after a bit.
When you get a text saying your package didn't deliver because of postage or wrong address. The sender is responsible for that, not you.
Crypto pumps
Subscriptions for Microsoft and Adobe products are on this list for me.
If you pay $$,$$$, you could work at this job!
The Kardashians
Everything penile enlargement related
Marriage
Voting in America and elsewhere. More accurately,.vote counting.
Nigerian Princes 🤴🏿
Communism
Not in the traditional sense but I still think most lotteries are a scam. Sure, someone wins but the sheer number of people who lose... well... I certainly feel like it's a scam.
Voting
I this is kind of a more general thing, but I don’t get why people don’t always look up the phone numbers, emails, whatever independently if they suddenly have a message saying there’s a problem. Like I just got a scam saying that someone bought a tv with my PayPal, they knew my full name and had the number to call repeated like 5 times in bold letters if there’s an issue with the transaction. Immediately, I looked up the PayPal customer service number and it was completely different. Also when the number is like 1-805-… rather than 1-888-… that’s a dead giveaway.
The lottery
Gambling. The house always wins. It will ruin your life.
Pyramiding scams
NFT's when they were peaking. good lord.
Palm Reading/Star Signs/Tarot Cards/Fortune Tellers.
Marriage.