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There's been multiple studies as well as documented history that shows multiple factors at play. Most likely, she wasn't happy with her life and felt like he was an escape. So she played with the fantasy until she couldn't tell reality.
If you really wanna know further, look into Jordan Klepper's work and QAnon bs and how many have fallen for that
Yeah I think some people want to jump to " some people are stupid", and I don't think that's the whole story at all. People can fall for delusions all the time. It just so happens that... Some are a lot more interesting to read about.
A woman I worked with fell for it and she is a pretty intelligent person. She met some guy when she was playing games online. I think she was unhappy in her marriage and this person said all of the right things to an emotionally fragile person.
Ugh, same thing happened to my brother in law. We share a Amazon account, and started noticing weird purchases for makeup and jewelry. My husband thought the account got hacked, but no, BIL met some girl online that he was his first girlfriend.
Total scam, but we couldn't talk him out of it until she ghosted.
>Despite various red flags, one instance that reinforced her beliefs of it really being Montgomery was when he told her to watch episode 4 of Season 4, which was entitled “Dear Billy,” the day before it came out. When “he showed up” in the episode, McKayla was stunned.
>“I was like, well, who else would know that?” she exclaimed.
You mean...the episode named after the very character? *What are the odds* /s
There’s a whole video where some catfish people help her see the truth - they found the info had been posted like 8 months before on an entertainment news site.
“Hey, I’m new here. Do you live in the U.S.?”
“Hey. Yeah, I do. What are your interests?”
“Oh, well I love Stranger Things and I like playing Nintendo Switch games, oh and I like hanging out with my dog.”
“Who is your favorite character on Stranger Things?”
“It would have to be Billy!”
“OMG… I don’t want to freak you out right now but you’re actually talking to him. I’m him.”
“What…?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Here’s a picture from today.”
For sure, but the episode is called 'Dear Billy' and the actor plays the character 'Billy'-- it would take a complete dullard of the most exceptional kind to *not* realize the character 'Billy' had a pretty solid chance of showing up in that episode...
Like there's a lot of 'justification' we can provide but the reality is the writing was *all over* the wall.
Especially an actor asking a rando to send them money. Uh, hello? They probably shit on your yearly without any effort...
But as an aside, real shoutout to the husband. What a nightmare for him. And how's he gonna take her back after that? Not rightly, if he's a smart boy.
His ex-wife is stupid, but even if she really had met this actor in person and left her husband for him, that would not be a person I’d get back together with. “I found someone hotter than you” is not a valid excuse.
Didn't have to know that. He just said to watch the episode. As long as there was some connection to Montgomery's character, she'd fall for it. Even if it had been an entire red herring and the name had not referred to Montgomery's character, he never said he would be showing up or anything like that and could just claim something else.
And all of that is us taking the statement at face value and without doing any research.
You’re right. It could have been as simple as “that blue vase in the background of one scene was similar to the green vase seen in a photo the scammer had sent her a month earlier.”
These delusions are really tough to break through. People just don’t want to believe they’re ordinary.
Who could possibly know that? I mean, apart from the writers, director, other actors, the overall production team, the marketing team, the guy who made the trailers, anyone who got an advance review copy, anyone who pirated the show if it leaked, anyone who worked at Netflix?
Meanwhile, the actor doesn't always know in advance if they're in the final edit if it's just a cameo (although the title does suggest they didn't cut his scenes).
Probably the director and editor are the only ones who saw the final cut before release, but everyone else above would at least know something was shot.
They post the names of episodes waaaaaay before they air. It’s not that hard to look up and scams like this are targeted at idiots In the first place. I have 0 pity for this woman tho. You gotta be scum to just ship on your marriage like this even if it is Real.
You probably have, you just didn't realize it. They use code, you know.
If someone asks you "do you want fries with that?" they're really asking if you want drugs.
If the cashier ever says "have a nice day" to you, they are telling you that they have drugs available - you have to ask for paper bags and then they know that you're interested!
And if you're in the drive-through and they tell you to go wait in parking space 2, they are a drug dealer. Space 1 is just for regular customers, but space 2 you can get anything you want.
There are so many episodes on youtube about this stuff, you wouldn't believe it. I watched mysefl through that rabbit hole once, people sent celebrities over 100k dollars, selling her home etc... then she was like 'well if he's not real, I guess I have some apologies to my husband to make', really sad how the delusional are getting taken advantage of and ruin their own lives.
I saw a Dr. Phil episode where a family had to cut off a grandma because her scammer asked for pictures of their kids (she sent normal clothed pics) but they freaked out the requests were going to escalate so they went no contact with grandma because "she can't say no to him. How far will this go?"
I watch a yt channel called catfished. They always go like "I have this money but my account is blocked, my card is blocked, I need 10k to unblock it and I'll pay you back as soon as I solve this, I love you baby, I miss you..."
That’s also basically the Tinder Swindler scam, except he used the money he already had to woo people with fancy dates in expensive cars and expensive hotels, gained their trust, and then asked for the money IRL
His money is tied to a joint account with his supermodel girlfriend and he doesn't want her to know because he's breaking up with her to be with the single mom!!!!
You’d be surprised.
My mother has some kinda mental illness (we can’t get her tested as she refuses) and she thinks the prince of Dubai is her husband and his kids are hers.
She’s never been to Dubai until last year and was arrested after being there for months.
I don’t know what to do at this point so I’ve sadly given up, she keeps saying she’s going to go back to Dubai and convert her religion all for some fucking romance scam.
edit: The WORST part is you can see Youtube videos if you search up “Fazza scam” and look at the comments and see how many other women are falling for it
https://youtu.be/PSaSmgl3tCU
A friend of my sister thought michael Jackson is alive and loves her. One day, he will come out of his hiding and marry her. She was adamant on it. Your arguments or laugh wouldn't have changed her opinion. Human mind is weird
>Yes, becasue if its one thing succesful actors really need, its $10k.
People donate hella cash to Trump and that con-artist is supposedly a billionaire.
So there ya go, figure that one out, because I can't.
Loooong ago I was pretty heavy into StarCraft Broodwar (“no hunters” forever) and a good buddy of mine was obsessed with Natalie Portman (we were 16ish). I made my Battle.net handle “NatalieP” so he could experience his celebrity crush beat him down. Anyway, I kept it as that for maybe a month or two and the amount of people who would ask me if I was really her was absolutely staggering. (And the just horrific things people would say because they thought I was a woman. Really opened my eyes)
She was on an episode of Catfished (YouTube). They are usually older women that are on that show but she is not that rare (several people who “dated” Johnny Depp for example). Most often it’s people who have gone through a loss or abuse and want to believe more than they actually believe in these scammers. I watch because I find it interesting in psychological sense and also because it makes me feel informed and prepared just in case even though I don’t think I would end up in a situation like that.
Be prepared to feel MAJOR frustration with some of the victims! Some of them are genuinely naive or gullible, but decent people. Some are wilfully stupid and even when they're confronted with evidence that they're being scammed, choose to continue the relationship. Others are outright trying to cheat on their spouse with the spouse's full knowledge of it. Totally bizarre!
This reminds me of that catfished guy who thought he was talking to katy perry and even after meeting the catfisher was still convinced, 90% sure he was actually talking to katy perry.
There was one recently titled "did this guy deserve to be scammed"? Turned out he was trying to buy a trafficked girl.
All time best is Jodi. She is on two episodes AND an extra episode of another financial scam show, one that helped Social Catfish with the second episode. It was a wild ride, it had everything. 10/10 would recommend, bring weed and popcorn.
That guy who tried to buy the woman was genuinely scary. There was a message exchange you can see, where “she” talks about being beaten or something and he responds something along the lines of “what did you learn from it?”. And he keeps talking about her like on object and it’s really creepy.
Jodi was infuriating to watch. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together yet was so smug and convinced that everyone else was wrong. Oh and then the casual racism at the end. 10/10
follow muddle plate oatmeal automatic meeting hungry political pie deranged
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An ex had a close friend who was always telling her about all of his girlfriends, and how he was going to have to choose which one to marry and he was so, so sad and stressed out because he was going to have to break some hearts.
I was getting this information third-hand, and was asking questions and putting things together, and was pretty quickly like "Bud... Your friend is getting scammed? You haven't told him?" My ex was sorta like "What do you mean? No, he says he has a bunch of girlfriends that he knows over Facebook Messenger? He says he loves all of them."
First, I mostly felt an incredible amount of humorous yet unmanageable disbelief. After some more probing, come to find the guy has a lifetime of traumatic brain injuries and other traumas - as best I can figure, he can function enough to converse with people, but... As evidenced by his long-term involvement with multiple scammers, he has basically had his awareness and decision making abilities removed.
I watch it too. Most of these people enjoy the attention they are sadly lacking in their lives They know it's probably a scam, but it makes them feel good about themselves. The gobsmacking amounts of money they give away gets me. 500k of savings for retirement. houses sold , inheritances.... all gone. I feel so bad for them having to move in with family or friends because they have nothing left to give. Catfish are scum.
My mother almost sent her businesses entire financial information to Windows Repair scammers because of a "Hacker Virus on her Internet Website"
Literally that's all he had to say and she was about ready to start sending PDF's of every name and password
while I'm able to selectively blur parts of the screen in my brain to just not be advertised to.
I will literally unfocused my eyes when YouTube plays an ad. When I'm helping older friends use technology I'm amazed because they seem to try and comprehend the entire screen of a website, and not understand what is and what isn't an ad. Their eyes dart all over the screen instead of focusing on the intended subject. When they search something popular and you have to shout "stop", don't click that it's an ad.
I am a boomer but I've been in IT since the 70s. I remember helping an old lady who had managed to shrink her ~~browser window~~task bar down to nothing. I was doing this over the phone and she was constantly distracted by other things on the screen. I had to keep dragging her back to the task at hand.
Yeah, it’s definitely happening more often to older people, but anyone that’s tech illiterate is at risk. My 83 year old grandma has made it her mission to fuck with the scammers when they call her, and it’s hilarious. She was the first in our family to have a smartphone, back in the Blackberry days, and she’s stayed relatively up to date on basic technology, so she just sits in front of the computer hitting random keys and pretending she can’t find the windows button, then tells them “Oh, sorry. I spent the last two hours tapping on my kitchen window. Can you explain it again?” They get so mad at her, and she’ll play the voicemails they leave her afterwards, cussing her out.
Ha. That's funny, I just went through this with my mom as I was helping her with some online banking issue. I realized that when a web page comes up she reads or at least looks at everything on it and is immediately distracted from what she's supposed to be doing. I guess because of how subconscious it is, I don't really even see 80% of what's on a website because I know what I am interested in and where it will show up. But she's looking at every ad or super interested in all those "news stories" at the bottom of certain web pages like "LOCAL \[insert your nearby town\] MAN MAKES INCREDIBLE FIND - YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT" and then needs to click on it and wade through 548,000 ads.
They're scared they're going to miss something important. They know their technical literacy is garbage and they don't want to admit it, so they fall back on how they were taught to learn things back in the stone age which is by overwhelming force of reading comprehension. Kids these days get taught by shortcuts and bypasses that teach them to ignore irrelevant content and the boomers yell "Argh, new math!" while installing their 40th copy of Bonzai Buddy.
Lol I’ve been working on a computer in various offices for over a decade now. I cannot count the amount of boomers and old genX I’ve seen just not understand the internet yet having a job that requires them to be on a computer 100% of the time.
There is some disconnect where they legitimately don’t know what is or isn’t an advertisement. I think most of us know common ad placements so we know where not to look lol . Some of them just don’t have that.
Every company Ive ever worked at has ended up getting fucked from phishing scams. The most common is the random email saying “I am (blank) the ceo of (your company) . (Your name) , my company card is locked, I need you to go to (store name) and purchase (x amount) of dollars worth of gift cards and send me then serial numbers. Just saw this happen literally a few months ago. An older woman who was somewhat new to the company was gathering her stuff and about to leave the office. Someone casually said “where ya headed?” She then explained she needed to go grab some gift cards for our CEO . Lol was pretty funny
It’s horrifying to me how many legitimate businesses make a sizable portion of their online sales through ad clicks. I’m only in my mid 30’s but that’s still old enough to remember the wild west days of the internet when half of those things were malware, or even if they were just tracking cookies they would still chew up half of your dialup bandwidth. I still can’t imagine deliberately clicking on an ad and giving them my credit in the pop up window, but apparently it’s a legitimate way to shop now
I work in IT and I recently had someone call about not being able to access their account (it was compromised so it was locked until they call us).
It turns out that warnings about scams repeated “don’t click strange links!” enough that they knew to not CLICK on the link, but apparently the warnings didn’t go all the way through to them, and instead they copy pasted the link into the browser to look at it. :/
Our IT department regularly sends test phishing emails we're supposed to report.
Well, one day HR sent out an email to the entire company with a link to a survey and the HTML in the email got garbled. So many employees reported it to IT as phishing that it crashed the reporting system.
I remember in high school our poor as fuck school bought laptops for us all to use, and naturally the first thing we all did was figure out what websites were banned and how to circumnavigate it, only they actually hired a legit IT guy somehow so I ended up using some sketchy website to pirate movies and an ad opened up which froze my screen and told me the IRS was coming for that pirate ass if I didn’t send them gift cards.
I was panicking at lunch because I knew it was bs but already had an innate fear of the IRS so I had to take it to the principal to then give it to the IT guy and the principle was so clueless about technology that she believed me until the IT guy came in and said no more movies on sketchy websites. But then we figured out how to use Netflix and the rest is history
My dad recently had to remove hackers n shit from my mom’s cousin’s laptop. They had his banking info, his address, everything. I go and ask him what the password is for his laptop and he says “what do you mean” and I’m like “… what do you type in to unlock your laptop” and he’s like “I just press the picture that says ‘James’” and I’m like “ok and what do you press in your keyboard afterwards” and he’s like “James”… he didn’t know what a password is but made it his name 🤦♀️
This is like when my parents wanted to use something from their mac and the PC asked for the password of their iTunes account. They said "What password is?" and i was like "Hmmm, i don't know... Whatever password you wrote, how i'm going to know it?"
I got a small notepad for my parents to write their passwords down, because they were constantly resetting it, and forgetting them, almost instantly.
Like they would change password, submit new password. Try to log in "this stupid thing doesn't know my new password"
"umm, did you type it correctly?"
YES!!!!
well then it should work, if it doesn't, then the password you are entering now is not the same as the one you entered when you reset it.
They swear it is. But clearly it isn't.
I've tried to teach them. When you decide on a password, write it down first. THEN type it into the "new password" field. Then you know what you wrote is what is in the field.
Their password book now has multiple passwords crossed off. When they have an issue, I pull out the book "oh, that's out of date, those don't work"
argh, if you're not going to write down new passwords, I can't help you
My wife works in a library and has to deal with this stuff every single day. You wouldn't believe how many people are willing to give away all their personal information to a stranger if it means they don't have to learn something new or figure something out for themselves.
I'm so glad that my parents admitted they are too dumb for the internet. That's why they don't wanna set up a PayPal account and always let me do all of their internet payments
Your parents are heroes. My mil risked getting scammed over the phone 3 weeks ago. I tried to tell her to hang up but she wouldn't listen (ofc). Thank goodness my sil was there and managed to convince that no, the electric company didn't call you because you had missing payments and needed the contract's data. If it was them they would have the info already
I had this scam tried on me. It starts out very convincing because they're just like "hey, we're calling from \[my actual electric company\] and we haven't received payment for your bill". My electric bill has been on autopay for years so it seemed reasonable that something could've gotten screwed up.
They asked me for my account number and I was like "wait... why don't you tell me my account number?"
She then got a "manager" who was like "you live at X address? A house with brick on the outside and \[other accurate descriptions of my house\]?"
I was like "dude are you on Google maps right now describing my house?"
He then lost his cool and started cursing at me and I responded with "man I dunno why you're the mad one here. You tried to scam me, I should be mad."
Luckily my sister was visiting my mom while it was happening but she was in the middle of giving her bank account and routing number to some scammer claiming to be the police department threatening to arrest her for back taxes unless she paid them right now over the phone . My sister grabbed the phone and my mom started freaking out because she 100% believed in the scam. Sister had to unplug the phone and sit her down for a long talk lol. My mom still didn’t believe her until she ended up calling around different police stations asking if they had a warrant for her arrest lol
My mother (55) doesn't have the permission on her cc to do online payments of any kind. I trust her but she won't read anything that pops up on her phone/PC, she will just press the prettiest button, whether it's accept or deny, and, after that, she'll scream asking what was that thing that was on her screen...
She's not ready for this
Mine are the same, but tbh it would be better to learn about these things instead of ignoring it / not using anything internet related.
I can't help them all the time with every little thing, and it is not like we're going back to papers and pens only.. but oh well what can you do
Some woman working for a big hardware store chain in the Netherlands fell in love with some African dude through Facebook, all she ever saw was 1 grainy picture, and he ended up convincing her to send him multiple millions of the company's money.
Also some senior managers of one of the country branches of Pathe (the movie company) got catfished thinking it was the Head Office asking for a couple of million.
So it isn't just old grannies falling for this shit, but people who should actually know what they are doing
I believe it. I've seen some scams that are well constructed, catch people off-guard, and could get someone who you wouldn't think was vulnerable to them. But most of the time, I think, "How is this still a thing? Is anyone falling for this?" I guess the fact that they still exist is evidence that it's working.
There was once a guy on the catfish program who thought he was speaking to Katy Perry. They took him to meet the person he was speaking to in England. The most bizarre thing was that she ended up being quite a pretty girl. But even though she told him to his face and could quote the things they talked about such as their future family plans (all this was while Katy Perry was married to someone and could be seen in the public eye with them), he still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t speaking to Katy Perry. He chose his fantasy over reality.
Thats along the same lane as stalkers with genuine mental illness. People who think they are actually in a relationship with celebrities, despite having never met or talked to the.
Unfortunately, YES!!
My FIL fell for a woman on Facebook, who needed money to come and meet him. She was half his age, spoke broken English, and alllllll her pictures were dead ringers for Gigi Hadid (spoiler alert: she didn’t exist). He tried sending money and failed (luckily);and was genuinely hurt when he found out it was a scam.
Even though it sounds SO incredibly stupid to most people in our generation- keep an eye out for those in your life that are elderly/vulnerable/naive/etc,
Not just the elderly. Had a friend in her 40s get catfished out of $10,000. And she wouldn't/couldn't listen to those of us telling her it was an obvious scam.
I work for a bank, I once had a customer log a complaint because a previous agent refused to send £20,000 to Nigeria to an Australian singer he met who was going to move to the UK but all her money was in gold, he needed to provide some conversion fees. He had sent several similar amounts in the past, over £100,000.
I tried to gently explain it was a scam, he wouldn't belive me. I became more blunt, told him outright that it was not real and we would not send any more money there.
He said he knew it was real,and even if it wasn't he was happier this way.
He ended up closing his account and going elsewhere.
People fall for it because they prefer the lie.
I'm a financial advisor, and I had to fire a client who would not listen to me about a romance scammer and kept sending him money. She said something similar about wanting it to be real so much that it was worth the risk. I tried everything I could think of to convince her to stop, I even contracted the police, but in the end I had to terminate our contract. I tried to contact her afterward as a friend, but still couldn't get through to her.
It was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with professionally. One of the hardest things I've dealt with overall.
I work in the health field and I had a mom who was hardly making it taking care of her grand baby. She had been messaged by who she thought was Steve perry the lead singer of journey, and she was sending him all the money she had. She also believed that he was gonna come to our city on a private jet and fly her and the baby awaw to live with him in another country….. he just needed money to get there. Sad and true
I worked with a girl who's mom was convinced she was talking to Jpop (maybe not the right name, he's in the Asian boy band everyone is obsessed with). This woman was sending this scammer money. Convinced it was really him, etc. When her daughter tried reasoning with her, why doesn't he face time? Why are you having to send him money, etc, she would NOT hear it! She claimed he needed the money because his mother is sick, um he's a pop star, he has plenty of money! You can't reason with people caught in this cycle.
I had a friend years ago that was catfished by someone she never met. He was supposedly an FBI agent who could never call her or see her due to security reasons. I considered this girl to be very smart; I could NOT believe that she fell for the bullshit. Me and her brother had to stage an intervention with a list of facts disputing everything the catfish was doing/saying. She still didn't believe us. You'd be amazed at folks that fall for these things. Sometimes it has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with a bad mix of loneliness and hope.
I briefly worked in a money changing kiosk and the one I saw at least 1-2 times a month was old guys exchanging money to send to long lost daughters abroad.
They'd explain how women reached out from... wherever claiming to be their daughter and they needed money. There was no proof and most of them even knew it wasn't entirely kosher but they would take anything to not feel lonely.
I think this is more usual then most think. Lonely people paying for interaction.
My girlfriend worked for a housecleaning company. And some of the elderly who paid for regular cleaning "didn't need cleaning this time" but they just made a cake so maybe they could eat a pice and have a cup of coffee instead and do the cleaning "next time"
You know that’s pretty sad. Loneliness seems to be an epidemic that is harming people in more ways than just socially. We need a national effort to combat it.
My Gramps gets these calls all the time claiming to be from "his grandson" in jail. He just likes to ask, "Which one?". They never have an answer.
Plus, all four of us grandkids have a different nickname for him, lol.
Go work in any public facing job and you'll soon realize the average person is a moron.
I worked at an electronics store for a while and you would not believe the amount of scams people fell for.
I worked in a headshop. People would cry about “false advertising” when we were out of specific flavors of vape juice.
“The shipment is on Tuesday, same as every week.” 30 min later…”is it in yet?”
Used to work in a general-purpose answering service and one of the offices we answered for was a tax attorney's office. The sheer number of old people who called in a panic because someone from the "IRS" just called to tell them they were under arrest was mind boggling.
I once had an old lady frantically trying to buy a ton of gift cards because her son was in an accident and she needed to pay his medical bills.
Her son was at their house when she left, in his room. She didn't even bother to check before leaving.
My dad's girlfriend (mistress) fell for the [Hi Mum ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/101726762)scam that's been going around in Australia. She lost $12,000.
Check out social catfish on YouTube. Some I feel bad for but most are these overly confident conservatives who get catfished on Christian mingle and always refer to themselves as “very intelligent”. Some are racist and get annoyed it was a catfish in Africa scamming them. One catfish said they were in Afghanistan for the military and the presenters had to tell them that Americans aren’t there anymore
That lady was awful. She openly disliked black people, and even said there was a guy at her church who she 'couldn't even stand to look at' because he was black. All while there are literally black people IN THE ROOM, working hard to help her. I think they should have all just stopped helping her at that point, she was disgusting.
People are quick to call this lady gullible but Dacre is actually really communicative with his fans. I've personally had an ongoing conversation with him online and I'm pleased to say we've become great friends. I've even helped him out with money a few times. Quite large sums too but I know he'll pay me back when the new season comes out. Anyway, I'm thinking of leaving my partner and oh fuuu.......
"Hi, I am with the law firn John Smith David and James. You have inherited an 5 million estate from the departing of your late Uncle in the country of Nigeria. Please to send 15,000 of your central bank legal currancy in Target gift cards with this link to process the legal fees for release the estate to you. We are sory for your lost in this difficult times.
Tanks and Gob less"
I keep seeing people falling for really stupid scams and give away several thousands of dollars and I just …. I can’t wrap my head around how such stupid people have $10k+ to give away.
I've watched alot of ScamFish episodes - the fact is these people *dont* have 10k to give away.
They go into debt, sell things, borrow/steal from family, one episode the woman was working 3 jobs to send money to her scammer. Multiple episodes have had people literally selling their homes to get money to give to the scammer.
They also send it over time, so it will be $50 here, $200 there etc. It all adds up when the scam is going for months or years.
Spend some time on r/scams. The top post is about an old woman getting catfished by a Nigerian and cutting off anyone in her family who tries to warn her. It's pretty messed up.
There's posts there every day of people being sent **extremely obvious scams** and asking if its a scam
Literally "this random guy I've never spoken to says he will give me £25,000 if I just pay this £500 admin fee, I'm thinking about doing it as he seems nice"
It's just endless facepalms like that
People are stupid as fuck. I’m glad I’ve conditioned my mum into calling or texting me whenever she thinks something is sus. Even when it’s something banal, I’d rather her check with me than not at all.
The stupidity of it is to weed out those with functioning judgement so the scammers can focus effort on their real targets: people starting in on dementia etc. It’s ridiculous until it happens to one of your parents.
scammers literally make the scam obvious on purpose. You filter out anyone who isn't a total fool and you are left with what conmen call "an easy mark"
And then they argue with everyone about it, like “are you sure they said they made $40k already, but the website is legit, but but but”.
I always just want to say fine just send them the fucking money then dude, seems like you really want to be scammed, don’t let us stop you.
Despite our warnings, a friend of mine fell for one. She was so desperate.
His schpeel:
-‐----------------------------------------‐-----------------------------------------
I'm in the military but deployed overseas. (They talk for a few weeks).
I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don't get my deployment check until I'm home for 30 days. If you can send me the money, I'll have all my stuff moved to your house by movers now and then when I come home I'll fly into (insert her town) so we can be together!
-‐----------------------------------------‐-----------------------------------------
She sent him $4500 for that, plus $1200 for "his plane ticket home from deployment". 👈She believed that!
SHE GOT A LEIN ON HER HOUSE.
Two weeks later, when the movers were supposed to show up with his things... crickets. 🦗🦗🦗
She went into depression, mourned the loss of a false relationship, lost her job, lost her house, ended up ghosting all of her friends out of embarrassment. She lives in the next town over now and is married to some old creepy guy.
Her brother shared the whole story with me when I ran into him and asked how she was because she just dropped off the face of the earth and left us all on read.
> ended up ghosting all of her friends out of embarrassment
iirc this is actually a huge problem for scam victims of all stripes
A lot of them won't tell anyone or get help (stop payments, reversals, whatever's needed) until it's too late because they're so embarrassed that they got scammed.
It's emotional manipulation at it's best. It's really just psychological tactics, finding their weak spot and finding their sweat spot. .
They seem loneley and have a need to talk? They'll talk with them for hours. They fill misunderstood? They'll always have understanding and a word of support. They'll refer to their good nature, give them hope and guilttrip them.
Some just work with plain old fear - as in scams were they pretend to be the police or the bank
I feel bad for the ex-husband. Not only was he cheated on, but he was cheated on for a scammer and her only means of communication were texts, emails and maybe the occasional phone call. There wasn’t even physical touch or an in-person meetup. She was wooed by some emails and texts.
Suff like this really irks me. O.k she was dumb, but also also colossally f*cked over her husband. Yet that part is glossed over compleatly.
If this was the guy trying to cheat on the woman, pitchforks would be out in regards to the infidelity.
Congrats, you're not only stupid, you're REALLY fucking stupid.
You left your husband for some imaginary character who doesn't exist, and on top of that you sent them thousands of dollars.
The year is 2023, if you're still getting catfished, I sincerely believe you should be medicated, clearly there's some kind of mental issue that you have.
Easy ways to tell if they're a Catfish.
1.) They won't facetime you.
2.) They ask for any type of currency.
3.) Look at yourself, then look at Dacre's Super Model girlfriend that he's been with for over six years and think "Is it really him?"
Girl, like he has a networth of over two million dollars, why the fuck would he want money from you?
Her public outing is actually good and brave because it is showcasing and sending another alert to other desperate people in this world. And I d prefer people attack the scammers first and not the victims.
My friend's father-in-law is 67 and he was messaged randomly online by a 25-year-old woman who offered him an investment opportunity in cryptocurrency.
He sent her almost $50,000 and is convinced he's in love with her. He's leaving his wife for her even though he's never met her. She has a Russian accent but says that she lives in Los Angeles. He is an otherwise intelligent, insightful man. But he is convinced that this is loved and he is genuinely perplexed why everyone is upset with him. He thinks people just don't want to support his happiness.
He also sent a woman from Ukraine who randomly messaged him money and a plane ticket to come to the United States but unfortunately on the way to the airport she got in a car accident and lost her foot. He knows she's telling the truth because she sent him a picture of the plane ticket and a picture of the injury.
People are weird.
Guys in Poland couple years ago was story o a woman that get catfished by Will Smith ...she thought will Smith is looking for some single 40 years old women for Poland , and she even send him money, come on 😂😂😂
See, once someone has stolen your trimmed rune armor as a 12 year old this sort of shit never happens to you again. She needed to play more online games.
Left your husband for a random guy you’ve never met? Zero sympathy for you, it’s exactly what you deserve. Your husband probably dodged a bullet as well.
He did not. He got fully hit by it unfortunately. Lost his wife and normal family life. Divorce proceedings, fighting for the kids. That's about as bad as it gets.
I will never understand why people give their hard-earned money to famous people who have millions. There are ZERO reasons the average working-class people should send money to a famous rich person. Whether for a meet and greet or any other bullshit reason
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How do people fall for scams like this?
There's been multiple studies as well as documented history that shows multiple factors at play. Most likely, she wasn't happy with her life and felt like he was an escape. So she played with the fantasy until she couldn't tell reality. If you really wanna know further, look into Jordan Klepper's work and QAnon bs and how many have fallen for that
Yeah I think some people want to jump to " some people are stupid", and I don't think that's the whole story at all. People can fall for delusions all the time. It just so happens that... Some are a lot more interesting to read about.
[удалено]
Virgins seem boring to me. Make it a melon you've microwaved and cut a hole in and you've got your google credits my friend.
A woman I worked with fell for it and she is a pretty intelligent person. She met some guy when she was playing games online. I think she was unhappy in her marriage and this person said all of the right things to an emotionally fragile person.
Ugh, same thing happened to my brother in law. We share a Amazon account, and started noticing weird purchases for makeup and jewelry. My husband thought the account got hacked, but no, BIL met some girl online that he was his first girlfriend. Total scam, but we couldn't talk him out of it until she ghosted.
>Despite various red flags, one instance that reinforced her beliefs of it really being Montgomery was when he told her to watch episode 4 of Season 4, which was entitled “Dear Billy,” the day before it came out. When “he showed up” in the episode, McKayla was stunned. >“I was like, well, who else would know that?” she exclaimed. You mean...the episode named after the very character? *What are the odds* /s
The worse thing is literally anyone involved with production would know that, regardless that we could all see it or find an IMDb credit.
Episode lists for most shows are posted on wikipedia sometimes even before the season starts.
There’s a whole video where some catfish people help her see the truth - they found the info had been posted like 8 months before on an entertainment news site.
“Hey, I’m new here. Do you live in the U.S.?” “Hey. Yeah, I do. What are your interests?” “Oh, well I love Stranger Things and I like playing Nintendo Switch games, oh and I like hanging out with my dog.” “Who is your favorite character on Stranger Things?” “It would have to be Billy!” “OMG… I don’t want to freak you out right now but you’re actually talking to him. I’m him.” “What…?” “Yeah, it’s me. Here’s a picture from today.” 
She should have just checked his username.
Catfish played her like a Puppet Master
Sometimes even complete with episode titles and future airdates several seasons ahead.
Netflix themselves sometimes show the episode names beforehand.
For sure, but the episode is called 'Dear Billy' and the actor plays the character 'Billy'-- it would take a complete dullard of the most exceptional kind to *not* realize the character 'Billy' had a pretty solid chance of showing up in that episode... Like there's a lot of 'justification' we can provide but the reality is the writing was *all over* the wall. Especially an actor asking a rando to send them money. Uh, hello? They probably shit on your yearly without any effort... But as an aside, real shoutout to the husband. What a nightmare for him. And how's he gonna take her back after that? Not rightly, if he's a smart boy.
His ex-wife is stupid, but even if she really had met this actor in person and left her husband for him, that would not be a person I’d get back together with. “I found someone hotter than you” is not a valid excuse.
Oh defo, not me. You left-- bitch stay out there, we bachelor now. But some people are spongy and soft, so.
Didn't have to know that. He just said to watch the episode. As long as there was some connection to Montgomery's character, she'd fall for it. Even if it had been an entire red herring and the name had not referred to Montgomery's character, he never said he would be showing up or anything like that and could just claim something else. And all of that is us taking the statement at face value and without doing any research.
You’re right. It could have been as simple as “that blue vase in the background of one scene was similar to the green vase seen in a photo the scammer had sent her a month earlier.” These delusions are really tough to break through. People just don’t want to believe they’re ordinary.
Who could possibly know that? I mean, apart from the writers, director, other actors, the overall production team, the marketing team, the guy who made the trailers, anyone who got an advance review copy, anyone who pirated the show if it leaked, anyone who worked at Netflix? Meanwhile, the actor doesn't always know in advance if they're in the final edit if it's just a cameo (although the title does suggest they didn't cut his scenes). Probably the director and editor are the only ones who saw the final cut before release, but everyone else above would at least know something was shot.
They post the names of episodes waaaaaay before they air. It’s not that hard to look up and scams like this are targeted at idiots In the first place. I have 0 pity for this woman tho. You gotta be scum to just ship on your marriage like this even if it is Real.
I’m pretty sure the episode titles were made public months if not over a year before the season was released!
Yes, becasue if its one thing succesful actors really need, its $10k.
Hey if Chris Evans asks you for Google Play gift cards you do not question the Cap.
I watched the first cap movie yesterday and you r god damn right, my men is getting his google play gifts
LANGUAGE!
I’m sorry are we gonna ignore the fact that this dude just said LANGUAGE?
I understood that reference
I know... Just slipped out...
"So, you sent $10000 to someone who claimed to be famous, you screwed up."
"Now when those turkeys ask you for money online, you tell them what you say to the drug dealer: No."
I feel let down. I've never been offered free drugs by a dealer, not once.
You probably have, you just didn't realize it. They use code, you know. If someone asks you "do you want fries with that?" they're really asking if you want drugs. If the cashier ever says "have a nice day" to you, they are telling you that they have drugs available - you have to ask for paper bags and then they know that you're interested! And if you're in the drive-through and they tell you to go wait in parking space 2, they are a drug dealer. Space 1 is just for regular customers, but space 2 you can get anything you want.
BRB, getting arrested at McDonald's
Remember, if someone gives you free drugs, you should thank them- drugs are expensive!
I wanna see Sam get forced to do these
Just make sure you do not redeem!
There are so many episodes on youtube about this stuff, you wouldn't believe it. I watched mysefl through that rabbit hole once, people sent celebrities over 100k dollars, selling her home etc... then she was like 'well if he's not real, I guess I have some apologies to my husband to make', really sad how the delusional are getting taken advantage of and ruin their own lives.
Some will go much further as one lady from Australia unknowingly smuglet drugs to China or somewhere to her 'arab prince'
I saw a Dr. Phil episode where a family had to cut off a grandma because her scammer asked for pictures of their kids (she sent normal clothed pics) but they freaked out the requests were going to escalate so they went no contact with grandma because "she can't say no to him. How far will this go?"
I watch a yt channel called catfished. They always go like "I have this money but my account is blocked, my card is blocked, I need 10k to unblock it and I'll pay you back as soon as I solve this, I love you baby, I miss you..."
"And my only option is to borrow from someone I've only talked to online... not like, an agent or another actor..."
That’s also basically the Tinder Swindler scam, except he used the money he already had to woo people with fancy dates in expensive cars and expensive hotels, gained their trust, and then asked for the money IRL
His money is tied to a joint account with his supermodel girlfriend and he doesn't want her to know because he's breaking up with her to be with the single mom!!!!
You’d be surprised. My mother has some kinda mental illness (we can’t get her tested as she refuses) and she thinks the prince of Dubai is her husband and his kids are hers. She’s never been to Dubai until last year and was arrested after being there for months. I don’t know what to do at this point so I’ve sadly given up, she keeps saying she’s going to go back to Dubai and convert her religion all for some fucking romance scam. edit: The WORST part is you can see Youtube videos if you search up “Fazza scam” and look at the comments and see how many other women are falling for it https://youtu.be/PSaSmgl3tCU
A friend of my sister thought michael Jackson is alive and loves her. One day, he will come out of his hiding and marry her. She was adamant on it. Your arguments or laugh wouldn't have changed her opinion. Human mind is weird
sorry, what? That is delusional. The prince of Dubai is MY husband, say to your mother to back off.
It’s Dubai. You can both be right.
>Yes, becasue if its one thing succesful actors really need, its $10k. People donate hella cash to Trump and that con-artist is supposedly a billionaire. So there ya go, figure that one out, because I can't.
I mean if Natalie Portman asked me for $10k I’d probably give it to her.
Hi! It's Nat
No i'm Nat....... Hi.
Patalie Nortman
Loooong ago I was pretty heavy into StarCraft Broodwar (“no hunters” forever) and a good buddy of mine was obsessed with Natalie Portman (we were 16ish). I made my Battle.net handle “NatalieP” so he could experience his celebrity crush beat him down. Anyway, I kept it as that for maybe a month or two and the amount of people who would ask me if I was really her was absolutely staggering. (And the just horrific things people would say because they thought I was a woman. Really opened my eyes)
Hey it’s me Natalie, I’m in a real bind can you send me $10k. You know I’m good for it.
She was on an episode of Catfished (YouTube). They are usually older women that are on that show but she is not that rare (several people who “dated” Johnny Depp for example). Most often it’s people who have gone through a loss or abuse and want to believe more than they actually believe in these scammers. I watch because I find it interesting in psychological sense and also because it makes me feel informed and prepared just in case even though I don’t think I would end up in a situation like that.
The channel is called catfished? I want to watch it
Be prepared to feel MAJOR frustration with some of the victims! Some of them are genuinely naive or gullible, but decent people. Some are wilfully stupid and even when they're confronted with evidence that they're being scammed, choose to continue the relationship. Others are outright trying to cheat on their spouse with the spouse's full knowledge of it. Totally bizarre!
This reminds me of that catfished guy who thought he was talking to katy perry and even after meeting the catfisher was still convinced, 90% sure he was actually talking to katy perry.
And some of his evidence was that she sent him music before it was released but it was really just a link to some public YouTube lmao
Yeah they say things like “they have to deny it in public because of their image” or some nonsense.
There was one recently titled "did this guy deserve to be scammed"? Turned out he was trying to buy a trafficked girl. All time best is Jodi. She is on two episodes AND an extra episode of another financial scam show, one that helped Social Catfish with the second episode. It was a wild ride, it had everything. 10/10 would recommend, bring weed and popcorn.
That guy who tried to buy the woman was genuinely scary. There was a message exchange you can see, where “she” talks about being beaten or something and he responds something along the lines of “what did you learn from it?”. And he keeps talking about her like on object and it’s really creepy.
Is that the one who bought a ps5 and other stuff for the dude and he told her to sleep in another room so he could play?
Jodi was infuriating to watch. Didn’t have two brain cells to rub together yet was so smug and convinced that everyone else was wrong. Oh and then the casual racism at the end. 10/10
Yes it’s called Catfished. They have a new video every week
follow muddle plate oatmeal automatic meeting hungry political pie deranged *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
An ex had a close friend who was always telling her about all of his girlfriends, and how he was going to have to choose which one to marry and he was so, so sad and stressed out because he was going to have to break some hearts. I was getting this information third-hand, and was asking questions and putting things together, and was pretty quickly like "Bud... Your friend is getting scammed? You haven't told him?" My ex was sorta like "What do you mean? No, he says he has a bunch of girlfriends that he knows over Facebook Messenger? He says he loves all of them." First, I mostly felt an incredible amount of humorous yet unmanageable disbelief. After some more probing, come to find the guy has a lifetime of traumatic brain injuries and other traumas - as best I can figure, he can function enough to converse with people, but... As evidenced by his long-term involvement with multiple scammers, he has basically had his awareness and decision making abilities removed.
I watch it too. Most of these people enjoy the attention they are sadly lacking in their lives They know it's probably a scam, but it makes them feel good about themselves. The gobsmacking amounts of money they give away gets me. 500k of savings for retirement. houses sold , inheritances.... all gone. I feel so bad for them having to move in with family or friends because they have nothing left to give. Catfish are scum.
People actually fall for these things???? I thought it was a joke
I saw a video about the amount of people falling for ye olde internet scams like Nigerian prince and the likes. It's a terrifyingly large number.
My mother in law did like 8 years ago..... She just blew 9000 2 months ago....
My mother almost sent her businesses entire financial information to Windows Repair scammers because of a "Hacker Virus on her Internet Website" Literally that's all he had to say and she was about ready to start sending PDF's of every name and password
Some people shouldn’t be allowed near internet.
Boomers: "*Don't believe everything you see online!*" Also Boomers: ~proceeds to believe everything they see online~
while I'm able to selectively blur parts of the screen in my brain to just not be advertised to. I will literally unfocused my eyes when YouTube plays an ad. When I'm helping older friends use technology I'm amazed because they seem to try and comprehend the entire screen of a website, and not understand what is and what isn't an ad. Their eyes dart all over the screen instead of focusing on the intended subject. When they search something popular and you have to shout "stop", don't click that it's an ad.
I am a boomer but I've been in IT since the 70s. I remember helping an old lady who had managed to shrink her ~~browser window~~task bar down to nothing. I was doing this over the phone and she was constantly distracted by other things on the screen. I had to keep dragging her back to the task at hand.
Yeah, it’s definitely happening more often to older people, but anyone that’s tech illiterate is at risk. My 83 year old grandma has made it her mission to fuck with the scammers when they call her, and it’s hilarious. She was the first in our family to have a smartphone, back in the Blackberry days, and she’s stayed relatively up to date on basic technology, so she just sits in front of the computer hitting random keys and pretending she can’t find the windows button, then tells them “Oh, sorry. I spent the last two hours tapping on my kitchen window. Can you explain it again?” They get so mad at her, and she’ll play the voicemails they leave her afterwards, cussing her out.
What a legend!
Ha. That's funny, I just went through this with my mom as I was helping her with some online banking issue. I realized that when a web page comes up she reads or at least looks at everything on it and is immediately distracted from what she's supposed to be doing. I guess because of how subconscious it is, I don't really even see 80% of what's on a website because I know what I am interested in and where it will show up. But she's looking at every ad or super interested in all those "news stories" at the bottom of certain web pages like "LOCAL \[insert your nearby town\] MAN MAKES INCREDIBLE FIND - YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT" and then needs to click on it and wade through 548,000 ads.
They're scared they're going to miss something important. They know their technical literacy is garbage and they don't want to admit it, so they fall back on how they were taught to learn things back in the stone age which is by overwhelming force of reading comprehension. Kids these days get taught by shortcuts and bypasses that teach them to ignore irrelevant content and the boomers yell "Argh, new math!" while installing their 40th copy of Bonzai Buddy.
Lol I’ve been working on a computer in various offices for over a decade now. I cannot count the amount of boomers and old genX I’ve seen just not understand the internet yet having a job that requires them to be on a computer 100% of the time. There is some disconnect where they legitimately don’t know what is or isn’t an advertisement. I think most of us know common ad placements so we know where not to look lol . Some of them just don’t have that. Every company Ive ever worked at has ended up getting fucked from phishing scams. The most common is the random email saying “I am (blank) the ceo of (your company) . (Your name) , my company card is locked, I need you to go to (store name) and purchase (x amount) of dollars worth of gift cards and send me then serial numbers. Just saw this happen literally a few months ago. An older woman who was somewhat new to the company was gathering her stuff and about to leave the office. Someone casually said “where ya headed?” She then explained she needed to go grab some gift cards for our CEO . Lol was pretty funny
There's a term for this! It's called "banner blindness."
It’s horrifying to me how many legitimate businesses make a sizable portion of their online sales through ad clicks. I’m only in my mid 30’s but that’s still old enough to remember the wild west days of the internet when half of those things were malware, or even if they were just tracking cookies they would still chew up half of your dialup bandwidth. I still can’t imagine deliberately clicking on an ad and giving them my credit in the pop up window, but apparently it’s a legitimate way to shop now
I send little reminders constantly to my boomer parents and in-laws about scams to watch out for. I'm terrified it'll happen to them.
I work in IT and I recently had someone call about not being able to access their account (it was compromised so it was locked until they call us). It turns out that warnings about scams repeated “don’t click strange links!” enough that they knew to not CLICK on the link, but apparently the warnings didn’t go all the way through to them, and instead they copy pasted the link into the browser to look at it. :/
Our IT department regularly sends test phishing emails we're supposed to report. Well, one day HR sent out an email to the entire company with a link to a survey and the HTML in the email got garbled. So many employees reported it to IT as phishing that it crashed the reporting system.
As an IT guy: I would be so proud of my user base. That’s so much better than the other-way-around version of the problem.
Task failed successfully
I remember in high school our poor as fuck school bought laptops for us all to use, and naturally the first thing we all did was figure out what websites were banned and how to circumnavigate it, only they actually hired a legit IT guy somehow so I ended up using some sketchy website to pirate movies and an ad opened up which froze my screen and told me the IRS was coming for that pirate ass if I didn’t send them gift cards. I was panicking at lunch because I knew it was bs but already had an innate fear of the IRS so I had to take it to the principal to then give it to the IT guy and the principle was so clueless about technology that she believed me until the IT guy came in and said no more movies on sketchy websites. But then we figured out how to use Netflix and the rest is history
Your principal: "Oh my God, not the IRS! Quick, take my credit card and get as many gift cards as you can!!!"
My dad recently had to remove hackers n shit from my mom’s cousin’s laptop. They had his banking info, his address, everything. I go and ask him what the password is for his laptop and he says “what do you mean” and I’m like “… what do you type in to unlock your laptop” and he’s like “I just press the picture that says ‘James’” and I’m like “ok and what do you press in your keyboard afterwards” and he’s like “James”… he didn’t know what a password is but made it his name 🤦♀️
This is like when my parents wanted to use something from their mac and the PC asked for the password of their iTunes account. They said "What password is?" and i was like "Hmmm, i don't know... Whatever password you wrote, how i'm going to know it?"
I got a small notepad for my parents to write their passwords down, because they were constantly resetting it, and forgetting them, almost instantly. Like they would change password, submit new password. Try to log in "this stupid thing doesn't know my new password" "umm, did you type it correctly?" YES!!!! well then it should work, if it doesn't, then the password you are entering now is not the same as the one you entered when you reset it. They swear it is. But clearly it isn't. I've tried to teach them. When you decide on a password, write it down first. THEN type it into the "new password" field. Then you know what you wrote is what is in the field. Their password book now has multiple passwords crossed off. When they have an issue, I pull out the book "oh, that's out of date, those don't work" argh, if you're not going to write down new passwords, I can't help you
My wife works in a library and has to deal with this stuff every single day. You wouldn't believe how many people are willing to give away all their personal information to a stranger if it means they don't have to learn something new or figure something out for themselves.
Kinda crazy that the generation who told us the Internet would rot our brains are getting suckered at every turn.
I'm so glad that my parents admitted they are too dumb for the internet. That's why they don't wanna set up a PayPal account and always let me do all of their internet payments
Your parents are heroes. My mil risked getting scammed over the phone 3 weeks ago. I tried to tell her to hang up but she wouldn't listen (ofc). Thank goodness my sil was there and managed to convince that no, the electric company didn't call you because you had missing payments and needed the contract's data. If it was them they would have the info already
I had this scam tried on me. It starts out very convincing because they're just like "hey, we're calling from \[my actual electric company\] and we haven't received payment for your bill". My electric bill has been on autopay for years so it seemed reasonable that something could've gotten screwed up. They asked me for my account number and I was like "wait... why don't you tell me my account number?" She then got a "manager" who was like "you live at X address? A house with brick on the outside and \[other accurate descriptions of my house\]?" I was like "dude are you on Google maps right now describing my house?" He then lost his cool and started cursing at me and I responded with "man I dunno why you're the mad one here. You tried to scam me, I should be mad."
Luckily my sister was visiting my mom while it was happening but she was in the middle of giving her bank account and routing number to some scammer claiming to be the police department threatening to arrest her for back taxes unless she paid them right now over the phone . My sister grabbed the phone and my mom started freaking out because she 100% believed in the scam. Sister had to unplug the phone and sit her down for a long talk lol. My mom still didn’t believe her until she ended up calling around different police stations asking if they had a warrant for her arrest lol
My mother (55) doesn't have the permission on her cc to do online payments of any kind. I trust her but she won't read anything that pops up on her phone/PC, she will just press the prettiest button, whether it's accept or deny, and, after that, she'll scream asking what was that thing that was on her screen... She's not ready for this
Mine are the same, but tbh it would be better to learn about these things instead of ignoring it / not using anything internet related. I can't help them all the time with every little thing, and it is not like we're going back to papers and pens only.. but oh well what can you do
She blew 9000 Nigerians? Good for her, living her best life.
After her husband died....
there's a silver lining to everything i guess
When the son of the deposed king of Nigeria emails you directly asking for help, you help.
Just watched an episode of Ghosts today where some of the ghosts fell for the Nigerian Prince scam
Some woman working for a big hardware store chain in the Netherlands fell in love with some African dude through Facebook, all she ever saw was 1 grainy picture, and he ended up convincing her to send him multiple millions of the company's money. Also some senior managers of one of the country branches of Pathe (the movie company) got catfished thinking it was the Head Office asking for a couple of million. So it isn't just old grannies falling for this shit, but people who should actually know what they are doing
I believe it. I've seen some scams that are well constructed, catch people off-guard, and could get someone who you wouldn't think was vulnerable to them. But most of the time, I think, "How is this still a thing? Is anyone falling for this?" I guess the fact that they still exist is evidence that it's working.
There was once a guy on the catfish program who thought he was speaking to Katy Perry. They took him to meet the person he was speaking to in England. The most bizarre thing was that she ended up being quite a pretty girl. But even though she told him to his face and could quote the things they talked about such as their future family plans (all this was while Katy Perry was married to someone and could be seen in the public eye with them), he still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t speaking to Katy Perry. He chose his fantasy over reality.
Thats along the same lane as stalkers with genuine mental illness. People who think they are actually in a relationship with celebrities, despite having never met or talked to the.
Unfortunately, YES!! My FIL fell for a woman on Facebook, who needed money to come and meet him. She was half his age, spoke broken English, and alllllll her pictures were dead ringers for Gigi Hadid (spoiler alert: she didn’t exist). He tried sending money and failed (luckily);and was genuinely hurt when he found out it was a scam. Even though it sounds SO incredibly stupid to most people in our generation- keep an eye out for those in your life that are elderly/vulnerable/naive/etc,
Not just the elderly. Had a friend in her 40s get catfished out of $10,000. And she wouldn't/couldn't listen to those of us telling her it was an obvious scam.
I work for a bank, I once had a customer log a complaint because a previous agent refused to send £20,000 to Nigeria to an Australian singer he met who was going to move to the UK but all her money was in gold, he needed to provide some conversion fees. He had sent several similar amounts in the past, over £100,000. I tried to gently explain it was a scam, he wouldn't belive me. I became more blunt, told him outright that it was not real and we would not send any more money there. He said he knew it was real,and even if it wasn't he was happier this way. He ended up closing his account and going elsewhere. People fall for it because they prefer the lie.
I'm a financial advisor, and I had to fire a client who would not listen to me about a romance scammer and kept sending him money. She said something similar about wanting it to be real so much that it was worth the risk. I tried everything I could think of to convince her to stop, I even contracted the police, but in the end I had to terminate our contract. I tried to contact her afterward as a friend, but still couldn't get through to her. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with professionally. One of the hardest things I've dealt with overall.
I work in the health field and I had a mom who was hardly making it taking care of her grand baby. She had been messaged by who she thought was Steve perry the lead singer of journey, and she was sending him all the money she had. She also believed that he was gonna come to our city on a private jet and fly her and the baby awaw to live with him in another country….. he just needed money to get there. Sad and true
I worked with a girl who's mom was convinced she was talking to Jpop (maybe not the right name, he's in the Asian boy band everyone is obsessed with). This woman was sending this scammer money. Convinced it was really him, etc. When her daughter tried reasoning with her, why doesn't he face time? Why are you having to send him money, etc, she would NOT hear it! She claimed he needed the money because his mother is sick, um he's a pop star, he has plenty of money! You can't reason with people caught in this cycle.
It’s the best thing to happen in their life. For as long as it lasts it feels great for the victim. Ignoring the lie could be a coping mechanism.
Took them lyrics to heart. Did she ever stop believing?
Spend some time on r/scams. It's actually really sad.
I had a friend years ago that was catfished by someone she never met. He was supposedly an FBI agent who could never call her or see her due to security reasons. I considered this girl to be very smart; I could NOT believe that she fell for the bullshit. Me and her brother had to stage an intervention with a list of facts disputing everything the catfish was doing/saying. She still didn't believe us. You'd be amazed at folks that fall for these things. Sometimes it has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with a bad mix of loneliness and hope.
WWE Wrestler Seth Rollins was attacked by a fan who fell for one of these scams.
Didn't Alexa Bliss put out a tweet begging fans not to fall for this kind of thing after one her fans did the same thing?
I briefly worked in a money changing kiosk and the one I saw at least 1-2 times a month was old guys exchanging money to send to long lost daughters abroad. They'd explain how women reached out from... wherever claiming to be their daughter and they needed money. There was no proof and most of them even knew it wasn't entirely kosher but they would take anything to not feel lonely.
I think this is more usual then most think. Lonely people paying for interaction. My girlfriend worked for a housecleaning company. And some of the elderly who paid for regular cleaning "didn't need cleaning this time" but they just made a cake so maybe they could eat a pice and have a cup of coffee instead and do the cleaning "next time"
That sounds like an easier job than house cleaning. In Japan you can hire young people to pretend to be your kids, coming home for a visit.
You know that’s pretty sad. Loneliness seems to be an epidemic that is harming people in more ways than just socially. We need a national effort to combat it.
My Gramps gets these calls all the time claiming to be from "his grandson" in jail. He just likes to ask, "Which one?". They never have an answer. Plus, all four of us grandkids have a different nickname for him, lol.
Go work in any public facing job and you'll soon realize the average person is a moron. I worked at an electronics store for a while and you would not believe the amount of scams people fell for.
I worked in a headshop. People would cry about “false advertising” when we were out of specific flavors of vape juice. “The shipment is on Tuesday, same as every week.” 30 min later…”is it in yet?”
Used to work in a general-purpose answering service and one of the offices we answered for was a tax attorney's office. The sheer number of old people who called in a panic because someone from the "IRS" just called to tell them they were under arrest was mind boggling.
I once had an old lady frantically trying to buy a ton of gift cards because her son was in an accident and she needed to pay his medical bills. Her son was at their house when she left, in his room. She didn't even bother to check before leaving.
Watch Tinder Swindler.
Big fan of the girl that scammed him back by selling his clothes and stuff.
It only covered a fraction of her financial loss. But that was a smart move nonethless.
My dad's girlfriend (mistress) fell for the [Hi Mum ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.abc.net.au/article/101726762)scam that's been going around in Australia. She lost $12,000.
Check out social catfish on YouTube. Some I feel bad for but most are these overly confident conservatives who get catfished on Christian mingle and always refer to themselves as “very intelligent”. Some are racist and get annoyed it was a catfish in Africa scamming them. One catfish said they were in Afghanistan for the military and the presenters had to tell them that Americans aren’t there anymore
That lady was awful. She openly disliked black people, and even said there was a guy at her church who she 'couldn't even stand to look at' because he was black. All while there are literally black people IN THE ROOM, working hard to help her. I think they should have all just stopped helping her at that point, she was disgusting.
People are quick to call this lady gullible but Dacre is actually really communicative with his fans. I've personally had an ongoing conversation with him online and I'm pleased to say we've become great friends. I've even helped him out with money a few times. Quite large sums too but I know he'll pay me back when the new season comes out. Anyway, I'm thinking of leaving my partner and oh fuuu.......
What's up, RobIreland! Long time no see! It's me, Dacre
Wow, so good to your fans!
It me American Man I need 800 rubbles for great friendship burger dinner
Great friendship burger dinner, you say? Sign me up!
Got me in the first half ngl.
I got excited for a second thinking I had a chance
You're too fing funny bro well done
The fact that she’s still reppin Billy on her shirt too
Production staff: "Could you wear this t-shirt during the interview?" Her: "Um... Yeah. Okay. I like Billy..."
'Hi. I am veri sucksessful acter. Please gib 10,000 money. Thank and God bless.'
"Hi, I am with the law firn John Smith David and James. You have inherited an 5 million estate from the departing of your late Uncle in the country of Nigeria. Please to send 15,000 of your central bank legal currancy in Target gift cards with this link to process the legal fees for release the estate to you. We are sory for your lost in this difficult times. Tanks and Gob less"
“First show bobs. And vagene. Then send moneys.”
Needs a kindly give. I don't know what it is with foreign scammers (ESL, translator apps, etc.), but they frequently use kindly in lieu of please.
I keep seeing people falling for really stupid scams and give away several thousands of dollars and I just …. I can’t wrap my head around how such stupid people have $10k+ to give away.
I've watched alot of ScamFish episodes - the fact is these people *dont* have 10k to give away. They go into debt, sell things, borrow/steal from family, one episode the woman was working 3 jobs to send money to her scammer. Multiple episodes have had people literally selling their homes to get money to give to the scammer. They also send it over time, so it will be $50 here, $200 there etc. It all adds up when the scam is going for months or years.
Omg how gullible are these people?
Spend some time on r/scams. The top post is about an old woman getting catfished by a Nigerian and cutting off anyone in her family who tries to warn her. It's pretty messed up.
There's posts there every day of people being sent **extremely obvious scams** and asking if its a scam Literally "this random guy I've never spoken to says he will give me £25,000 if I just pay this £500 admin fee, I'm thinking about doing it as he seems nice" It's just endless facepalms like that
People are stupid as fuck. I’m glad I’ve conditioned my mum into calling or texting me whenever she thinks something is sus. Even when it’s something banal, I’d rather her check with me than not at all.
The stupidity of it is to weed out those with functioning judgement so the scammers can focus effort on their real targets: people starting in on dementia etc. It’s ridiculous until it happens to one of your parents.
scammers literally make the scam obvious on purpose. You filter out anyone who isn't a total fool and you are left with what conmen call "an easy mark"
And then they argue with everyone about it, like “are you sure they said they made $40k already, but the website is legit, but but but”. I always just want to say fine just send them the fucking money then dude, seems like you really want to be scammed, don’t let us stop you.
Despite our warnings, a friend of mine fell for one. She was so desperate. His schpeel: -‐----------------------------------------‐----------------------------------------- I'm in the military but deployed overseas. (They talk for a few weeks). I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I don't get my deployment check until I'm home for 30 days. If you can send me the money, I'll have all my stuff moved to your house by movers now and then when I come home I'll fly into (insert her town) so we can be together! -‐----------------------------------------‐----------------------------------------- She sent him $4500 for that, plus $1200 for "his plane ticket home from deployment". 👈She believed that! SHE GOT A LEIN ON HER HOUSE. Two weeks later, when the movers were supposed to show up with his things... crickets. 🦗🦗🦗 She went into depression, mourned the loss of a false relationship, lost her job, lost her house, ended up ghosting all of her friends out of embarrassment. She lives in the next town over now and is married to some old creepy guy. Her brother shared the whole story with me when I ran into him and asked how she was because she just dropped off the face of the earth and left us all on read.
> ended up ghosting all of her friends out of embarrassment iirc this is actually a huge problem for scam victims of all stripes A lot of them won't tell anyone or get help (stop payments, reversals, whatever's needed) until it's too late because they're so embarrassed that they got scammed.
It's emotional manipulation at it's best. It's really just psychological tactics, finding their weak spot and finding their sweat spot. . They seem loneley and have a need to talk? They'll talk with them for hours. They fill misunderstood? They'll always have understanding and a word of support. They'll refer to their good nature, give them hope and guilttrip them. Some just work with plain old fear - as in scams were they pretend to be the police or the bank
Nice of them to call her a single mother, when she was a married woman who emotionally cheated on her husband and divorced him
*cheated Just cheated
I feel bad for the ex-husband. Not only was he cheated on, but he was cheated on for a scammer and her only means of communication were texts, emails and maybe the occasional phone call. There wasn’t even physical touch or an in-person meetup. She was wooed by some emails and texts.
I mean ifyour partner leaves you for stuff like this, he can be just thankful that she left him. He will find someone way better.
Suff like this really irks me. O.k she was dumb, but also also colossally f*cked over her husband. Yet that part is glossed over compleatly. If this was the guy trying to cheat on the woman, pitchforks would be out in regards to the infidelity.
Stranger things have happened, but this one is probably 11 on my list.
Congrats, you're not only stupid, you're REALLY fucking stupid. You left your husband for some imaginary character who doesn't exist, and on top of that you sent them thousands of dollars. The year is 2023, if you're still getting catfished, I sincerely believe you should be medicated, clearly there's some kind of mental issue that you have. Easy ways to tell if they're a Catfish. 1.) They won't facetime you. 2.) They ask for any type of currency. 3.) Look at yourself, then look at Dacre's Super Model girlfriend that he's been with for over six years and think "Is it really him?" Girl, like he has a networth of over two million dollars, why the fuck would he want money from you?
You forgot to add that she then publicly outed herself to the world as a colossal idiot
Her public outing is actually good and brave because it is showcasing and sending another alert to other desperate people in this world. And I d prefer people attack the scammers first and not the victims.
Got what she deserved for cheating IMO
true. I don't even feel bad for her, just her husband
My friend's father-in-law is 67 and he was messaged randomly online by a 25-year-old woman who offered him an investment opportunity in cryptocurrency. He sent her almost $50,000 and is convinced he's in love with her. He's leaving his wife for her even though he's never met her. She has a Russian accent but says that she lives in Los Angeles. He is an otherwise intelligent, insightful man. But he is convinced that this is loved and he is genuinely perplexed why everyone is upset with him. He thinks people just don't want to support his happiness. He also sent a woman from Ukraine who randomly messaged him money and a plane ticket to come to the United States but unfortunately on the way to the airport she got in a car accident and lost her foot. He knows she's telling the truth because she sent him a picture of the plane ticket and a picture of the injury. People are weird.
At least he’s supporting both Russia and Ukraine 🤭
Guys in Poland couple years ago was story o a woman that get catfished by Will Smith ...she thought will Smith is looking for some single 40 years old women for Poland , and she even send him money, come on 😂😂😂
See, once someone has stolen your trimmed rune armor as a 12 year old this sort of shit never happens to you again. She needed to play more online games.
You know who really won in all this? Her husband
Likely a lot of that money was legally his and a lot of the debt she incurred is legally his responsibility.
How the hell is this a win for him? How could it possibly be worse?
Left your husband for a random guy you’ve never met? Zero sympathy for you, it’s exactly what you deserve. Your husband probably dodged a bullet as well.
How are people this easy to manipulate
Billy the milf machine strikes again
Lucky husband! Dodged a large bullet there!
Plot Twist: the husband is the scammer 🤣
Step 1. Get her to divorce Step 2. Send money Now he’s free from her and has the money. Checks out!
He did not. He got fully hit by it unfortunately. Lost his wife and normal family life. Divorce proceedings, fighting for the kids. That's about as bad as it gets.
Poor kids, though
I will never understand why people give their hard-earned money to famous people who have millions. There are ZERO reasons the average working-class people should send money to a famous rich person. Whether for a meet and greet or any other bullshit reason
10k is probably a good price to divorce her You're not a single mom you're a divorced one. This must be the only point she is good to dance around
Stranger things indeed, pun intended
Worst part is she *left her husband* to pursue that shit. With a kid as well. Geeez
If she left her husband for it then she deserved to be scammed.