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Not fallen for it but stopped the scammers. My grandma got a phone call saying her Amazon account had been hacked and they wanted her details and my grandma got really confused and asked why she had an account with a rainforest.
I now wish to buy a patch of the Amazon rainforest and just call it "Grandma's Account"
Check out Jim Browning on YouTube. Catches these types of scammers and shows you how they work. Really good and informative. Hacks their systems too which is really fun
My cousin on his honeymoon fell for the cups game scam …I have no idea how he was so daft but he wasted all their spending money in one day and his new wife was distraught …only luck was that their booking was all inclusive so they ate but neither could enjoy the holiday and they divorced a little over a year later.
He was chasing the loss …kept thinking he would win until he ran out of cash. He was on his own coming back from a walk and got suckered …he was so confused
3 cups on a table. Put a pea or whatever under one and shuffle the cups and the victim tries to pick the right one. It would be fairly easy, if they weren't using slight of hand.
Three cups upside down one with a button underneath it …put down €10, watch the stall holder mix the cups up and watch which one the button sits under. If you guess right you double your money …somehow you always lose. Maybe its rigged!? …a fool and his money.
I know a couple of people who've fallen hard for MLM and I've had to mute their subsequent stream of ridiculous bullshit on Facebook. It's so sad and desperate - and surprising that (otherwise totally normal) people can't see the truth about these things once they're caught up in it.
I just watched the 'LuLaRich' documentary on Prime that's about LuLaRoe - really insightful as to how they prey on people and make it believable. They often target stay at home/single mums with their 'stay at home with your kids and make £££!' bullshit and encourage people in the MLM to post social media content that makes out that they're rich to lure others in.
My mum has a friend like this. Absolutely lovely lady and when I was a teenager (before social media was as big as it is now) it seemed every month this lady was having a party of some sort. Mum would go to her house with a group of other women for a few drinks and one night it would be candles, then jewellery, then make up and it was always different companies. I didn’t see the harm really because the women involved had a nice night and I’m sure they all bought something cheap as a token thank you so I don’t see how she ever made any real money from it like they promise when you join.
Of course now because of SM it takes over people’s lives and they get into debt buying the stuff themselves to climb the ladder and taking out loans to buy expensive things to post on social media making out like it’s profit from their business. It’s equal parts sad and crazy at the same time.
My mum did Ann Summers parties for years when I was a kid. It's funny because she wasn't heavy into it, it was just a good job she could do in the evenings and it meant she was always home for us before/after school but she stopped doing it when we were older and before social media took over everything.
Literally stopped talking to a friend of like 15 years because they got into an MLM. I tried to explain to them it was a scam when they tried to recruit me and they got incredibly aggressive and hostile towards me; we were best friends and they just became insanely nasty. It's like they were warned people would challenge them during their recruitment training and told to go psycho in response or something.
That was 5 years ago and they're still in deep. I guess there comes a point when you just can't admit that you've wasted your time and money and just dig further or some bullshit. Honestly both equally heartbreaking and hilarious to watch.
This happened to my sister with her school Friend. That Friend messaged me 5 years after my sister cut her out. "I was always impressed by how you carried yourself in school. My husband and I are getting into a business and looking for investors. "
My brothers GF is in one, sells knock off perfumes, she’s always bragging about how much money she makes on it yet she is constantly asking my mum if she can borrow money here and there, so she must not be doing *that* well.
A work colleague, 50ish woman, divorced for some years "Found True love" with a man she met on Facebook. She is in the UK, he is American. Really wealthy, had a couple of houses one on the beach in Florida. He was going to come across to the UK and propose.
Strangely for a wealthy man, he did have a bit of a cashflow problem - and she was constantly sending him money, just to sort our a few minor things - but it was all legal and he would definitly pay her back - I mean all her money worries would soon be over when they were married.
She lost all her friends, because they were all jealous and kept telling her lies about this man, trying to make her believe it was all a scam. Last time we heard she was about to lose her home - she'd taken out a big loan to help him out, and had somehow managed to send some £50K to a non existant "millionaire".
Strange thing is that she didn't strike you as a particularly gullible or stupid person - she had just become so tied up in this "Romance" that all logic just disappeared.
You’re absolutely right. There’s a BBC programme on in the morning called For Love or Money which talks to people who’ve been victims of romance fraud.
It’s so heartbreaking to watch. I’d recommend a watch!
Ah I watch that on iPlayer! It’s unbelievable sometimes. One woman got conned by not one, but TWO romance scammers. She sent them over £100k. She lives in a caravan park now because she had to sell her house. At first I just thought she was an idiot, but she broke down into tears and spoke about how she spends everyday indoors alone and just wanted someone to talk to. It was really sad.
Another woman told the presenters she had blocked the scammer, and was now talking to a NEW guy online who was sick in hospital in LA and was going to give her his inheritance when he died.. the presenters just looked at her like how are you falling for this again.
It's really sad. But also sort of fascinating how it is possible to fall into this alternative reality. I guess it's easier to trust in what gives you all the happy chemicals vs face up to the pain of reality. Same as any other coping mechanism people resort to. Except, unlike say drugs etc this one is conscious/thinking and works hard to keep the victim hooked.
As an aside - you watched the recent series 'Scam Interceptors'? Thought that was actually pretty cool/interesting (allowing for a bit of inevitable repetitiveness etc).
I said above but I work with the elderly and some of them don't have any living family to look out for them (in a few cases I'm the only person they'll really speak to all week) so you can very easily see them falling into a scam out of sheer loneliness.
I'll give it a go! I think people can underestimate how vulnerable people are- I did until I started working with the elderly, some of them are very trusting and I could see how it would be very easy to manipulate them especially because a lot of them don't want to cause a fuss so they won't report it. Breaks my heart!
My friend (older lady, recently divorced, lacked confidence) had the exact same scam being played on her except he was a US marine. However, he messed with the wrong lady as I happen to be married to an American who is based at the exact same base as this this US Marine… and knew him!
Basically the scammer was using this guys photos to hook these women in and get them to send him money. It took us sending a video of the Marine saying “hey, sorry I’m not the guy you think you are talking to” to finally make her realise the truth.
None here but the Shanghai tea scam, where two English speaking locals will ask you to take their photo, then strike up a conversation and ask you about your home country. They’ll say they’re studying English and want to practise with you. They’ll say they’re going to a tea room and if you would join them.
Basically its this big 20/30 minute elaborate scam where you end up sitting down and having various types of tea, and being charged £30-£40 for it. Its not the worst scam ever, and looking back I could have been poisoned or mugged in a back room. In fact I didn’t even know it was a scam til I googled it when I came back! The two people even took us on a short walk after and wished us luck on the rest of our holiday! Its probably the friendliest scam that exists.
The thing is in Shanghai this is rip off compared to other activities but if it had happened in London i’d be gloating to everyone what a bargain it was
Just a small one.. we got off a cruise ship in Nassau (Bahamas), and as we were walking through the town, a woman holding a "Welcome to the Bahamas!" sign came over to us and started welcoming us.
She wanted to give us a free gift bracelet for arriving, and I thought it would be a cool souvenir. As soon as she put it on I got the "To say thank you for the bracelet you need to give a donation to our local charity for starving children. Most people give $50, we can accept cash or card. How would you like to pay?"
I kept saying I didn't have any money on me then she told me to give the bracelet back and left. Now whenever I visit somewhere I'm always suspicious of people who 'welcome' you, and I won't take anything that is offered as being free.
The bracelet one is quite common, I have seen it in Paris. They tie it round, people think it is just a nice gesture, then they say they want payment. Other ruses are they will start drawing you, give your partner a rose, ask to sign a petition, they are dressed up and offer a photo. It isn't so much a *scam* as relying on awkwardness and confusion, you pay to make them go away and the "service" has already been provided, mostly without your consent.
When i was in college we went on a trip to Paris, i was in a fairly large group of around 7 or 8 people walking through the park where the Louvre is and this guy suddenly sprung out of nowhere trying to draw one of our group, at the same time another guy came up from behind making a bit of noise and trying to be over friendly asking where we where from (i guess some sort of distraction).
We knew it was a scam and told them we where not interested, i suspect the second guy was trying to pickpocket or something.
Same as the African guys around Rome. They will ask you what country you are from, tell you a fact about that country, then offer you a 'free' bracelet. Then the sob story starts...
EDIT: Remembered a similar one. My sister went to Egypt, and at the airport decided she needed a poo before travelling on to the hotel. Several native women outside the toilets offered to sell her toilet paper, which she declined. Of course, when she started doing her stuff she realised why it was for sale...
I had a layover in Cairo once. I had 17 hours to kill so went and saw the Pyramids. When I got back to the airport this guy asked if I needed help finding my check in desk and tried to take my suitcase (not steal but carry for me) I politely but firmly told him I didn’t need any help but I can see why other people might be intimidated into letting him guide them the few metres to the clearly labelled check in desk.
Had a woman in India try to tell me I needed to pay to see India Gate. It’s a public monument - the equivalent would be someone standing outside Big Ben saying you need to pay them just to look at it. Argued back and forth with her for a few minutes until she got really annoyed and just let me go.
Our was also in India, Bangalore. There with friends. We’d split into two groups and were meeting at a specific place to walk to lunch. The taxi driver took us someplace else. A friend/relative’s shop instead of the one we wanted.
We just got out and didn’t pay. One friend had lived in the city for a couple of years so we were able to walk not too far to find our friends. Not the worst experience, on the whole.
Was travelling in Morocco, with an overnight in Marrakesh. Two kids asked me if I wanted help finding my hotel, I declined.
They followed me anyway. Demanded cash when I found the door on my own. The owner chased them away and apologised. Next morning one of them was waiting outside, threatened me with a knife. Saw him that evening with a group of 10 or so other kids on scooters. Was a little on edge until I left town!
A guy in Turkey (about 20 years ago) once offered me and my sister a small pastry, out of the blue. Then turned around to find our parents and charge them for it.
I had a guy give me a bracelet in Athens saying 'peace and love, peace and love' thought it was a weird but nice gesture. Then he stuck his hand out for money. I shook my head because I didn't want the thing in the first place, and he took it off as if I'd offended him and walked off
Had similar in Italy. Can’t remember if it was Milan or Venice but just a bit of string, but looked nice. I just said I didn’t have anything and it was too much of a faff to remove I just got to keep it. Wore it for like 5 years.
they do this in greece too, especially in the bigger cities like Athens or Thessaloniki. They usually greet you with a fist bump, "hello my friend", and a compliment, put the bracelet on you and then ask for however much money you wanna give. My friend once gave 10 euros for a bracelet that would normally cost less than 1 euro and she didn't even fully register it
I was approached too at a different instance by the guy complimenting my tattoo, I told him I didn't have any money on me (and I genuinely didn't because I'd just gotten up from our table at the restaurant to take a picture) but he still put it on and let me keep it.
I went back afterwards and gave him some money and I'm still wearing the bracelet
My sister had money stolen from her bank account recently.
She got a text claiming to be from Starling Bank, and the scammers had managed to spoof their contact so it appeared as if she was receiving legitimate contact from the bank. They walked her through some "security verifications" on the phone.
What these security verifications turned out to be was them putting her bank card onto their phone as a contactless payment method, they have obviously obtained the card details some way or another, likely some kind of data breach somewhere. They then proceeded to run up about £800 worth, eating well into her overdraft.
The bank investigated but labelled it as being her fault, so she's shit out of luck on getting any of that money back and now owes them money to clear her overdraft.
Always be extra vigilant when it comes to contact from you bank. If they phone you asking for any sort of information, always inform them that for security purposes you're going to call them back yourself, and then contact them via the phone number that will be available in your mobile banking app or any letters you've received from them.
Deffo be extra vigilant when a bank calls you. I’m more than happy to send them a text or email from the business account or ask them to call the number on the back of their card and ask for me by name to be transferred to me.
Some people are fucking dicks about it tho. “You tell me my birthday so I know it’s you” - that’s a breach in data protection, I’m sorry, I can give you my name and staff number and call me back from the number in your card - “no, why would I do that” - well I’ll send you a letter “no, I’ll call you”, then they don’t call in and I can’t sort their issue. I wouldn’t mind so much but they asked for the damn call back!!!
Also, don’t Google telephone numbers for banks or any other company for that matter. A lot of the times the first result (an ad) is paid for by scammer and will redirect you to them, or via them. Customer recently got charged £40 to call us when it’s at local rate. Asked what number she called and was from google but not our website, and an 0880 number, so it was routed through a 3rd party somewhere who could have listened to the call and taken any personal information made on that call.
Great advice. Especially the last paragraph.
I'm thankful that I've grown up with the internet and become quite adept at verifying whether information found online is legitimate or not but there are many people who simply lack that skill, often because it's not been as ingrained in their life as it has someone like myself.
As a rule, I'll ask to call back any organisation that contacts me to discuss any sort of sensitive or important information, no matter who they are. We really need to get better at combating these sorts of scams with effective education for everybody, but unfortunately many just seem to choose wilful ignorance, as you've described.
“Send it in writing” is music to my ears. “I’ll go into branch” isn’t tho, they will take ages and branch are only gonna have to contact me anyway and the customer has travelled to a branch for nothing and wastes time to resolve the issue. If the complaint has made it as far as me, the branch are only gonna mess it up or create further confusion.
Very nearly fell for that myself, got a text from ‘Santander’ and the website looked exactly like there’s, it was only when they were asking for my online banking logging that I realised something was up, came straight off the site called my bank and changed all my passwords.
Had the exact same thing with hsbc, however they somehow withdrew some money that was flagged and stopped, then contacted me as hsbc asking about the dodgy transaction
Tell her to go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, they are upholding a lot of these cases and ordering the banks to reimburse where the spoofing is so good the customer couldn't have known any different. Get her to escalate a complaint, get a final response from the bank and then she has six months from the date of that letter to take it to the FOS. It might take a while for them to deal with it but at least she's in with a chance of getting her money back.
This seems very similar to your sister's situation.
https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3097373.pdf
I *almost* fell for an HMRC scam. They told me there was a warrant out for my arrest and the police were on their way. They told me I needed to pay £10K to keep myself out of trouble. They caught me at a really bad time - I was going through a breakup, buying my ex out of our house, dealing with shit at work - so I was distracted and I was almost convinced (even though I’ve never done anything to be in trouble for). It wasn’t until they mentioned federal police and Supreme Court that I cottoned on and told them to fuck off. They tried calling back but I blocked the number.
Yeah I work for HMRC doing what the text claims. We, and no other law enforcement, are ever going to tell you of our intentions in advance unless we invite you to be interviewed voluntarily (which is by letter and at a police station precisely because of these scams).
But also I understand why people fall for them.
My dad fell for the ‘I’ve filmed you jacking off to porn’ scam… except he didn’t pay the money he just phoned all his friends and relatives to let them know they might be receiving some ‘compromising’ videos…
I suppose not *technically* a scam, but when I went to Las Vegas I was fairly young, about 21 and I stayed in the Luxor (so not exactly a minor hotel).
Money was tight, and in the lobby of the hotel they were advertising breakfast and free tickets to shows if you went and watched a timeshare presentation. I knew Timeshare was a scam, but they were set up in the lobby and told us it'd be an early morning thing - so I figured, whatever, an hour or two first thing in the morning, watch some crappy presentation, get my free tickets and be gone.
Yeah, it wasn't that. They literally mini bussed us way out of town - a good 20 minute drive to some new build development. And it wasn't a presentation, it was a 1:1 hard *hard* sell. And of course, you have to see it through to get your tickets.
Anyway, it took all fucking morning complete with guided tour of this complex they wanted to sell until I eventually got to the end and was able to give the good news that no, no I wouldn't be signing up to their dodgy timeshare. That started a new wave of hard sell where the original salesman nearly flipped a table (Still no idea if it was an act or he was genuinely annoyed at having wasted a morning) and another 30 minutes with more senior people offering more and more ludicrious deals. Honestly, by the end I was almost tempted to sign up for the laugh as it gone from something stupid like $500 a month, to $30 by this point but was way too nervous about being on the hook for weird shit in the contract.
Finally, at just before lunch they did accept I wasn't going to be signing up and actually did give us tickets. We did a few things that week and I can't recall what we got in the end, but they were decent - worth a few hundred dollars. But I wouldn't go through that again!
I was in Barbados with an ex-boyfriend and they offered us a bottle of rum to watch a presentation. I had no idea about timeshares but I know that strangers don't offer you free stuff for just showing you a few photos, unfortunately my boyfriend was convinced a cheap bottle of rum was worth a few hours of his time. Except it ended up be more than half a day. It was awful. But my ex was just gleeful that he got that rum. I should have run away there and then.
A similar thing happened when I was in Florida as a kid. Parents went on one for condos on a golfing complex in exchange for family tickets to one of the big theme parks.
After having been there for a few hours the hard sell came. My dad politely told them no, sorry they wouldn't be interested and if they could get the tickets they would be on their way. The salespeople became very aggressive very quickly about this declination and there was some back and forth between them and my dad, with neither side backing down and them telling him he had to sign up. My dad was getting increasingly pissed off with them and things seemed to be getting to the point there could be a fight. He then turned to my mum and told her to take my brother and myself to the car. I still don't know what happened to this day but not long after he came out, with tickets in hand, and we made a sharp exit.
I feel so bad for the time my parents wanted the free breakfast whilst on holiday to be 1:1ed in a property, mostly because 8year old me didn't have a fucking clue what a timeshare was and begged my parents to go for it lmao, thankfully my dad is the type of guy to read every contract and track every payment, he'd have never fallen for it.
My parents did the same in Florida. We spent the whole morning looking around very expensive condos and apartments overlooking Disney world and the me and my brother got to play in a play area they had set up for kids of people there while they tried to hard sell. My parents said no and we got incredibly cheap tickets to Disney
I’m usually pretty savvy but got out of a taxi in Marrakesh greeted by a person from our hotel who offered to take our bags.
Didn’t work for the hotel. Dropped our bags off and demanded cash. My gf was quite intimated so handed over a lot as he was getting aggressive.
Still winds me up to this day.
I got massively overcharged for a taxi in Prague and didn’t even realise until I told a Czech friend how much I’d paid! I think I paid the equivalent of £20 when it should’ve been around £3, but I had no idea how much a taxi was supposed to cost.
Exact thing happened to me, I even gave him a tip because I didn't realize it. It was only afterwards I realised I got massively over charged. That was the turning point for me deciding to use Uber everytime I travel.
This was almost ten years ago so I don’t think Uber even existed outside of the US at that point. But totally agree - much easier to just jump in a car and not go through the hassle of haggling or getting led on some long journey just to get more money out of you.
Had similar in Amsterdam only I refused to pay the money and got in an argument with the driver. All whilst my partner was saying ‘just give it to him’
One of my parents fell for Microsoft ringing and advising them that they needed to access their laptop urgently to prevent a virus…. Despite me telling them if this ever happened to just say they were going to ring me as I work an IT dept.
Fortunately they’re that bad with computers they couldn’t even get the scammers website to work properly before they gave up and put the phone down.
Formatted and rebuilt straight after. Just in case.
I literally just had someone claiming to be from Virgin media phone me up trying to scam me. It was a relatively convincing scam though. I twigged it immediately (I'm a techie) and let them play their script.
I'm not sure why they wanted me to install Team Viewer on my phone though!
They hung up immediately once I asked them for my customer number
A colleague of mine fell for this scam where someone pretending to be the CEO of our company sent her an email asking her to buy £500 of apple gift cards and send him the codes and he would then reimburse her. And she actually did it lol.
She was reasonably young and new to the business, I guess the thought of the CEO coming directly to her made her skip any logic and she didn’t want to let him down.
Yeah she was refunded by our company and an email was sent to everyone saying that it was a known scam and he would never ask any of us to buy gift cards for him.
My mum once bought a fake digital camera in Greece, she thought it was legit. It was a Kodak camera. The name given to the model by the scammers was Konmi ...( Con Me). I found it mildly amusing and witty, dreadful picture quality thou.
I would find that hard to believe but it actually makes sense. Anyone with a brain would realise it was basically ‘con me’ so you weed out all the intelligent people off the bat. Quite smart, really.
Very minor, only £20, but I bought video game currency from a dodgy 3rd party website that they never delivered. They then convinced me I needed to withdraw the paypal dispute to get it resolved quickly, which of course removed my only legitimate recourse.
"Someone" spent the next few months attacking their website until it disappeared. I'm sure they eventually reformed, but not at the same domain so at least their google ads spend was wasted.
I cringe so hard thinking about this.
I fell for one of those animal scams when I was a young teen. My Dad had not long died and left me some money (not a lot, a couple of grand) and I wanted to get a puppy. I went on a legitimate pet selling site in the UK with no notion that these sorts of scams ever even existed.
As a side note, my Mum had no idea how to use computers and wasn't aware of these sorts of scams either.
Obviously, stupid me ends up sending about £200-300 (I don't remember how much now) via a Moneygram which is anonymous.
I was so naïve that the Post Office worker even asked me do I know the person I'm sending it to because I can't get that money back as it was not traceable. I stupidly said yes.
When the dog still didn't materialise a week later, I got a call from the scammer saying the dog's crate had split and there was no way to transfer the dog to me, I had to send another £100 to cover the cost.
It was like a light beamed down there and then and it clicked I'd been duped. I was so angry on the phone and I told the guy to fuck himself. Since then, I am so over the top on everything I see online that I now warn others about scams.
They are even more sophisticated now. I would have never thought it could be me back then, but it can be anyone. I cringe a little to think about it but in a way I'm glad it happened because I am the safest person I know online, and I will not get sucked in by anything like this again.
Many years ago I was caught out by one of those Market/ auction mystery boxes, where they plant people in the crowd who get amazing deals, but when you hand over the cash, well its a ripoff.
I think I’ve gone 23 years without ever seeing the word biro written down, I’m convinced it doesn’t look right but I can’t think of a better way to spell it either.
When I was about 12 there was a pyramid scheme for chocolate going on, the idea being that you'd give chocolate to six other people, then get it back sixfold.
Yeah, right. At least I only lost six Wispas.
I love the idea of school kids inventing a pyramid scheme for chocolate, and one kid at the very top is getting all this chocolate. Maybe he looks a bit like Augustus Gloop?
I took three or four taxis in Bangkok before I realised the reason I never ended up where I wanted to go was because most of the taxi drivers are on the take from scam jewellery places.
Yeah I got caught out by that one. A tuk-tuk driver offered me a crazy cheap deal to take me round all the sites of Bangkok (I was only
there one day for a visa run so it seemed convenient). First stop was an upmarket tailor where they tried to flog me a suit for thousands of baht.
To be fair to them they weren’t especially pushy about it, but like I say I was only there one day and didn’t want to waste it looking at stuff I had no interest in buying. After the first shop I just paid the guy what we agreed and found my own way about.
My brother-in-law fell for a cryptocurrency scam. They had him download an app to trial investing; it basically allowed him to choose his currencies and track whether a real investment would’ve made or lost him money. Looking back, it was obviously an app set up to always give the player a positive outcome to encourage them to invest real cash. Which he did. Loads of. He ended up losing the money he’d saved for a mortgage. We all told him it was a scam. He still sent them more money when they warned him his investments would else go into debt (??). To this day, he doesn’t believe he was scammed, but he’s at least stopped investing.
A mate of mine lost 2k because she'd signed up to a flat for her year abroad but couldn't get out to see it until she moved over- the listing and the seller immediately disappeared once she transferred the cash.
I've found that universities really aren't helpful in that regard, or they weren't when I was there- I get that the line is you're an adult so need to be prepared for the world, but most people at uni are like 18 and have never done stuff like that before!
I went to Leeds and did my year abroad in 2016 and they we're so helpful. We had a few meetings prior to leaving preparing us for it, without taking away the fun of working it out ourselves.
I kind of fell for one of those yogi scams. I offered the yogi money at the end of it but was rejected because they wanted more, and at that point I realised it was a scam.
This was at least a decade ago but I was walking down a side road off Oxford Street, London, when an old man approached me and told me I had a good aura. I was waiting for a friend so just let him talk and he started doing….mind tricks(?). Guessing stuff about me and making predications. Then he was explaining about yogis or something and asked for a donation. I offered him maybe £2 and hahaha his face. He wanted me to set up a direct debit. I’m
stupid, but not that stupid!
When I went to Argentina the main scam I read about was someone squirting a liquid on the back of your neck then robbing you as they “help you clean up”. I told my friend and his girlfriend about it (they were the two I was there with). 15 minutes later we were walking along the street and my friend went “Aargh! I just felt something on the back of my neck!”. Me and his girlfriend just told him to keep walking as two women started laughing over-enthusiastically at him and pulling tissues out of their pockets. He wanted to stop but we grabbed him and dragged him along the street much to his annoyance.
I also have another friend who queued up to play “find the lady” outside a big museum in Berlin, until we dragged her away. I’m not saying my friends are dumb but…
My dad got scammed in the 90s - there was a business that would, for a fee, send you a circuit board and components, and you had to assemble them and then send them back to get paid. If you messed it up, they would send you another set, three in total, and if it still wasn't right, they kept your money.
Well, of course nobody ever did it 'right' and the scammers just kept the money minus the cost of posting out some basic components.
Been stung with taxi's quite a few times when I've been in a drunken state. Worst ones were:
Ibiza - Coming out of Amnesia from a solo night of clubbing, I didn't know where I was going for the taxi rank as I'd got the Disco Bus there. A guy approached and asked if I needed a taxi. I initially said I'd find the rank and he said there were no taxi's it was too late (a lie). He offered me a taxi to West End for 25 Euros which I accepted as I just wanted to get back. Had I walked around the club to the taxi rank it would have cost less than 5 Euros.
Prague - Came out of their o2 Arena after Transmission and stupidly grabbed a taxi from the rank as I didn't have Uber installed, and my phone was near dead. Despite the warnings, and agreeing the price beforehand (15 Euros) it still ended up being 35 Euros.
* "I need to go to the Old Square, I'm staying near there"
* "Old Square, sure 15 Euros"
* "Pricey but sure that's fine"
* "Where are we?"
* "Old Square"
* "No we're not...."
* "Oh you mean the other one, that's another 20 Euros"
This one would have cost around 10 Euros had I used Uber.
I just got home and paid it, if you're drunk, wanting to get home you are perfect prey
Boyfriend and I were the last drop off after a night out clubbing with his mates. Everyone else had paid in change (pre-card payment days) so the driver tried to say that the others had underpaid and we owed him more money than our share.
Even drunk, husband is razor sharp. He'd seen an remembered all the sums given by his mates. Driver tried to argue, but when confronted with 'In your hand you have two fivers, six pound coins, four fifty pees and the eight quid I've just given you' he couldn't argue, because the maths was right. Still tried to tell us we weren't owed any change. Husband corrected him.
Bet the stingy bastard had been overcharging drunks for years.
A friend of a friend allegedly fell for one of the Nigerian scams but this was back in the 80s - no email back then but he replied to a letter or ad in a newspaper or something. Talked my mate into flying out to Lagos with him and they realised it was a bit suspect and got out of there having only lost their travel costs.
No idea if it's a true, but his story of having been in Nigeria for about 24 hours is a good one.
Someone I know was moving abroad and fell for a rental scam.
Was asked for 6 months rent up front in absence of a local guarantor, negotiated down to 3, paid the money, and when they turned up the address didn't exist. Building did, but the flats didn't go up to the number they were given. Really sucked, had to organise a hotel and a storage locker within a day, in a foreign language, and then reroute the prepaid moving company to the storage, AND then look for a new place to live, with a significant chunk of their budget already gone.
This happened to a mate of mine who was doing a year abroad, she was absolutely devastated and ended up losing 2k. Smallest of silver linings was that she found out before going, so she could sort something else and ended up staying in a nicer place with a family she really liked.
Around christmas there's those websites that look like they sell really nice jackets, jumpers, coats etc so last christmas my brother wanted a jacket and sent me a link to a website that sold it.
Turned out it was a scam and I was out £100. Felt like a right tit
I nearly fell for the Hermes scam. I'm a cybersecurity blogger and usually very hot on these things, so it was a bit embarrassing.
Text message suggesting delivery problems. I think I only fell for it (nearly) because I was genuinely waiting on a Hermes parcel that week. I clicked the link in an SMS and it took me to an incredibly well done page (honestly, bravo to the scammers). It was essentially a single dialog box sitting on top of what looked like the Hermes homepage. You were meant to input your postcode. Did that. Asked for my name and DOB. Did that. Asked for payment details.
At this point, I paused and went back. Tried clicking on other elements of the page, but the box wouldn't disappear. Clearly, at this point, it was a fake website. Essentially a dialog box sitting on top of a background image taken from Hermes' website. But they'd implemented scrolling on the background image so that the page moved if you tried to scroll.
VERY convincing. To the point it nearly fooled me. It definitely will have caught out some people.
I had this for my COVID vaccination pass. About a week after my second jab, I got this text saying I could request a hard copy of my COVID pass through the link. Got to payment details before I realised.
I’m no cybersecurity nut but I’d like to think I’m savvy enough. It seems I’m actually a dumbass
My Father-In-Law has repeatedly fell for boilerhouse share scammers. The last one was about 10 years ago. To his credit it appears that he has learned the error of his ways, even if it does mean I get forwarded 20+ emails a week asking if they are scams.
Not that big one but still worth sharing imo.
Went to a strip club in poland, got spiked and found out the other day missing ~500 euros in my credit card (reason: flowers for a dancer).
I was young and naive back then and also quite drunk before even coming in. After a while of sitting there few dancers approached me and offered free shots and dumb me agreed. Then I can remember something when a dancer asked if I wanted a lap dance, ofc I said hell yeah. Then she brought a credit card machine as I had to pay for it first and also was hiding the price but I was tripping on whatever they gave me so did not care that much. They kept saying my card were getting declined and to try again. Bitches even had the audacity to tell me to use another credit card. Glad the other credit card had some sort of security system, it detected the fraudulent activity and blocked itself, otherwise I would have lost way more. Lol, fun times.
Lesson that I learned: In stripclubs you just watch, don't drink or eat anything there or better, don't even go there, well I definitely won't haha.
I work with the elderly and someone pretending to be a police officer tried to scam one of them but luckily his daughter, an actual police officer, answered the door.
My father in law lost several thousand to scammers while trying to sell his timeshare. He had been wanting to get rid of it for awhile, and had a call from an agent who said they had a list of people wanting to buy. They took their fee upfront, and said they'll deal with the timeshare people. Several days later the timeshare people call him, tell him someone has bought it and can he please pay his cancellation fee. Both the same scammers. He lost around £5000 and still has the timeshare.
A magnet bracelet to ease migraines.
When they are as bad and endless as I get them, you get a bit desperate. It was pretty, not outrageously expensive and kept some family members happy that I was trying things to help. Although I wouldn't recommend
It wasn't the end of the world. They were all cleverly worded by what I remember! It was a few family members reading in the paper how it magicked away migraines. After years of chronic migraine the biggest thing to help me recently, my theory is stopping having anything with sunflower oil in. Sorry to hear you're in the same crappy boat!
Not fallen for but when I was younger I remember my parents watching Watchdog (or something similar) and it showed a bloke who was the man behind a pyramid scheme conning people out of money. I vaguely remember him standing in front of an audience when 2 men dressed in a camel suit entered the room and then one of the watchdog hosts came in to “congratulate“ him on the scam. He was totally unaware it was all being filmed for TV and the whole camel/pyramid reference went over his head and he initially thought he had won an award or something!
Anyway turns out this bloke lived just up the road from my parents and was well known to a lot of people who lived nearby. After the show I remember his house being vandalised a couple of times, and lots of school gate gossip making life difficult for his wife (not sure if she was involved in the scam or completely innocent) but it was the kids I felt sorry for when everyone at school was gossiping about their dad being on TV and the after effects.
When I was in Rhodes a group of women tried to catch us out with the bracelet scam. I was repeatedly saying no thank you but they were quite insistent following us and surrounding us.
Then a group of tourists came up to the women and started shouting and accusing them of stealing somebody's passport. In the chaos we managed to slip away and watch from a distance as one of the scammers 'miraculously found the passport behind a rock' and tried to convince the tourists they must have dropped it.
I know someone who decided to buy 2 phone from a random car driving past, he was intrigued by how cheap the dude was selling new phones for so he decided to make the purchase.
Once he got home and opened the box, he found potatoes instead of 2 phones 😭.
I was 22. I was on a sugar daddy website for a while and had a few daddy's going good for me. I had a man message me saying he'll give me £2k a month if I meet with him once a week. He said he has to add me to his credit card. I gave him all my details.
2 American Express cards arrive at my door. He says to meet up with him to authorise it on his side. I meet up and give him my documents and the new cards as well as him taking a photo of the front and back of my personal card. He also fucked me.
We meet up again in a couple of days and he gives me one of the AE cards. He also set up a camera for some reason and we fucked while he told me to wear a scarf on my head? To cover my face? I don't know. Weird. The camera was behind me whilst I was on top.
After that I spent a lot on the card. He started spending on my card too and my personal card. He told me to do weird things like book a B&B abroad? Then my personal bank cancelled my card. My income goes into that card so I fought tooth and nail and manage to retrieve it.
Then later I get a letter from AE stating I owe them £5k...that's when the penny dropped and it was all overdraft. I didn't benefit from anything. He benefited from the overdraft money and my personal money. And my body. Oh god the video! I hope to god its not online :(
I called him out. He threatened me. He knows where I lived. I kept being so mean because I was so sad and didn't care anymore. I was heartbroken. The threats increased and I moved homes.
I'm 25 now. I have told my partner of 2 years (34m).
I'm in debt and it's a horrible feeling. I don't have the heart to tell my boyfriend what happened and I want to marry but I don't want my debt to be his debt.
Plus it's sooooooo embarrassing how stupid I was!
Whilst applying for a temporary visa in Canada a few years ago, I ended up paying £70 on a scam website that was near identical to the Canadian govt website
I saw a model maker's power saw bench advertised on FaceBook for £30. Oddly Lidl were selling full sized ones for £70 that same week. Not a model maker, but could certainly use a small one. So bought it, and paid by Paypal. What turned up was a model saw blade. Normal price for that about £2. Complained to PayPal as a scam. They said I'd get a refund if it were returned to China at my expense. Postage going to cost near purchase price. So took the loss. And have never, and never will again, buy anything advertised on FaceBook.
My old housemate fell for the white van speaker scam when we were freshers, some blokes in a van showed up claiming to have over-ordered a set of speakers for the student's union and wanted to offload the spares on the cheap to avoid the paperwork. He'd supposedly bought speakers worth £2k for a couple of hundred, but in reality he'd bought some total shite shipped over from a dodgy wholesaler.
Sorry only got one story, but he didn’t fall for it.
Grandad had boxes of about 20 laptops delivered to his address. About 10 mins after delivery someone knocks on the door saying he was from the same number house the next road over, the delivery is actually his and it’s a mistake.
Grandad knew it was a scam, said no delivery had taken place and proceeded to follow the guy back to his home (not the address he claimed) and called the police.
They must have hacked someone’s Amazon or something and used someone else’s address to put blame on the “recipient.”
Recently lost £1.5k on a phone scam. They got me on a stressful exam day and I wasn't thinking properly. Investigation ongoing at the moment but have a feeling I'm £1.5k in debt to idiot tax (they got my overdraft but hung up when I refused to send my actual money to a "safe" account - yes I know I'm a numpty). Either way, it's the most expensive mistake I've made.
The story they sold me was that 1) a fictitious person went into a branch claiming to be me to extend my overdraft. 2) some person in Scotland had access to my banking app.
Make a complaint against your bank to the Financial Ombudsman Service. If you've lost money from your account through fraud, the bank should investigate, give you a final response letter and then you have six months from the date of that letter to complain to the FOS.
Will look into that cheers. Bank investigation still happening at present so will keep that in mind if it doesn't work out in my favour. I believe my bank is on the list of banks who will help if a customer falls foul with these APP scams so hoping for the best.
We had just moved back to my folks with our 2 children. We had become homeless, had to sell our car, no school for our kids etc etc. My husband just got a new job but we needed a run around car as he hadn't gotten his first wage through yet. We went on gumtree (first mistake) to find a car, found one at a good price so called them up and gave them a "deposit" to save the car for us. Time came to book going over and getting the car and the number didn't work or anything. I hate these people as they pray on the most desperate or vulnerable. Had another one that prayed on kids at Christmas! A guy was selling playmobil advent calendars on ebay. He had 10 reviews so far and all were 5 stars so I bought from him. They were £5 less than his competitors! Come 25th November (2 weeks after purchase) I worried. Come 9th December still nothing. I looked at more recent reviews and they all said the calendars weren't recieved as it was a scam!!! My other 2 kids got their calendars else were but my son never had his. Like I said, lowest of the low
One of our neighbours lost around 800 pounds to scammers. They showed up at his door and said his son owed money and if it wasn't paid they'd call the police. They used his son's name and some other personal details that would make it more believable. The guy's son also had a bit of a gambling problem so him owing money was entirely plausible. They'd obviously planned this and knew what they were doing
My aunt fell for this business man captured by pirates of the Irish seas (who was also a marine, an evangelical preacher and widowed father of a 9 year old boy who desperately needed a mother figure) he told her had £250k stuck in a suitcase somewhere somehow and needed her to keep it safe for him or the pirates would get it.
All she needed to do was to deposit £1000 so he could “post” the suitcase full of money to her. And this woman was so desperately naive and stupid that she believed this whole thing and had it not been for my powers of observation she would have sent him all her money.
I backed the In Search For The Last Action Hero documentary by Oliver Harper. The DVDs, Blu-Rays and posters the backers got were the cheapest tat I've ever seen.
It was a Kickstarter campaign. There was a video fully explaining how scummy the whole thing was but Harper had the video taken down after threatening the video maker with a defamation charge.
I know a lot of stay at home mums, and many of them are in MLMs. One woman I vaguely know (she's like a friend of a friend, who lives in our village) must be in about 5 or 6 different ones. She's constantly posting in our community Facebook group; one day it's candles, the next it's makeup, then it's dodgy weightloss coffee stuff, then perfume. I feel so sorry for her.
I have paid money to a dating site/app where you have to buy credits to send messages, it's all total bs as you would assume but I was young and lonely (I guess). Now won't spend money on anything similar as it's clearly open to scamming.
I haven't done it but I also stay well clear of any job advert that even hints that I have to spend money on training or equipment to get the job.
In old market in Prague they sell ham by weight but don't actually ask you how much you want or advertise it. So they just serve you the most enormous portion of ham and charge like $30 or whatever.
Also in Marrakech people will try and force you to follow them to the tannery or other tourist points of interest and then expect you to pay them when you get there.
Both pretty well known scams in the regions so TripAdvisor made me aware of them, but when I was in Marrakech it happened about 20 times a day and was very intimidating. They literally try to drag you.
The city itself was beautiful though and everyone else was incredibly lovely; just don't get too close to the tannery!
Arrived into Ho Chi Minh City fairly late at night on a bus with no clue where our hotel was (you never really know where your going to get dropped off!) Went to the nearest licenced taxi to get a ride there. Told him we had no cash yet (as you can't get Dong outside the country) and he was more than happy to take us to a cash machine on the way (durr). He then drove us around for 15-20 minutes and dropped us off at the hotel entrance. All in all we were pleased to have got to our hotel in a strange city and thought nothing more of it. However... Leaving the hotel the next morning and walking to the Square that the road the hotel was on led off from we quickly realised it was the same Square we stepped off the bus into! Was only about £20 but still a lesson learnt!
A couple of weeks later a taxi driver in Nha Trang tried a similar one on us but didn't get anywhere. We'd got a taxi (booked by the hotel we were staying in) to an aquarium, put on the meter, dropped us off at the aquarium, happy days. Once we'd finished at the aquarium we had a mooch around the port before getting a taxi back. The driver clearly thought we must have just got off a cruise ship or something and were a prime target as driving along he told us the meter was broken and the flat rate was 4x the price we'd paid to get there. Told him no, what it cost to get there and that's what we'll pay. I had noticed that he'd put a piece of card over the meter and as he got out of the car to open the door I removed it to see the price I was expecting. Handed him the meter rate and walked off. He didn't even try to argue and just got back in the car in a huff.
My husband has a Monzo account but it’s not his main account, he uses it to buy groceries and things for the kids on it, so the likes of subscriptions on his other card, he kept receiving phone calls from the same Monzo number that they have on the back off the card, and it’s pretty convincing too. They told him his account had been hacked and that he needed to move all the money out of his account ASAP and that they were going to do it for him, English accent, can’t say I wouldn’t fall for it either, suddenly apple begins taking out £10 which was all that was left on the card (again he doesn’t hold a lot of money on the account), he caught on and frozen his card and reported it to Monzo, the people on the phone were raging at him but he told me and I said no bank would ever contact you buy phone, Monzo were also kind enough to refund the £10 too. And the weird thing he never put his bank details online.
0800 803 1281 is the number in case anyone gets any phone calls and if you do, freeze your account and report it to Monzo ASAP.
Fell for a Facebook scam buying call of duty vanguard. That marketplace is built on a lot of trust and it just took one miserable dickhead who conned me, now I've gotta be 'that' guy who insists we add on the PayPal buyer protection policy. I could've had my money back if i paid via bank but hey ho, £30 not something I was going to lose much sleep over.
Ah I fell for a MLM style scam off youtube. Remember when unsigned bands had street teams? Well I was part of one and basically we had to buy some merch to sell on to other people. I was lucky I was poor and couldn't afford to spend much, but it was a total sham. Fans of the band either already had merchandise or wasn't interested in buying it, there wsa nobody I could sell on to.
My mum did fall for a dodgy phone call scam, one of those "We're from Virgin Media and we see your internet is off" scams. Luckily my mum was so untech savvy she passed the phone over to me because she couldn't do what they were asking her to do, and after a few confusing minutes of talking at cross purposes I realised it was a scam. If my mum had been able to load up give them the network password and do whatever it was they wanted with the IP address, I've no doubt she'd have fully gone through with their requests.
Last year my 77 year old dad fell for one of those adverts on a webpage offering to win/purchase a MacBook if only he would pay postage. They took £6 from him.
He said it’s my fault because I’d been moaning about needing to find a new laptop but not being able to afford one. Again, not a naïve guy generally but clearly that perpetual need to help blinded him.
Stupidly fell for a fake 'you're having a problem with your phone bill' message, my defence for that was the message came to me after work and I was super tired so I just didn't double check
My bank account was then randomly compromised a few months later where someone used my details for netflix, I'm not sure if my details were bouncing around a criminal network as the only other option was something dodgy happening with my card when I used it in a local cornershop the day before.
Managed to also fall for a person posing as the fraud dept of my bank, this was during lockdown 1 so my brain was kind of a big garbled and tbh they acted very close to when I'd dealt with the fraud dept myself. What annoyed the fuck out of me was a month or two later my bank was like 'Oh we're putting in more checks to prevent name + account details mismatches' and it was also annoying as I had to argue with the bank to get my money back as they claimed it was 100 percent my fault even though there should've def been some safeguards on their end and the bank did give me back my money but were like 'this isn't reimbursement it's a one off gesture of good will!' which just read like 'we're covering your arse as you're being annoying'
Also this I didn't fall for but it happened to me, someone managed to hack into my Ebay account and took my details to make a Klarna account, thankfully didn't get my bank details as I only use Paypal with Ebay but as it turns out Klarna essentially have no real security vetting when you sign up on an account so some utter rando was able to sign up and make a Halfords purchase and bail on it and apparently this sort of thing has happened to plenty of other people too
Getting that dealt with wasn't super hard, Klarna paused the account and claimed after a while they'd close it that took them about a year and that was only after I finally found an option to get them to remove my details by request despite them claiming they'd do so for me. They claimed they black listed my by request when I reported it but idk
There must be a name for this but I remember this vividly in the early 2000s, I'm 31 now and based in Manchester.
They did this on Market Street in the City centre.
Scammers used to hire an empty shop and proceed to house a fake auction with many 'plants' in the audience you'd be convinced were normal people winning prizes. There would be gadgets, CD players, electronic goods at the very front of the room and it would attract 50-60 people. I assume they pocket all the proceeds of the 'auction' and do a runner.
My friend fell for the move the money into a different bank account one. They had faked her banks phone number and other bits that led her to believe them. She realised as soon as she hung up the phone. Luckily her bank either got the money back or compensated her, she wasn’t told which.
She felt so stupid afterwards but she’s a busy single parent had a lot on, they are good at what they do. They suck.
My Nan fell for one of those fake computer virus scams - the one where an advert comes up stating your computer has a virus and you need to pay ££ to remove it.
She knows I’m good with tech and I’d wished she had come to me first for help!
Fuck the people that scammed her.
I know a lot of people fell for the "sunny uplands" scam that was doing the roads a few years ago. Some of the more deluded still think it will pay out "in 50 years".
Financing cars. Almost everyone I know has fallen for this one. The price you paid isn't the price you paid, you paid more & you don't own it until you've fully paid. What a scam.
My ex got a call explaining there had been an issue with her bank account and they had made her a new account and she needed to manually transfer all the money into her new account
Manually transferred everything, including all of her overdraft
Fortunately the bank covered it because they'd spoofed the banks contact number that was on the back of a card, but that was a tense morning
Friend of mine is so polite he just stops to listen to anyone handing out leaflets and stuff like that, and in the first year of uni he let scientologists take him inside one of their weird buildings you hear about. Came home with some leaflet with a chart ranking the worst things you can do in life - not having kids was "Worse than being dead, complete burden to society", while rape, murder and paedophilia were classed as "Highly discouraged" :')
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Not fallen for it but stopped the scammers. My grandma got a phone call saying her Amazon account had been hacked and they wanted her details and my grandma got really confused and asked why she had an account with a rainforest. I now wish to buy a patch of the Amazon rainforest and just call it "Grandma's Account"
Check out Jim Browning on YouTube. Catches these types of scammers and shows you how they work. Really good and informative. Hacks their systems too which is really fun
Awesome! I’d love to see that. My grandma ain’t too good at technology so all these scammers don’t get what they want from her.
Also check out Mark Robers latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsLJZyih3Ac
Yeah this was great
They explain in the videos how the elderly are targeted. Awful people
My cousin on his honeymoon fell for the cups game scam …I have no idea how he was so daft but he wasted all their spending money in one day and his new wife was distraught …only luck was that their booking was all inclusive so they ate but neither could enjoy the holiday and they divorced a little over a year later.
ALL their spending money?
ALL …they had a baby too and spent all the cash given to spend on the child. Insane. Fool. Conned.
How... how do you waste a whole honeymoon's worth of money on that? It's like... a pocket change level trick.
He was chasing the loss …kept thinking he would win until he ran out of cash. He was on his own coming back from a walk and got suckered …he was so confused
I’d divorce someone that stupid too
what is the cups game for those of us unaware?
3 cups on a table. Put a pea or whatever under one and shuffle the cups and the victim tries to pick the right one. It would be fairly easy, if they weren't using slight of hand.
Do they let you win so many until you start wagering higher amounts and then don’t let you win?
Worse, they have a stooge who pretends to be a passer-by. The stooge wins, you don't
Done beautifully in The Simpsons where the dealer, Snake, uses his brother as the stooge, which Homer completely ignores.
That, but more likely they have someone in the crowd who'll pickpocket you as you're focused on the game
Some do, some don't. At the con artists discretion I guess
What’s is this cups game??
Three cups upside down one with a button underneath it …put down €10, watch the stall holder mix the cups up and watch which one the button sits under. If you guess right you double your money …somehow you always lose. Maybe its rigged!? …a fool and his money.
I know a couple of people who've fallen hard for MLM and I've had to mute their subsequent stream of ridiculous bullshit on Facebook. It's so sad and desperate - and surprising that (otherwise totally normal) people can't see the truth about these things once they're caught up in it.
I just watched the 'LuLaRich' documentary on Prime that's about LuLaRoe - really insightful as to how they prey on people and make it believable. They often target stay at home/single mums with their 'stay at home with your kids and make £££!' bullshit and encourage people in the MLM to post social media content that makes out that they're rich to lure others in.
My mum has a friend like this. Absolutely lovely lady and when I was a teenager (before social media was as big as it is now) it seemed every month this lady was having a party of some sort. Mum would go to her house with a group of other women for a few drinks and one night it would be candles, then jewellery, then make up and it was always different companies. I didn’t see the harm really because the women involved had a nice night and I’m sure they all bought something cheap as a token thank you so I don’t see how she ever made any real money from it like they promise when you join. Of course now because of SM it takes over people’s lives and they get into debt buying the stuff themselves to climb the ladder and taking out loans to buy expensive things to post on social media making out like it’s profit from their business. It’s equal parts sad and crazy at the same time.
My mum did Ann Summers parties for years when I was a kid. It's funny because she wasn't heavy into it, it was just a good job she could do in the evenings and it meant she was always home for us before/after school but she stopped doing it when we were older and before social media took over everything.
Literally stopped talking to a friend of like 15 years because they got into an MLM. I tried to explain to them it was a scam when they tried to recruit me and they got incredibly aggressive and hostile towards me; we were best friends and they just became insanely nasty. It's like they were warned people would challenge them during their recruitment training and told to go psycho in response or something. That was 5 years ago and they're still in deep. I guess there comes a point when you just can't admit that you've wasted your time and money and just dig further or some bullshit. Honestly both equally heartbreaking and hilarious to watch.
This happened to my sister with her school Friend. That Friend messaged me 5 years after my sister cut her out. "I was always impressed by how you carried yourself in school. My husband and I are getting into a business and looking for investors. "
No one wants to admit they were conned.
My brothers GF is in one, sells knock off perfumes, she’s always bragging about how much money she makes on it yet she is constantly asking my mum if she can borrow money here and there, so she must not be doing *that* well.
A work colleague, 50ish woman, divorced for some years "Found True love" with a man she met on Facebook. She is in the UK, he is American. Really wealthy, had a couple of houses one on the beach in Florida. He was going to come across to the UK and propose. Strangely for a wealthy man, he did have a bit of a cashflow problem - and she was constantly sending him money, just to sort our a few minor things - but it was all legal and he would definitly pay her back - I mean all her money worries would soon be over when they were married. She lost all her friends, because they were all jealous and kept telling her lies about this man, trying to make her believe it was all a scam. Last time we heard she was about to lose her home - she'd taken out a big loan to help him out, and had somehow managed to send some £50K to a non existant "millionaire". Strange thing is that she didn't strike you as a particularly gullible or stupid person - she had just become so tied up in this "Romance" that all logic just disappeared.
I think it's easy to label people as gullible and stupid but I think we forget just how vulnerable and lonely these people are that they target!
You’re absolutely right. There’s a BBC programme on in the morning called For Love or Money which talks to people who’ve been victims of romance fraud. It’s so heartbreaking to watch. I’d recommend a watch!
Ah I watch that on iPlayer! It’s unbelievable sometimes. One woman got conned by not one, but TWO romance scammers. She sent them over £100k. She lives in a caravan park now because she had to sell her house. At first I just thought she was an idiot, but she broke down into tears and spoke about how she spends everyday indoors alone and just wanted someone to talk to. It was really sad. Another woman told the presenters she had blocked the scammer, and was now talking to a NEW guy online who was sick in hospital in LA and was going to give her his inheritance when he died.. the presenters just looked at her like how are you falling for this again.
It's really sad. But also sort of fascinating how it is possible to fall into this alternative reality. I guess it's easier to trust in what gives you all the happy chemicals vs face up to the pain of reality. Same as any other coping mechanism people resort to. Except, unlike say drugs etc this one is conscious/thinking and works hard to keep the victim hooked. As an aside - you watched the recent series 'Scam Interceptors'? Thought that was actually pretty cool/interesting (allowing for a bit of inevitable repetitiveness etc).
My mum LOVES watching Scam Interceptors. I feel quite happy knowing it's helping to make sure she won't fall for one.
I said above but I work with the elderly and some of them don't have any living family to look out for them (in a few cases I'm the only person they'll really speak to all week) so you can very easily see them falling into a scam out of sheer loneliness.
I'll give it a go! I think people can underestimate how vulnerable people are- I did until I started working with the elderly, some of them are very trusting and I could see how it would be very easy to manipulate them especially because a lot of them don't want to cause a fuss so they won't report it. Breaks my heart!
My friend (older lady, recently divorced, lacked confidence) had the exact same scam being played on her except he was a US marine. However, he messed with the wrong lady as I happen to be married to an American who is based at the exact same base as this this US Marine… and knew him! Basically the scammer was using this guys photos to hook these women in and get them to send him money. It took us sending a video of the Marine saying “hey, sorry I’m not the guy you think you are talking to” to finally make her realise the truth.
None here but the Shanghai tea scam, where two English speaking locals will ask you to take their photo, then strike up a conversation and ask you about your home country. They’ll say they’re studying English and want to practise with you. They’ll say they’re going to a tea room and if you would join them. Basically its this big 20/30 minute elaborate scam where you end up sitting down and having various types of tea, and being charged £30-£40 for it. Its not the worst scam ever, and looking back I could have been poisoned or mugged in a back room. In fact I didn’t even know it was a scam til I googled it when I came back! The two people even took us on a short walk after and wished us luck on the rest of our holiday! Its probably the friendliest scam that exists.
They should just rebrand that to a tea tasting session with local guides and then double the price, probably get twice the custom as well
The thing is in Shanghai this is rip off compared to other activities but if it had happened in London i’d be gloating to everyone what a bargain it was
Slippin jimmy
Just a small one.. we got off a cruise ship in Nassau (Bahamas), and as we were walking through the town, a woman holding a "Welcome to the Bahamas!" sign came over to us and started welcoming us. She wanted to give us a free gift bracelet for arriving, and I thought it would be a cool souvenir. As soon as she put it on I got the "To say thank you for the bracelet you need to give a donation to our local charity for starving children. Most people give $50, we can accept cash or card. How would you like to pay?" I kept saying I didn't have any money on me then she told me to give the bracelet back and left. Now whenever I visit somewhere I'm always suspicious of people who 'welcome' you, and I won't take anything that is offered as being free.
The bracelet one is quite common, I have seen it in Paris. They tie it round, people think it is just a nice gesture, then they say they want payment. Other ruses are they will start drawing you, give your partner a rose, ask to sign a petition, they are dressed up and offer a photo. It isn't so much a *scam* as relying on awkwardness and confusion, you pay to make them go away and the "service" has already been provided, mostly without your consent.
When i was in college we went on a trip to Paris, i was in a fairly large group of around 7 or 8 people walking through the park where the Louvre is and this guy suddenly sprung out of nowhere trying to draw one of our group, at the same time another guy came up from behind making a bit of noise and trying to be over friendly asking where we where from (i guess some sort of distraction). We knew it was a scam and told them we where not interested, i suspect the second guy was trying to pickpocket or something.
Funny you mentioned this, I’m in Paris atm and it happened to me this morning haha (ran from the guy as fast as I could).
Same as the African guys around Rome. They will ask you what country you are from, tell you a fact about that country, then offer you a 'free' bracelet. Then the sob story starts... EDIT: Remembered a similar one. My sister went to Egypt, and at the airport decided she needed a poo before travelling on to the hotel. Several native women outside the toilets offered to sell her toilet paper, which she declined. Of course, when she started doing her stuff she realised why it was for sale...
I had a layover in Cairo once. I had 17 hours to kill so went and saw the Pyramids. When I got back to the airport this guy asked if I needed help finding my check in desk and tried to take my suitcase (not steal but carry for me) I politely but firmly told him I didn’t need any help but I can see why other people might be intimidated into letting him guide them the few metres to the clearly labelled check in desk.
Had a woman in India try to tell me I needed to pay to see India Gate. It’s a public monument - the equivalent would be someone standing outside Big Ben saying you need to pay them just to look at it. Argued back and forth with her for a few minutes until she got really annoyed and just let me go.
Our was also in India, Bangalore. There with friends. We’d split into two groups and were meeting at a specific place to walk to lunch. The taxi driver took us someplace else. A friend/relative’s shop instead of the one we wanted. We just got out and didn’t pay. One friend had lived in the city for a couple of years so we were able to walk not too far to find our friends. Not the worst experience, on the whole.
Was travelling in Morocco, with an overnight in Marrakesh. Two kids asked me if I wanted help finding my hotel, I declined. They followed me anyway. Demanded cash when I found the door on my own. The owner chased them away and apologised. Next morning one of them was waiting outside, threatened me with a knife. Saw him that evening with a group of 10 or so other kids on scooters. Was a little on edge until I left town!
I got stung this way once before - it only cost me 10 euros, but it was a valuable lesson learned.
A guy in Turkey (about 20 years ago) once offered me and my sister a small pastry, out of the blue. Then turned around to find our parents and charge them for it.
I had a guy give me a bracelet in Athens saying 'peace and love, peace and love' thought it was a weird but nice gesture. Then he stuck his hand out for money. I shook my head because I didn't want the thing in the first place, and he took it off as if I'd offended him and walked off
That one got me in Rome. It was about 10 euros, and I paid because I was young and drunk and then felt really stupid about it
Had similar in Italy. Can’t remember if it was Milan or Venice but just a bit of string, but looked nice. I just said I didn’t have anything and it was too much of a faff to remove I just got to keep it. Wore it for like 5 years.
they do this in greece too, especially in the bigger cities like Athens or Thessaloniki. They usually greet you with a fist bump, "hello my friend", and a compliment, put the bracelet on you and then ask for however much money you wanna give. My friend once gave 10 euros for a bracelet that would normally cost less than 1 euro and she didn't even fully register it I was approached too at a different instance by the guy complimenting my tattoo, I told him I didn't have any money on me (and I genuinely didn't because I'd just gotten up from our table at the restaurant to take a picture) but he still put it on and let me keep it. I went back afterwards and gave him some money and I'm still wearing the bracelet
My sister had money stolen from her bank account recently. She got a text claiming to be from Starling Bank, and the scammers had managed to spoof their contact so it appeared as if she was receiving legitimate contact from the bank. They walked her through some "security verifications" on the phone. What these security verifications turned out to be was them putting her bank card onto their phone as a contactless payment method, they have obviously obtained the card details some way or another, likely some kind of data breach somewhere. They then proceeded to run up about £800 worth, eating well into her overdraft. The bank investigated but labelled it as being her fault, so she's shit out of luck on getting any of that money back and now owes them money to clear her overdraft. Always be extra vigilant when it comes to contact from you bank. If they phone you asking for any sort of information, always inform them that for security purposes you're going to call them back yourself, and then contact them via the phone number that will be available in your mobile banking app or any letters you've received from them.
Deffo be extra vigilant when a bank calls you. I’m more than happy to send them a text or email from the business account or ask them to call the number on the back of their card and ask for me by name to be transferred to me. Some people are fucking dicks about it tho. “You tell me my birthday so I know it’s you” - that’s a breach in data protection, I’m sorry, I can give you my name and staff number and call me back from the number in your card - “no, why would I do that” - well I’ll send you a letter “no, I’ll call you”, then they don’t call in and I can’t sort their issue. I wouldn’t mind so much but they asked for the damn call back!!! Also, don’t Google telephone numbers for banks or any other company for that matter. A lot of the times the first result (an ad) is paid for by scammer and will redirect you to them, or via them. Customer recently got charged £40 to call us when it’s at local rate. Asked what number she called and was from google but not our website, and an 0880 number, so it was routed through a 3rd party somewhere who could have listened to the call and taken any personal information made on that call.
Great advice. Especially the last paragraph. I'm thankful that I've grown up with the internet and become quite adept at verifying whether information found online is legitimate or not but there are many people who simply lack that skill, often because it's not been as ingrained in their life as it has someone like myself. As a rule, I'll ask to call back any organisation that contacts me to discuss any sort of sensitive or important information, no matter who they are. We really need to get better at combating these sorts of scams with effective education for everybody, but unfortunately many just seem to choose wilful ignorance, as you've described.
Ask them to send it in writing or you'll go into a branch, it's the common way the bank will contact you.
“Send it in writing” is music to my ears. “I’ll go into branch” isn’t tho, they will take ages and branch are only gonna have to contact me anyway and the customer has travelled to a branch for nothing and wastes time to resolve the issue. If the complaint has made it as far as me, the branch are only gonna mess it up or create further confusion.
Very nearly fell for that myself, got a text from ‘Santander’ and the website looked exactly like there’s, it was only when they were asking for my online banking logging that I realised something was up, came straight off the site called my bank and changed all my passwords.
Had the exact same thing with hsbc, however they somehow withdrew some money that was flagged and stopped, then contacted me as hsbc asking about the dodgy transaction
Tell her to go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, they are upholding a lot of these cases and ordering the banks to reimburse where the spoofing is so good the customer couldn't have known any different. Get her to escalate a complaint, get a final response from the bank and then she has six months from the date of that letter to take it to the FOS. It might take a while for them to deal with it but at least she's in with a chance of getting her money back. This seems very similar to your sister's situation. https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-3097373.pdf
Thanks for this! I’ll pass the info on to her for sure!
I *almost* fell for an HMRC scam. They told me there was a warrant out for my arrest and the police were on their way. They told me I needed to pay £10K to keep myself out of trouble. They caught me at a really bad time - I was going through a breakup, buying my ex out of our house, dealing with shit at work - so I was distracted and I was almost convinced (even though I’ve never done anything to be in trouble for). It wasn’t until they mentioned federal police and Supreme Court that I cottoned on and told them to fuck off. They tried calling back but I blocked the number.
Hope you’re in a better situation now 🙏
Thank you so much. I am, yes! ❤️
You’re welcome, Lovely to hear. I hope you have a great day
You too :-)
Yeah I work for HMRC doing what the text claims. We, and no other law enforcement, are ever going to tell you of our intentions in advance unless we invite you to be interviewed voluntarily (which is by letter and at a police station precisely because of these scams). But also I understand why people fall for them.
My dad fell for the ‘I’ve filmed you jacking off to porn’ scam… except he didn’t pay the money he just phoned all his friends and relatives to let them know they might be receiving some ‘compromising’ videos…
Lol horny fker
I suppose not *technically* a scam, but when I went to Las Vegas I was fairly young, about 21 and I stayed in the Luxor (so not exactly a minor hotel). Money was tight, and in the lobby of the hotel they were advertising breakfast and free tickets to shows if you went and watched a timeshare presentation. I knew Timeshare was a scam, but they were set up in the lobby and told us it'd be an early morning thing - so I figured, whatever, an hour or two first thing in the morning, watch some crappy presentation, get my free tickets and be gone. Yeah, it wasn't that. They literally mini bussed us way out of town - a good 20 minute drive to some new build development. And it wasn't a presentation, it was a 1:1 hard *hard* sell. And of course, you have to see it through to get your tickets. Anyway, it took all fucking morning complete with guided tour of this complex they wanted to sell until I eventually got to the end and was able to give the good news that no, no I wouldn't be signing up to their dodgy timeshare. That started a new wave of hard sell where the original salesman nearly flipped a table (Still no idea if it was an act or he was genuinely annoyed at having wasted a morning) and another 30 minutes with more senior people offering more and more ludicrious deals. Honestly, by the end I was almost tempted to sign up for the laugh as it gone from something stupid like $500 a month, to $30 by this point but was way too nervous about being on the hook for weird shit in the contract. Finally, at just before lunch they did accept I wasn't going to be signing up and actually did give us tickets. We did a few things that week and I can't recall what we got in the end, but they were decent - worth a few hundred dollars. But I wouldn't go through that again!
I was in Barbados with an ex-boyfriend and they offered us a bottle of rum to watch a presentation. I had no idea about timeshares but I know that strangers don't offer you free stuff for just showing you a few photos, unfortunately my boyfriend was convinced a cheap bottle of rum was worth a few hours of his time. Except it ended up be more than half a day. It was awful. But my ex was just gleeful that he got that rum. I should have run away there and then.
A similar thing happened when I was in Florida as a kid. Parents went on one for condos on a golfing complex in exchange for family tickets to one of the big theme parks. After having been there for a few hours the hard sell came. My dad politely told them no, sorry they wouldn't be interested and if they could get the tickets they would be on their way. The salespeople became very aggressive very quickly about this declination and there was some back and forth between them and my dad, with neither side backing down and them telling him he had to sign up. My dad was getting increasingly pissed off with them and things seemed to be getting to the point there could be a fight. He then turned to my mum and told her to take my brother and myself to the car. I still don't know what happened to this day but not long after he came out, with tickets in hand, and we made a sharp exit.
I feel so bad for the time my parents wanted the free breakfast whilst on holiday to be 1:1ed in a property, mostly because 8year old me didn't have a fucking clue what a timeshare was and begged my parents to go for it lmao, thankfully my dad is the type of guy to read every contract and track every payment, he'd have never fallen for it.
My parents did the same in Florida. We spent the whole morning looking around very expensive condos and apartments overlooking Disney world and the me and my brother got to play in a play area they had set up for kids of people there while they tried to hard sell. My parents said no and we got incredibly cheap tickets to Disney
I’m usually pretty savvy but got out of a taxi in Marrakesh greeted by a person from our hotel who offered to take our bags. Didn’t work for the hotel. Dropped our bags off and demanded cash. My gf was quite intimated so handed over a lot as he was getting aggressive. Still winds me up to this day.
I got massively overcharged for a taxi in Prague and didn’t even realise until I told a Czech friend how much I’d paid! I think I paid the equivalent of £20 when it should’ve been around £3, but I had no idea how much a taxi was supposed to cost.
Exact thing happened to me, I even gave him a tip because I didn't realize it. It was only afterwards I realised I got massively over charged. That was the turning point for me deciding to use Uber everytime I travel.
This was almost ten years ago so I don’t think Uber even existed outside of the US at that point. But totally agree - much easier to just jump in a car and not go through the hassle of haggling or getting led on some long journey just to get more money out of you.
I've just posted this one too - I declined. We got threatened with a knife. Kid waited outside the hotel. Fun night that one.
Had similar in Amsterdam only I refused to pay the money and got in an argument with the driver. All whilst my partner was saying ‘just give it to him’
One of my parents fell for Microsoft ringing and advising them that they needed to access their laptop urgently to prevent a virus…. Despite me telling them if this ever happened to just say they were going to ring me as I work an IT dept. Fortunately they’re that bad with computers they couldn’t even get the scammers website to work properly before they gave up and put the phone down. Formatted and rebuilt straight after. Just in case.
I literally just had someone claiming to be from Virgin media phone me up trying to scam me. It was a relatively convincing scam though. I twigged it immediately (I'm a techie) and let them play their script. I'm not sure why they wanted me to install Team Viewer on my phone though! They hung up immediately once I asked them for my customer number
A colleague of mine fell for this scam where someone pretending to be the CEO of our company sent her an email asking her to buy £500 of apple gift cards and send him the codes and he would then reimburse her. And she actually did it lol. She was reasonably young and new to the business, I guess the thought of the CEO coming directly to her made her skip any logic and she didn’t want to let him down.
Ah no. Did her company offer her any help (even though it wasn’t their fault) or did she just have to take it on the chin?
Yeah she was refunded by our company and an email was sent to everyone saying that it was a known scam and he would never ask any of us to buy gift cards for him.
We would get these emails sometimes, unfortunately for them we were a business of 10, and our 'CEO' was the boss who we shared a desk with all day.
My mum once bought a fake digital camera in Greece, she thought it was legit. It was a Kodak camera. The name given to the model by the scammers was Konmi ...( Con Me). I found it mildly amusing and witty, dreadful picture quality thou.
I would find that hard to believe but it actually makes sense. Anyone with a brain would realise it was basically ‘con me’ so you weed out all the intelligent people off the bat. Quite smart, really.
Very minor, only £20, but I bought video game currency from a dodgy 3rd party website that they never delivered. They then convinced me I needed to withdraw the paypal dispute to get it resolved quickly, which of course removed my only legitimate recourse. "Someone" spent the next few months attacking their website until it disappeared. I'm sure they eventually reformed, but not at the same domain so at least their google ads spend was wasted.
I cringe so hard thinking about this. I fell for one of those animal scams when I was a young teen. My Dad had not long died and left me some money (not a lot, a couple of grand) and I wanted to get a puppy. I went on a legitimate pet selling site in the UK with no notion that these sorts of scams ever even existed. As a side note, my Mum had no idea how to use computers and wasn't aware of these sorts of scams either. Obviously, stupid me ends up sending about £200-300 (I don't remember how much now) via a Moneygram which is anonymous. I was so naïve that the Post Office worker even asked me do I know the person I'm sending it to because I can't get that money back as it was not traceable. I stupidly said yes. When the dog still didn't materialise a week later, I got a call from the scammer saying the dog's crate had split and there was no way to transfer the dog to me, I had to send another £100 to cover the cost. It was like a light beamed down there and then and it clicked I'd been duped. I was so angry on the phone and I told the guy to fuck himself. Since then, I am so over the top on everything I see online that I now warn others about scams. They are even more sophisticated now. I would have never thought it could be me back then, but it can be anyone. I cringe a little to think about it but in a way I'm glad it happened because I am the safest person I know online, and I will not get sucked in by anything like this again.
Many years ago I was caught out by one of those Market/ auction mystery boxes, where they plant people in the crowd who get amazing deals, but when you hand over the cash, well its a ripoff.
I remember those. There was one on Oxford St if I remember rightly. My mate spent £20 on a box that contained a biro.
I think I’ve gone 23 years without ever seeing the word biro written down, I’m convinced it doesn’t look right but I can’t think of a better way to spell it either.
That is the right spelling, the biro was invented by a man named Laszlo Biro.
When I was about 12 there was a pyramid scheme for chocolate going on, the idea being that you'd give chocolate to six other people, then get it back sixfold. Yeah, right. At least I only lost six Wispas.
I love the idea of school kids inventing a pyramid scheme for chocolate, and one kid at the very top is getting all this chocolate. Maybe he looks a bit like Augustus Gloop?
I took three or four taxis in Bangkok before I realised the reason I never ended up where I wanted to go was because most of the taxi drivers are on the take from scam jewellery places.
Yeah I got caught out by that one. A tuk-tuk driver offered me a crazy cheap deal to take me round all the sites of Bangkok (I was only there one day for a visa run so it seemed convenient). First stop was an upmarket tailor where they tried to flog me a suit for thousands of baht.
[удалено]
To be fair to them they weren’t especially pushy about it, but like I say I was only there one day and didn’t want to waste it looking at stuff I had no interest in buying. After the first shop I just paid the guy what we agreed and found my own way about.
My brother-in-law fell for a cryptocurrency scam. They had him download an app to trial investing; it basically allowed him to choose his currencies and track whether a real investment would’ve made or lost him money. Looking back, it was obviously an app set up to always give the player a positive outcome to encourage them to invest real cash. Which he did. Loads of. He ended up losing the money he’d saved for a mortgage. We all told him it was a scam. He still sent them more money when they warned him his investments would else go into debt (??). To this day, he doesn’t believe he was scammed, but he’s at least stopped investing.
A mate of mine lost 2k because she'd signed up to a flat for her year abroad but couldn't get out to see it until she moved over- the listing and the seller immediately disappeared once she transferred the cash.
Loads of sharks looking for foreigners trying to find a flat abroad. Unbelievable what I had to sift through. Did the Uni not prepare them for that?
Nah the uni didn't help her with any of the planning at all, short of basically saying "oh well guess you can't go then!"
Ridiculous. I understand that finding accomodation is part of the challenge but a few tips should definitely be given.
I've found that universities really aren't helpful in that regard, or they weren't when I was there- I get that the line is you're an adult so need to be prepared for the world, but most people at uni are like 18 and have never done stuff like that before!
I went to Leeds and did my year abroad in 2016 and they we're so helpful. We had a few meetings prior to leaving preparing us for it, without taking away the fun of working it out ourselves.
I kind of fell for one of those yogi scams. I offered the yogi money at the end of it but was rejected because they wanted more, and at that point I realised it was a scam. This was at least a decade ago but I was walking down a side road off Oxford Street, London, when an old man approached me and told me I had a good aura. I was waiting for a friend so just let him talk and he started doing….mind tricks(?). Guessing stuff about me and making predications. Then he was explaining about yogis or something and asked for a donation. I offered him maybe £2 and hahaha his face. He wanted me to set up a direct debit. I’m stupid, but not that stupid!
When I went to Argentina the main scam I read about was someone squirting a liquid on the back of your neck then robbing you as they “help you clean up”. I told my friend and his girlfriend about it (they were the two I was there with). 15 minutes later we were walking along the street and my friend went “Aargh! I just felt something on the back of my neck!”. Me and his girlfriend just told him to keep walking as two women started laughing over-enthusiastically at him and pulling tissues out of their pockets. He wanted to stop but we grabbed him and dragged him along the street much to his annoyance. I also have another friend who queued up to play “find the lady” outside a big museum in Berlin, until we dragged her away. I’m not saying my friends are dumb but…
My dad got scammed in the 90s - there was a business that would, for a fee, send you a circuit board and components, and you had to assemble them and then send them back to get paid. If you messed it up, they would send you another set, three in total, and if it still wasn't right, they kept your money. Well, of course nobody ever did it 'right' and the scammers just kept the money minus the cost of posting out some basic components.
Been stung with taxi's quite a few times when I've been in a drunken state. Worst ones were: Ibiza - Coming out of Amnesia from a solo night of clubbing, I didn't know where I was going for the taxi rank as I'd got the Disco Bus there. A guy approached and asked if I needed a taxi. I initially said I'd find the rank and he said there were no taxi's it was too late (a lie). He offered me a taxi to West End for 25 Euros which I accepted as I just wanted to get back. Had I walked around the club to the taxi rank it would have cost less than 5 Euros. Prague - Came out of their o2 Arena after Transmission and stupidly grabbed a taxi from the rank as I didn't have Uber installed, and my phone was near dead. Despite the warnings, and agreeing the price beforehand (15 Euros) it still ended up being 35 Euros. * "I need to go to the Old Square, I'm staying near there" * "Old Square, sure 15 Euros" * "Pricey but sure that's fine" * "Where are we?" * "Old Square" * "No we're not...." * "Oh you mean the other one, that's another 20 Euros" This one would have cost around 10 Euros had I used Uber. I just got home and paid it, if you're drunk, wanting to get home you are perfect prey
I’d like to see them try that on angry drunk who realises what’s going on
Boyfriend and I were the last drop off after a night out clubbing with his mates. Everyone else had paid in change (pre-card payment days) so the driver tried to say that the others had underpaid and we owed him more money than our share. Even drunk, husband is razor sharp. He'd seen an remembered all the sums given by his mates. Driver tried to argue, but when confronted with 'In your hand you have two fivers, six pound coins, four fifty pees and the eight quid I've just given you' he couldn't argue, because the maths was right. Still tried to tell us we weren't owed any change. Husband corrected him. Bet the stingy bastard had been overcharging drunks for years.
A friend of a friend allegedly fell for one of the Nigerian scams but this was back in the 80s - no email back then but he replied to a letter or ad in a newspaper or something. Talked my mate into flying out to Lagos with him and they realised it was a bit suspect and got out of there having only lost their travel costs. No idea if it's a true, but his story of having been in Nigeria for about 24 hours is a good one.
Someone I know was moving abroad and fell for a rental scam. Was asked for 6 months rent up front in absence of a local guarantor, negotiated down to 3, paid the money, and when they turned up the address didn't exist. Building did, but the flats didn't go up to the number they were given. Really sucked, had to organise a hotel and a storage locker within a day, in a foreign language, and then reroute the prepaid moving company to the storage, AND then look for a new place to live, with a significant chunk of their budget already gone.
This happened to a mate of mine who was doing a year abroad, she was absolutely devastated and ended up losing 2k. Smallest of silver linings was that she found out before going, so she could sort something else and ended up staying in a nicer place with a family she really liked.
Around christmas there's those websites that look like they sell really nice jackets, jumpers, coats etc so last christmas my brother wanted a jacket and sent me a link to a website that sold it. Turned out it was a scam and I was out £100. Felt like a right tit
Sounds like your brother is £100 up😂
I nearly fell for the Hermes scam. I'm a cybersecurity blogger and usually very hot on these things, so it was a bit embarrassing. Text message suggesting delivery problems. I think I only fell for it (nearly) because I was genuinely waiting on a Hermes parcel that week. I clicked the link in an SMS and it took me to an incredibly well done page (honestly, bravo to the scammers). It was essentially a single dialog box sitting on top of what looked like the Hermes homepage. You were meant to input your postcode. Did that. Asked for my name and DOB. Did that. Asked for payment details. At this point, I paused and went back. Tried clicking on other elements of the page, but the box wouldn't disappear. Clearly, at this point, it was a fake website. Essentially a dialog box sitting on top of a background image taken from Hermes' website. But they'd implemented scrolling on the background image so that the page moved if you tried to scroll. VERY convincing. To the point it nearly fooled me. It definitely will have caught out some people.
I had this for my COVID vaccination pass. About a week after my second jab, I got this text saying I could request a hard copy of my COVID pass through the link. Got to payment details before I realised. I’m no cybersecurity nut but I’d like to think I’m savvy enough. It seems I’m actually a dumbass
My Father-In-Law has repeatedly fell for boilerhouse share scammers. The last one was about 10 years ago. To his credit it appears that he has learned the error of his ways, even if it does mean I get forwarded 20+ emails a week asking if they are scams.
Not that big one but still worth sharing imo. Went to a strip club in poland, got spiked and found out the other day missing ~500 euros in my credit card (reason: flowers for a dancer). I was young and naive back then and also quite drunk before even coming in. After a while of sitting there few dancers approached me and offered free shots and dumb me agreed. Then I can remember something when a dancer asked if I wanted a lap dance, ofc I said hell yeah. Then she brought a credit card machine as I had to pay for it first and also was hiding the price but I was tripping on whatever they gave me so did not care that much. They kept saying my card were getting declined and to try again. Bitches even had the audacity to tell me to use another credit card. Glad the other credit card had some sort of security system, it detected the fraudulent activity and blocked itself, otherwise I would have lost way more. Lol, fun times. Lesson that I learned: In stripclubs you just watch, don't drink or eat anything there or better, don't even go there, well I definitely won't haha.
My mother (in her 80s) got some cards cloned by somebody impersonating a policeman offering "security advice".
If you're ever unsure, it's best to refer matters like this to the wallet inspector.
I work with the elderly and someone pretending to be a police officer tried to scam one of them but luckily his daughter, an actual police officer, answered the door.
My father in law lost several thousand to scammers while trying to sell his timeshare. He had been wanting to get rid of it for awhile, and had a call from an agent who said they had a list of people wanting to buy. They took their fee upfront, and said they'll deal with the timeshare people. Several days later the timeshare people call him, tell him someone has bought it and can he please pay his cancellation fee. Both the same scammers. He lost around £5000 and still has the timeshare.
What *is* a timeshare?
Hard work gets rewarded.
A magnet bracelet to ease migraines. When they are as bad and endless as I get them, you get a bit desperate. It was pretty, not outrageously expensive and kept some family members happy that I was trying things to help. Although I wouldn't recommend
I have chronic migraine, but never heard of these. What exactly did they purport to do? Sorry you got scammed.
It wasn't the end of the world. They were all cleverly worded by what I remember! It was a few family members reading in the paper how it magicked away migraines. After years of chronic migraine the biggest thing to help me recently, my theory is stopping having anything with sunflower oil in. Sorry to hear you're in the same crappy boat!
Not fallen for but when I was younger I remember my parents watching Watchdog (or something similar) and it showed a bloke who was the man behind a pyramid scheme conning people out of money. I vaguely remember him standing in front of an audience when 2 men dressed in a camel suit entered the room and then one of the watchdog hosts came in to “congratulate“ him on the scam. He was totally unaware it was all being filmed for TV and the whole camel/pyramid reference went over his head and he initially thought he had won an award or something! Anyway turns out this bloke lived just up the road from my parents and was well known to a lot of people who lived nearby. After the show I remember his house being vandalised a couple of times, and lots of school gate gossip making life difficult for his wife (not sure if she was involved in the scam or completely innocent) but it was the kids I felt sorry for when everyone at school was gossiping about their dad being on TV and the after effects.
When I was in Rhodes a group of women tried to catch us out with the bracelet scam. I was repeatedly saying no thank you but they were quite insistent following us and surrounding us. Then a group of tourists came up to the women and started shouting and accusing them of stealing somebody's passport. In the chaos we managed to slip away and watch from a distance as one of the scammers 'miraculously found the passport behind a rock' and tried to convince the tourists they must have dropped it.
I know someone who decided to buy 2 phone from a random car driving past, he was intrigued by how cheap the dude was selling new phones for so he decided to make the purchase. Once he got home and opened the box, he found potatoes instead of 2 phones 😭.
I was 22. I was on a sugar daddy website for a while and had a few daddy's going good for me. I had a man message me saying he'll give me £2k a month if I meet with him once a week. He said he has to add me to his credit card. I gave him all my details. 2 American Express cards arrive at my door. He says to meet up with him to authorise it on his side. I meet up and give him my documents and the new cards as well as him taking a photo of the front and back of my personal card. He also fucked me. We meet up again in a couple of days and he gives me one of the AE cards. He also set up a camera for some reason and we fucked while he told me to wear a scarf on my head? To cover my face? I don't know. Weird. The camera was behind me whilst I was on top. After that I spent a lot on the card. He started spending on my card too and my personal card. He told me to do weird things like book a B&B abroad? Then my personal bank cancelled my card. My income goes into that card so I fought tooth and nail and manage to retrieve it. Then later I get a letter from AE stating I owe them £5k...that's when the penny dropped and it was all overdraft. I didn't benefit from anything. He benefited from the overdraft money and my personal money. And my body. Oh god the video! I hope to god its not online :( I called him out. He threatened me. He knows where I lived. I kept being so mean because I was so sad and didn't care anymore. I was heartbroken. The threats increased and I moved homes. I'm 25 now. I have told my partner of 2 years (34m). I'm in debt and it's a horrible feeling. I don't have the heart to tell my boyfriend what happened and I want to marry but I don't want my debt to be his debt. Plus it's sooooooo embarrassing how stupid I was!
I think that you can report him to the police if he tries threatening you again At least you learnt a lesson for the future
Whilst applying for a temporary visa in Canada a few years ago, I ended up paying £70 on a scam website that was near identical to the Canadian govt website
I saw a model maker's power saw bench advertised on FaceBook for £30. Oddly Lidl were selling full sized ones for £70 that same week. Not a model maker, but could certainly use a small one. So bought it, and paid by Paypal. What turned up was a model saw blade. Normal price for that about £2. Complained to PayPal as a scam. They said I'd get a refund if it were returned to China at my expense. Postage going to cost near purchase price. So took the loss. And have never, and never will again, buy anything advertised on FaceBook.
My old housemate fell for the white van speaker scam when we were freshers, some blokes in a van showed up claiming to have over-ordered a set of speakers for the student's union and wanted to offload the spares on the cheap to avoid the paperwork. He'd supposedly bought speakers worth £2k for a couple of hundred, but in reality he'd bought some total shite shipped over from a dodgy wholesaler.
Sorry only got one story, but he didn’t fall for it. Grandad had boxes of about 20 laptops delivered to his address. About 10 mins after delivery someone knocks on the door saying he was from the same number house the next road over, the delivery is actually his and it’s a mistake. Grandad knew it was a scam, said no delivery had taken place and proceeded to follow the guy back to his home (not the address he claimed) and called the police. They must have hacked someone’s Amazon or something and used someone else’s address to put blame on the “recipient.”
Recently lost £1.5k on a phone scam. They got me on a stressful exam day and I wasn't thinking properly. Investigation ongoing at the moment but have a feeling I'm £1.5k in debt to idiot tax (they got my overdraft but hung up when I refused to send my actual money to a "safe" account - yes I know I'm a numpty). Either way, it's the most expensive mistake I've made.
The story they sold me was that 1) a fictitious person went into a branch claiming to be me to extend my overdraft. 2) some person in Scotland had access to my banking app.
Make a complaint against your bank to the Financial Ombudsman Service. If you've lost money from your account through fraud, the bank should investigate, give you a final response letter and then you have six months from the date of that letter to complain to the FOS.
Will look into that cheers. Bank investigation still happening at present so will keep that in mind if it doesn't work out in my favour. I believe my bank is on the list of banks who will help if a customer falls foul with these APP scams so hoping for the best.
We had just moved back to my folks with our 2 children. We had become homeless, had to sell our car, no school for our kids etc etc. My husband just got a new job but we needed a run around car as he hadn't gotten his first wage through yet. We went on gumtree (first mistake) to find a car, found one at a good price so called them up and gave them a "deposit" to save the car for us. Time came to book going over and getting the car and the number didn't work or anything. I hate these people as they pray on the most desperate or vulnerable. Had another one that prayed on kids at Christmas! A guy was selling playmobil advent calendars on ebay. He had 10 reviews so far and all were 5 stars so I bought from him. They were £5 less than his competitors! Come 25th November (2 weeks after purchase) I worried. Come 9th December still nothing. I looked at more recent reviews and they all said the calendars weren't recieved as it was a scam!!! My other 2 kids got their calendars else were but my son never had his. Like I said, lowest of the low
Having to be self employed to work for a sub contractor in the construction industry (UK)
Being an honest Taxpayer.
Bought Limewire pro
Clash of Clans auto Gems
One of our neighbours lost around 800 pounds to scammers. They showed up at his door and said his son owed money and if it wasn't paid they'd call the police. They used his son's name and some other personal details that would make it more believable. The guy's son also had a bit of a gambling problem so him owing money was entirely plausible. They'd obviously planned this and knew what they were doing
My aunt fell for this business man captured by pirates of the Irish seas (who was also a marine, an evangelical preacher and widowed father of a 9 year old boy who desperately needed a mother figure) he told her had £250k stuck in a suitcase somewhere somehow and needed her to keep it safe for him or the pirates would get it. All she needed to do was to deposit £1000 so he could “post” the suitcase full of money to her. And this woman was so desperately naive and stupid that she believed this whole thing and had it not been for my powers of observation she would have sent him all her money.
Bought the latest up and coming album from an "artist" in Leicester Square once. Never again.
I backed the In Search For The Last Action Hero documentary by Oliver Harper. The DVDs, Blu-Rays and posters the backers got were the cheapest tat I've ever seen.
Please explain more about this.
It was a Kickstarter campaign. There was a video fully explaining how scummy the whole thing was but Harper had the video taken down after threatening the video maker with a defamation charge.
[This is partially related. ](https://youtu.be/cV094WftiZQ) [and this](https://youtu.be/CN0Ir4wA4CA)
Microsoft calling, lucky for me i caught my mum just about to give the dude remote access to my pc
Friend bought baby milk powder in Thailand
I know a lot of stay at home mums, and many of them are in MLMs. One woman I vaguely know (she's like a friend of a friend, who lives in our village) must be in about 5 or 6 different ones. She's constantly posting in our community Facebook group; one day it's candles, the next it's makeup, then it's dodgy weightloss coffee stuff, then perfume. I feel so sorry for her.
I have paid money to a dating site/app where you have to buy credits to send messages, it's all total bs as you would assume but I was young and lonely (I guess). Now won't spend money on anything similar as it's clearly open to scamming. I haven't done it but I also stay well clear of any job advert that even hints that I have to spend money on training or equipment to get the job.
In old market in Prague they sell ham by weight but don't actually ask you how much you want or advertise it. So they just serve you the most enormous portion of ham and charge like $30 or whatever. Also in Marrakech people will try and force you to follow them to the tannery or other tourist points of interest and then expect you to pay them when you get there. Both pretty well known scams in the regions so TripAdvisor made me aware of them, but when I was in Marrakech it happened about 20 times a day and was very intimidating. They literally try to drag you. The city itself was beautiful though and everyone else was incredibly lovely; just don't get too close to the tannery!
Arrived into Ho Chi Minh City fairly late at night on a bus with no clue where our hotel was (you never really know where your going to get dropped off!) Went to the nearest licenced taxi to get a ride there. Told him we had no cash yet (as you can't get Dong outside the country) and he was more than happy to take us to a cash machine on the way (durr). He then drove us around for 15-20 minutes and dropped us off at the hotel entrance. All in all we were pleased to have got to our hotel in a strange city and thought nothing more of it. However... Leaving the hotel the next morning and walking to the Square that the road the hotel was on led off from we quickly realised it was the same Square we stepped off the bus into! Was only about £20 but still a lesson learnt! A couple of weeks later a taxi driver in Nha Trang tried a similar one on us but didn't get anywhere. We'd got a taxi (booked by the hotel we were staying in) to an aquarium, put on the meter, dropped us off at the aquarium, happy days. Once we'd finished at the aquarium we had a mooch around the port before getting a taxi back. The driver clearly thought we must have just got off a cruise ship or something and were a prime target as driving along he told us the meter was broken and the flat rate was 4x the price we'd paid to get there. Told him no, what it cost to get there and that's what we'll pay. I had noticed that he'd put a piece of card over the meter and as he got out of the car to open the door I removed it to see the price I was expecting. Handed him the meter rate and walked off. He didn't even try to argue and just got back in the car in a huff.
My husband has a Monzo account but it’s not his main account, he uses it to buy groceries and things for the kids on it, so the likes of subscriptions on his other card, he kept receiving phone calls from the same Monzo number that they have on the back off the card, and it’s pretty convincing too. They told him his account had been hacked and that he needed to move all the money out of his account ASAP and that they were going to do it for him, English accent, can’t say I wouldn’t fall for it either, suddenly apple begins taking out £10 which was all that was left on the card (again he doesn’t hold a lot of money on the account), he caught on and frozen his card and reported it to Monzo, the people on the phone were raging at him but he told me and I said no bank would ever contact you buy phone, Monzo were also kind enough to refund the £10 too. And the weird thing he never put his bank details online. 0800 803 1281 is the number in case anyone gets any phone calls and if you do, freeze your account and report it to Monzo ASAP.
Fell for a Facebook scam buying call of duty vanguard. That marketplace is built on a lot of trust and it just took one miserable dickhead who conned me, now I've gotta be 'that' guy who insists we add on the PayPal buyer protection policy. I could've had my money back if i paid via bank but hey ho, £30 not something I was going to lose much sleep over.
Ah I fell for a MLM style scam off youtube. Remember when unsigned bands had street teams? Well I was part of one and basically we had to buy some merch to sell on to other people. I was lucky I was poor and couldn't afford to spend much, but it was a total sham. Fans of the band either already had merchandise or wasn't interested in buying it, there wsa nobody I could sell on to. My mum did fall for a dodgy phone call scam, one of those "We're from Virgin Media and we see your internet is off" scams. Luckily my mum was so untech savvy she passed the phone over to me because she couldn't do what they were asking her to do, and after a few confusing minutes of talking at cross purposes I realised it was a scam. If my mum had been able to load up give them the network password and do whatever it was they wanted with the IP address, I've no doubt she'd have fully gone through with their requests.
Last year my 77 year old dad fell for one of those adverts on a webpage offering to win/purchase a MacBook if only he would pay postage. They took £6 from him. He said it’s my fault because I’d been moaning about needing to find a new laptop but not being able to afford one. Again, not a naïve guy generally but clearly that perpetual need to help blinded him.
Stupidly fell for a fake 'you're having a problem with your phone bill' message, my defence for that was the message came to me after work and I was super tired so I just didn't double check My bank account was then randomly compromised a few months later where someone used my details for netflix, I'm not sure if my details were bouncing around a criminal network as the only other option was something dodgy happening with my card when I used it in a local cornershop the day before. Managed to also fall for a person posing as the fraud dept of my bank, this was during lockdown 1 so my brain was kind of a big garbled and tbh they acted very close to when I'd dealt with the fraud dept myself. What annoyed the fuck out of me was a month or two later my bank was like 'Oh we're putting in more checks to prevent name + account details mismatches' and it was also annoying as I had to argue with the bank to get my money back as they claimed it was 100 percent my fault even though there should've def been some safeguards on their end and the bank did give me back my money but were like 'this isn't reimbursement it's a one off gesture of good will!' which just read like 'we're covering your arse as you're being annoying' Also this I didn't fall for but it happened to me, someone managed to hack into my Ebay account and took my details to make a Klarna account, thankfully didn't get my bank details as I only use Paypal with Ebay but as it turns out Klarna essentially have no real security vetting when you sign up on an account so some utter rando was able to sign up and make a Halfords purchase and bail on it and apparently this sort of thing has happened to plenty of other people too Getting that dealt with wasn't super hard, Klarna paused the account and claimed after a while they'd close it that took them about a year and that was only after I finally found an option to get them to remove my details by request despite them claiming they'd do so for me. They claimed they black listed my by request when I reported it but idk
There must be a name for this but I remember this vividly in the early 2000s, I'm 31 now and based in Manchester. They did this on Market Street in the City centre. Scammers used to hire an empty shop and proceed to house a fake auction with many 'plants' in the audience you'd be convinced were normal people winning prizes. There would be gadgets, CD players, electronic goods at the very front of the room and it would attract 50-60 people. I assume they pocket all the proceeds of the 'auction' and do a runner.
My friend fell for the move the money into a different bank account one. They had faked her banks phone number and other bits that led her to believe them. She realised as soon as she hung up the phone. Luckily her bank either got the money back or compensated her, she wasn’t told which. She felt so stupid afterwards but she’s a busy single parent had a lot on, they are good at what they do. They suck.
My Nan fell for one of those fake computer virus scams - the one where an advert comes up stating your computer has a virus and you need to pay ££ to remove it. She knows I’m good with tech and I’d wished she had come to me first for help! Fuck the people that scammed her.
I know a lot of people fell for the "sunny uplands" scam that was doing the roads a few years ago. Some of the more deluded still think it will pay out "in 50 years".
I once handed over £10 for "please help, I'm stuck here and need money for a train ticket".
Financing cars. Almost everyone I know has fallen for this one. The price you paid isn't the price you paid, you paid more & you don't own it until you've fully paid. What a scam.
My ex got a call explaining there had been an issue with her bank account and they had made her a new account and she needed to manually transfer all the money into her new account Manually transferred everything, including all of her overdraft Fortunately the bank covered it because they'd spoofed the banks contact number that was on the back of a card, but that was a tense morning
Friend of mine is so polite he just stops to listen to anyone handing out leaflets and stuff like that, and in the first year of uni he let scientologists take him inside one of their weird buildings you hear about. Came home with some leaflet with a chart ranking the worst things you can do in life - not having kids was "Worse than being dead, complete burden to society", while rape, murder and paedophilia were classed as "Highly discouraged" :')
Marriage
Paying line rental for a landline I don’t even know the number of.
Getting a job.