Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

Most scams/cons prey on one simple thing: greed. Don't underestimate the power of human greed. It's amazing, and it makes people overlook all sorts of glaring warning signs.

Common scams that I've come across:

1) White van speaker scam: guys selling speakers / home theater stuff out of the back of their van, usually because the shipper "put too much in their truck for a delivery" or something like that. They portray it as very high end stuff and have literature with them to back it up. It is total and absolute poo poo, according to online reviews. like to ask if I can buy 2, and that I'll be right back with the money after I go to an ATM. I leave and don't come back. I've had them follow me to the ATM a couple of times, and I just keep driving to see how long they follow. In at least one instance they followed me for about 10 minutes. Note: greed makes people overlook all sorts of warning signs and I pictured them in the van thinking "Well, maybe he's just looking for a certain bank".

2) Job scams: online jobs where you can make $1 to $2k per week from home! It's either filling out endless surveys (for about $0.50 each, if that) or cheque cashing scams where they send you a fraudulent cheque and you deduct an amount and send them the rest via western union. When the cops come calling, you're on the hook cause they're way overseas.

3) Romance scams: affects both men and women, the scammer is overseas and starts an online relationship eventually asking for money to come and see you. It doesn't prey on greed, but on your heart strings which is another powerful motivator. I've seen it tied in to cheque cashing scams, too.

4) MLM. Need I say more? Geometric growth is unsustainable. No, your system isn't "different".

These are the most popular ones I've come across. There's an old saying that says "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". Personally, I think that's somewhat false. How about "If it sounds too good to be true it always is, and if you're wrong then by keeping this in mind you won't get victimized and you'll save more money anways".

Actually, I'd add one more new one:

5) Not exactly a scam, but sorta. Sextortion. Hot women "friend" you on Facebook and ask if you want to chat on Skype. They convince you to undress and "perform" on camera for them. They record it, and since they're friends with you on FB they have all your contacts. They demand money from you or else they will send the video to all of them. They put it up on Youtube (as a private link) and send you the link to it to prove they have it. More info here: https://www.scamsurvivors.com

I haven't fallen victim to any of these but through my job I've spoken to lots of people who have. In the end, it's greed that makes them do stupid things. I suppose that holds true for the course of human history, as well.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 15:41

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:00

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

Kopijeger posted:

If he really was that affable and interesting, he could probably make a decent living being a legitimate tourist guide. Seems like a waste.

On the subject of scams requiring extreme naivety on part of the victim, in Rome some dude attempted to pull the following scam on me:

The thing about this is that you would have to be extremely naive and credulous to fall for it. In my case, he saw fit to ask me for the way to Piazza del Popolo. From an obvious non-Italian like me. In English. While brandishing a road map and being in view of at least two obvious landmarks (the Aurelian walls with the Porta Pinciana and the Villa Borghese park). And for some reason he wore sunglasses even though it was cloudy. This made it difficult to read his expression, but he did seem surprised when I laughed derisively at him and walked on.

This happened on the street to a friend of mine in Toronto, Canada. Not downtown in the touristy area, but in the middle of a middle-of-the-road neighbourhood. Maybe these guys go on vacation and take their crappy clothes with them? Or they open up branch offices.

All of these scams work because you really can't underestimate the power of greed.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 14:15

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

Captain Cool posted:

If you wait long enough you might get lucky. The US government, with other governments and universities and private companies, took down the original cryptolocker servers and recovered most of the keys: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-leads-multi-national-action-against-gameover-zeus-botnet-and-cryptolocker-ransomware

Don't get people's hopes up, that was from 2 years ago. Now instead of one coder running his ransomware scheme, he has other people do it for him "Ransomware As A Service (RAAS) : https://blog.knowbe4.com/cyberheistnews-vol-6-1-first-javascript-only-ransomware-as-a-service-discovered

That whole blog is pretty good if you're interested in ransomware at all.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 14:06

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

One scam I thought of the other day was a panhandler in downtown Toronto: "The Shaky Lady".

She would sit in a high traffic area and shake her whole body like she had horrible Parkinsons. People felt sorry for her and she made a lot of money doing it, until a reporter followed her and found that after she packed up at night she walked (slowly) to her car and drove to her $300k house in the suburbs where her symptoms mysteriously disappeared.

After she was outed in the paper she stopped showing up.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 14:14

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

cheerfullydrab posted:

Aren't stories about how panhandlers are secretly rich and faking their mental illness like one of the oldest urban poo poo that didn't happen myths? They exist for a reason, so you can feel better about not giving bums money.

I believe that a lot of people think that way, and it only takes one legit example of a scammer to make everyone else feel justified in not giving any panhandlers anything, ever.

In this case, it was a real thing. A reporter followed her, and published the results many years ago. It keeps coming up occasionally, mostly when the reporter mentions it:

http://www.torontosun.com/search?cx...s=1707j897815j6

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 14:15

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

RenegadeStyle1 posted:

When we were originally looking for a place to live when I got out of the army my wife got contacted from Craigslist saying they were an older lady that owned a house in East Texas that she wanted someone to live in for free to take care of it. Obviously it sounded like a scam so we didn't do it but she sent pictures of a house and everything. I always wondered what the scam was since she never asked for any money, although we never got past a few emails with her.

My guess is that they want a deposit, and that it isn't their house.

Fake rentals have been another scam here in the last couple of years. One person rented out a cottage in the summer to 4 families per week, all summer. So each week 4 families would show up on the doorstep expecting to have the cottage for the week. The owner of the cottage had no idea what was going on. The scammer had used pictures from when the cottage was posted for sale a while earlier to advertise the rental.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 16:13

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

jase1 posted:

This story is a rehash from an old thread I had about hustling dummies at the pool table. I learned everything I know about pool hustling from my uncle. We use to run cons in dive bars all over the place all the time when we were on the road hustling. This is my favorite con that we use to pull because it worked almost every time.

My uncle would drop me off at this dive bar and I would walk in and bring my pool stick and just start shooting. Get a few drinks, shoot around, ask some people to shoot for drinks and start a very good repor with the bar. Hopefully I could get some people to who were interested in shooting pool. We would shoot friendly games for drinks and I would make sure to never lose and just keep winning and showing my best moves. After a an hour or 2 or maybe 3 depending on how things are going Frank walks in. Frank is a master at acting drunk so much so that he has fooled me a few times just to get me to drive home. So he walks in already drunk and he sits down at the bar and starts drinking and making sure everyone there can hear him talk. He is loud, obnoxious, annoying and just a straight up rear end in a top hat. After he has had a few drinks he will walk over and just watch me shoot. He starts poo poo talking my pool play and telling me what I am doing wrong and we get into a little discussion that turns into pissing contest. I tell him to grab a stick and lets play for some drinks, he laughs and says he only plays for money. I tell him I don't gamble for money like that and I eventually walk away from the table and sit at the bar. He grabs the stick and starts shooting and proclaiming that he is the best everyone is afraid him and that sort of thing. Now the regulars are getting mad because he has ruined the good vibe in the bar I had going. I get mad and tell him to cool it no one wants to hear his bullshit. He gets in my face and calls me a coward because I won't gamble with him. I tell him if I had any money on me I would shut him up right now. He laughs and just continues his parade of assholishness. He keeps harping on the gambling thing.

Right around this time hopefully someone will come to my rescue and stake me. Usually a guy will come up to me and say hey I'll give you 20 bucks to gamble with the guy and shut him up so I will take that 20 and say alright how about we gamble for 20 and Frank will just laugh and say something like he doesn't even pick up a stick for less than a 100 and I go back to the guy and give him his money and tell him what Frank says. Hopefully I have done my part and these guys are sucked in because then they start to go around the bar and raise some money for me to shut him up. Usually its around 200 or so depending on the area. I have had a few times where it got up over 1k. After they raise the money I tell Frank to lets gamble and I proceed to lose it all to him in an amazing acting performance that should get me some award but I have perfected the art of taking a beating at the pool table without it looking like it was my fault. Frank leaves I stick around and apologize and then after an hour or so I leave and meet up with Frank down the street or wherever.. When I was younger and on the road hustling we could do that maybe 6 times a month and have all my hotels and food paid for from those cons so we could drive to the next town looking for a pool hall to hustle more dummies.

Have you thought about re-opening / restarting your thread? You must have been up to stuff in the last year or two

# ¿ Apr 18, 2016 16:00

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

Marenghi posted:

Hasn't that been the case for the longest time. Counterfeits are usually built in the same factories as the real deal just with the production ramped up and less quality control.

For cycling products (carbon fiber wheels and other bits) the factory makes them during the day, and a rep (or reps) from the company are looking at the output for quality control. Making sure nothing is shipped with obvious flaws etc. The company rep goes home at the end of the day and the factory keeps pumping out the products but with in-house labels on them. The quality control is worse as well, but if you are lucky you get a great deal on a virtually identical product.

# ¿ May 1, 2016 13:53

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

Boris Galerkin posted:

I'm in Italy right now and I keep getting people pushing these stupid string bracelets on me. Like the dudes literally put a bracelet on my shoulder as I'm walking by and then grab my arm when I ignore them and keep telling me "it's free it's free." Whatever I just keep ignoring them and walking away. Sometimes I see them approaching me with a hand full of bracelets and I stick out my hand and start saying no and they've generally gotten the idea.

Like I get the general idea of this scam but how exactly does it work out? According to Google they should tie it on my wrist and then demand money for the bracelet. How does it go from them telling me repeatedly that it's free to "give me money now?"

I'd check here for a great list of European tourist scams:

https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/theft-scams/tourist-scams

# ¿ Jun 12, 2016 15:03

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:00

JiimyPopAli: Oct 5, 2009

Professor Shark posted:

How do those pages that pop up and tell you that "Windows has had an ERROR! and has been halted until you phone this number" work? I just got one and alt-cntrl-del'd out of it (scanning with Malwarebytes then AVG right now), but I know people who have been hit by them and have actually called.

Like what does that page do to make your browser stop working? Also, how concerned should I be?

I've called the number a few times, just out of curiosity. It always goes to a call center in India where they try to get you to download some software to "fix the problem". I've never gone that far, but one day I'll set up a VM on an old laptop and do it just for fun.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2016 14:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Tell me about common cons/scams: "Thanks, you suck. Hello, this is Linda."