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."

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Every six months or so I run into this guy who asks if I can come with him to a gas station to show them my ID so he can buy a jerry can. Every time I tell him you don't need an ID to buy a jerry can as I have purchased one with cash in recent memory. Then he swears at me and tells me I don't like helping people and blah blah and looks for another victim. The last time I told him I'd go with him if he just told me what his scam was since I see him a couple times a year pulling the same nonsense but he just yelled at me and ran away.

What does he really want? There's usually a gas station in sight so I'm pretty sure he's not trying to lure me away to murder me in an alley.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2016 04:48

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 19:27

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

mostlygray posted:

In honor of my dearly departed Grandmother, here's a good one. She died a few years ago at the age of 100. She was awesome. She partied with Trotsky at Frida Kahlo's house and that's possibly the most normal thing she did. There's some Joe Kennedy Jr. things from a cruise ship and it just get's more weird from there. I wish I could list all the stories but there are too many.

She used to run a con in Mexico with a friend of hers. This wouldn't work now, but did in the 30's. She would hang out on a bench on the street looking prim and proper but available. A man would ask her out for dinner and she would demurely accept after having flirted with him for a time. She would suggest a local restaurant and they would go. Once they were there, a friend of hers would "happen" to walk in. Of course, the gentleman would have to invite the friend to the table for dinner. He would then pay for the dinner. At this point, this guy figures he's in like Flynn as my Grandma would continue to flirt in an absurdly raunchy manner. At the end of the evening, my Grandma would say "I've had a lovely time, thank you." She'd hand him a calling card with a non-existent address and phone number and leave.

She ran that game the whole time she was in Mexico. Never paid for a meal. The calling card was actually an address for a brothel. Quite amusing.

She also once smuggled a parrot from South America into Mexico in an empty flashlight. Again, there are way to many stories to tell.

I miss her every day.

People still do this. My sister gets idiots off of Tinder to order pizzas for her.

Not to say your grandma isn't cool, she clearly put a lot more effort into it that my sister.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 03:05

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Sister lives in co-op housing with like 8 other people, she'll never be home alone and the white knight type males are just itching for a chance to defend her honour or whatever.

I don't visit often.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2016 04:26

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

I got some bad news for you about the presidency thing.

# ¿ May 17, 2017 13:18

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

He could also be huffing it.

# ¿ May 8, 2018 23:21

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Our IT department releases fake phishing emails on a regular basis to train people to hit the big "Report Phishing" button on Outlook. I saved my favourite one.

IT Department posted:

Dear Mr. Sir,
I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. In the 14-years since
he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $ 15,000,000 USD.
If we can obtain access to this money, we can place a down payment with the Russian Space Authorities for a
Soyuz return flight to bring him back to Earth. I am told this will cost $ 3,000,000 American Dollars. In order to
access the his trust fund we need your assistance.
My colleague and I are willing to transfer you the 3,000,000 USD in order to help bring him home.
Kindly expedite action as we are behind schedule to enable us include downpayment in this financial quarter.
Please click on this link to enter your banking information.
Yours Sincerely, Dr. Bakare Tunde
Astronautics Project Manager

Some poor astronaut is trapped in space until they can get $3 Mil to bring him back

# ¿ Mar 7, 2021 23:51

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

duodenum posted:

The carriers HAVE to know the origin of these scam number-spoofing calls that are so loving ubiquitous. How they can just let this go for YEARS is ridiculous. We need some consumer protection/advocacy agency with teeth to gently caress these people in the rear end.

I feel confident that there was a law or something that made the carrier have to pay you for every scam call, the problem would disappear immediately.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2022 23:41

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Local hero turns the tables on scammer, stolen from the Schadenfruede thread:

The Fattest PI posted:

Here's some maybe schad for you:
People all over kajiji trying to sell their car have been getting contacted by a VOIP number who claims to be local to them and is interested in buying the car. Everything seems legit until they ask for a report on the car. It's a carfax kind of thing, but they demand it from a specific website (the site they own). It actually gives you a real report I think but they're just charging like 10x what the real website does, but uses their EXACT results. Of course even if you buy the report the interested buyer flakes so you're left with no car sale and you just donated 50-100 to the scammer. I only became aware of them because they almost got my friend who's struggling for money and trying to sell her car.

I was going through the website trying to pick up info, but it was mostly a premade mockup you can buy, and a lot of the links didn't go anywhere. One thing that did work was their chat-help feature, the little bubble in the bottom right that pops up. I'm not 100% sure how those work whether it's a 3rd party company or if you can just get those messages forwarded to a specific phone number or address or app or whatever. I tested it posing as a rube, and whoever was on the other end was coming off sketchy enough so I didn't feel bad about sending them lemonparty.jpg a bunch of times, randomly throughout the day and night. He'd close the chat and the chat thing would go away completely but that was defeated by just using an incognito window. Sometimes I'd talk a little bit and he'd ask for a screenshot of the receipt for the payment I claimed I was having trouble with. Here's the receipt: lemonparty
Eventually he stopped answering altogether and would just close the chatbox any time I said anything or sent anything. Whatever here's another lemonparty! I like to imagine that this piece of poo poo was getting lemonparty notifications while he was sitting at home or out for dinner or whatever.

At the start of this before any of the lemonparties I looked up the site's registrar and sent them an email through their abuse reporting tool thing, laid out all the evidence that they were using their service for a scam. I just got a reply today thanking me for all the info and the website was taken down.

# ¿ Mar 28, 2022 18:40

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

thrakkorzog posted:

I'll admit, I'm a bit weak on the slurs. "Please stop calling me," doesn't work.

On the other hand, screaming that I support nukes for Pakistan, let's just wipe Mumbai off the loving map already, it's full of loving wogs, only cuts down on the calls by like 10%.

OK, I pulled that number out of my rear end.

Past a certain point when you're hurling racist slurs against people you have nothing against aside from them calling you, the slurs are kind of weak.

I just figure I asked nicely, but after that, Argle bargle racist BS comes into play.

It is very easy to hang up the phone.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2022 14:46

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Sydin posted:

Go to pretty much any major airport and you'll see a line of taxis lined up at arrivals, totally unoccupied and ready to go, and a bunch of people choosing instead to walk over to the Uber/Lyft pickup spot and hang around for 10-15 minutes waiting for their driver to arrive.

I wasn't going to join in taxibashchat, but then I remembered the one time my car battery died at the airport parking lot, in the winter, at minus 30. Taxis in my city offer boosts at a flat rate, but airport taxis are notorious for not wanting to do anything other than drive back to the main part of the city, since it's a significant chunk of coin for them to do so. I assumed out of the 17 waiting taxi's, one of them would do a quick boost, but none of them would. gently caress em.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2022 23:49

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Blue Moonlight posted:

I got caught by a car rental place today when I assumed the �standard� coverage was what came with the rental, and the �premium� coverage was additional.

Oh no. The �standard� coverage was also additional, and I didn�t figure that out until I was looking at an itemized statement while waiting for the car because trying to get through renting a car with a family waiting to start their vacation fun has a lot of cognitive overhead.

Common cons/scams: anything having to do with vacation.

Your regular car insurance probably covers everything on a rental that their special upsell insurance does. If you paid for your rental on a credit card, your credit card might have extra insurance as well.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2022 12:17

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Weatherman posted:

France, not the UK. And there's doubt now over whether that woman was in fact the person she claimed to be, or that person's niece or something.

It's scams all the way down!

# ¿ Apr 28, 2023 21:08

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

My org also does phishing tests, but they aren't too difficult to detect. There was a period of a few months where some of them were pretty goofy, and I think the person writing them got told to tone it down.

Here is my favourite, about a poor astronaut trapped on the ISS. Will you help get him down?

IT posted:

Dear Mr. Sir,
I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. In the 14-years since
he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $ 15,000,000 USD.
If we can obtain access to this money, we can place a down payment with the Russian Space Authorities for a
Soyuz return flight to bring him back to Earth. I am told this will cost $ 3,000,000 American Dollars. In order to
access the his trust fund we need your assistance.
My colleague and I are willing to transfer you the 3,000,000 USD in order to help bring him home.
Kindly expedite action as we are behind schedule to enable us include downpayment in this financial quarter.
Please click on this link to enter your banking information.
Yours Sincerely, Dr. Bakare Tunde
Astronautics Project Manager

# ¿ Nov 18, 2023 06:27

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# ¿ May 4, 2024 19:27

Poldarn: Feb 18, 2011

Wee Bairns posted:

The trapped astrounaut scam has a kinda interesting history.

That's fascinating.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2023 18:48

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