The Great Scam!!

[zephae]

A friend of mine kept getting calls at work from a supposed "law firm" telling her that she had an overdue payday loan and that if she didn't send them payment immediately, they would be filing action in civil court. While she had had several payday loans before, she checked her credit report often enough to be sure of which loans she had outstanding, which at the time was none. When she asked them to send her the address and phone number of their office, the name of the person to contact for further information about the case, verification that she had ever signed for the alleged loan, or copies of the court papers that were being filed, the person on the other end got very upset and hung up on her only to call back and do the same damn thing multiple times over the course of several months. I told her to send a fraud complaint to the FBI and have since heard nothing from these obvious scammers.

 

[Booze Zombie]

So guys(and mythical creature they call "woman") what scams have you been presented with or have you been in one yourself?

My dad had the same one, apparently he was from Oxford. Pfft. Had my dad on the phone for half an hour, making him look at junk folders with my dad going "ooh, there's loads of these files, aaah" with me just facepalming next to him. Then he reached the point where the guy told him he needed to buy a program to fix his PC... he didn't, he put the phone down.

my sister was selling those stupid pyramid scheme knives for a while, but otherwise no. also, women are not mythical creatures. thought you ought to know.

I wouldn't exactly be bothered if they were mythical, to be very frank with you.

 

[Hamish Durie]

the microsoft scam.......
I love that one Why?
Because he kept asking me to do things and i just kept half grunting into the phone(which he mustve takin for uh'ha and ok) well after about 20 minutes of it he finnaly asks me for my information.
Maaf saya tidak berbahasa inggris (sorry I don't speak english)

always knew learning indonesian would come in handy

 

[LetalisK]

My mother was tricked by some professional thugs. You see, when you live in a fucking Warzone that is Mexico city, scammers get better, and they are good, so to make a long story short they tricked her and took her computer and iPhone, Found them using iCal, fuckers have 5-10 years of prison, not that it matters in this country.

How was a calendar app used to find them?

 

[Dr. Pepper Unlimited]

Mostly just the usual UK lotto (I don't gamble) or the magical Nigerian princess. I had one for a while that talked about my long-last sister that was dying from cancer and she needed money for an operation to save her life. That was a new one...

 

[arsenicCatnip]

My store keeps getting automated calls from some credit card company saying that there's a problem with our account, and will we please enter our card number and our store's phone number so it can be fixed.

Apparently these sorts of things are prevalent enough that Sbux corporate issued instructions on how to deal with people calling and requesting store card/banking info.
"DO ask for a phone number, to confirm that everything is legitimate. If it's legitimate, the person on the phone won't hesitate to give you the number.

DO NOT return the call. It may be a scammer charging Starbucks for a fraudulent conference call."

 

[OverweightWhale]

I keep getting emails from "Blizzard" telling me that my World Of Warcraft account is compromised or that there has been recent activity on it.

 

[acer840]

I keep getting emails from "Blizzard" telling me that my World Of Warcraft account is compromised or that there has been recent activity on it.

I got that one too once. Funny thing was I didn't have a WoW account at the time of the E-mail.

 

[savandicus]

Mostly just the usual UK lotto (I don't gamble) or the magical Nigerian princess. I had one for a while that talked about my long-last sister that was dying from cancer and she needed money for an operation to save her life. That was a new one...

The lottery isnt really gambling, its more a tax on the stupid. Take the UK lotto for example, you pay £1 to recieve £0.40. Its basically the same offer as paying someone a pound for a 1% chance of getting £40 only the maths is hidden behind brightly coloured balls.

Comparing the lottery to a roulette wheel which if you pay £1 on average you recieve 97.3p and you realise how hillarously silly it is to ever play the lottery.

On topic, The only scams i've seen have been over email. Your world of warcraft account has been hacked/found botting/gold selling/whatever and is being investigated, just prove that your the owner of the account by going to www.worldofwarcrajt-account-admin.battlenet.support.game.com to prove that its you!

Half of them dont even have correct spelling and grammer for the contents of the email. Also there are an aweful lot of hot woman who want to talk to me because they've found out how amazingly handsome i am and they all want to reconnect with me again. Its had being so good looking but its a curse I just have to live with.

 

[Apollo45]

Every year without fail we get the same guys showing up at our apartment selling "magazines". They say they're some poor kids trying to make their way back in life and whatnot, but the guys here before us warned us about them, just as the guys before them warned them (apparently they had paid for a couple magazines and never got them). So, every year without fail, one of us answers the door and talks to the guy for about twenty minutes. We get him to explain what magazines he has, what our options are, how much the magazines cost, and so on. The trick is that we know the magazines all "cost" $20, so we all say we can spare about $15. They try to get us to pay $20, and eventually we decide we can't do it.

Oh, but maybe one of my roommates can afford it; the one talking goes and gets the other guy, and him and the scammer go through the whole process all over again. By the time the third guy comes up and makes them go through the same thing usually they're pretty pissed off. At the end the last guy finally says, "so, we know you're trying to scam us. We've been through this multiple times already. Please get off of our porch" and walks off.

Although last year the guy ended up pulling a knife on us and threatening to 'cut us up' if we didn't give him some money... Probably not the best situation ever, but I'd heard what he was saying and when I walked up with my own set of knives (a couple buck knives clipped to my belt and sharpening a Ka-bar on a whetstone on the way up: he was carrying this basic 4" flip knife) and my other roommate came up with an aluminum baseball bat, the guy turned tail and booked it out of there. We called the cops after that, and the roommate talking to him was a bit on edge, but damn was it fun to see his face go from threatening to ghost-white "oh crap I don't wanna die, please don't kill me" pale in the blink of an eye. I will admit though, I slept with a shotgun under by bed for a few weeks after that, just in case.

 

[Queen Michael]

They told me somebody had stolen my eBay account. I've never had one.

 

[No_Remainders]

So about 5-10 minutes ago i got a phone call from "Microsoft Tech Support" witch i found really interesting ( thinking why would the need to phone me). Now here is where it got interesting the person kept on telling me that there is something wrong with my computer but wouldn't tell me witch one so i thought that i would amuse my self to see where this is going. It got really interesting when the man would not tell me what the problem is and kept on telling me to open stuff. long story short i phoned Microsoft just to be safe and reported the scam.

So guys(and mythical creature they call "woman") what scams have you been presented with or have you been in one yourself ?

I've been getting that exact call almost every day for a month, my way of dealing with it is as follows.

Step 1: Answer, sound interested.
Step 2: When they ask to turn your computer on, you say "ok, be right back", and place the phone down. Leave.
Step 3: Come back five minutes later, if they are still on the line, say "it's loading now, it's been very slow recently, it must be those problems you were talking about!"
Step 4: Say "be right back". Place phone down again. Leave.
Step 5: Come back five minutes later, if they are still on the line, say "Yeah I'm not buying it." and hang up.


It wastes their money, so it's good.

 

[neonsword13-ops]

A loan company keeps calling my cell asking for a "Melissa".

I have never known or will be a Melissa. Good day to you, COMPANY SCUM!

 

[SpaceGnome]

oh god i had the same people call me
"your computer bas contracted virus sir possibly from a website"
"oh really what computer would that be?"
"a windows system it is a very bad virus"
"oh well i should do something about this then"
*put phone down, walk away*
"good news its a mac"
*listen to the annoyance when they find that you have wasted 10mins of there time *

 

[Jonluw]

I keep getting mails from noreply@blizzard.com saying my battle.net account info has been changed.

I don't think I play a single blizzard game, and I certainly don't have a battle.net user.

 

[Pat8u]

Yea I got the same one knew it was a scam since microsoft treats you as anonymus So I put the phone down for 5 mins and when I came back he was still talking so I hang up

 

[Hawgh]

There's an endless stream of indubitably sincere emails informing me that my battle.net account has been compromised. It's so lucky that there are so many different people keeping their eyes on that.

Also recently got one informing me that a battle.net account belonging to someone else had been hijacked, and asked for my help. I was rather confused.