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Otisburg posted:true story i was once worked at a detachment run by a man who wore the mantle "oldest warrant officer serving in the navy" with the airs and graces of it being a royal title. idk how navy warrant officers work. in the army they are mostly obsolete (with the exception of where they have really specialised roles like aviation or special forces) so in some organisations they will have essentially or literally no responsibilities but are still officers. in afghanistan there was one attached to my unit who was supposedly responsible for all the local contracting, but in every situation I can think of local contracting was handled entirely by my company's XO with no involvement from him. I saw him only twice the entire deployment and when I tried to coax his actual activities out of him his response was basically just "shhhh".
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Feb 3, 2016 09:33
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I sold the same WoW account to like 4 different chinese websites in the mid 2000s. Made more money doing that than i did working.
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Feb 3, 2016 09:36
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:idk how navy warrant officers work. in the army they are mostly obsolete (with the exception of where they have really specialised roles like aviation or special forces) so in some organisations they will have essentially or literally no responsibilities but are still officers. this was a "naval media center," which operated basically as the local TV and Radio station for the base. pretty sure there was zero call for warrants in that job and he was just grandfathered (probably literally) into it because of the way TO&E worked in korea or whatever and had enough good ol' boy connections to basically gently caress around doing whatever he wanted. in spite of the weird environment in that regard, it was one of the coolest jobs in the USAF IMO. I remember on weekend duty minding the station I'd grab big broadcast quality betamax tapes of Star Trek TNG Episodes or 80's movies and watch them in one of the editing bays. Plus I got to be a TV personality/radio DJ/local quasi-celebrity at 19.
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Feb 3, 2016 09:38
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I had a WoW account on ebay for like 6 hours into a one week auction and someone offered $1400. I think we let that guy keep it cause jesus christ
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Feb 3, 2016 09:40
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In primary school i made a fake neopets logon page that emailed your deets to me. I only ever got variations of like gently caress You But i think i was pretty clever for like 9 years old
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Feb 3, 2016 09:48
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i got an ex who thought i was vegetarian for the year we were dating. the whole trick is to tell them one thing and then do the complete opposite of what that fuckin bitch expected.
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Feb 3, 2016 10:11
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I got a text from "my bank" telling me my accounts were frozen. I guess the scammers were expecting me to call back on that number because I went to my branch over the road from my work and found out that no, my accounts were all in order. I can imagine people who don't have that convenience and can't be assed to look up the bank's customer support number would fall for it though.
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Feb 3, 2016 10:21
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Isaac posted:In primary school i made a fake neopets logon page that emailed your deets to me. did this too but stole a whole bunch of virtual neoshit from a ton of people
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Feb 3, 2016 10:29
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have you guys ever heard of this thing called the Something Awful Forums?
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Feb 3, 2016 10:33
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FishionMailed posted:are you really so bereft of anything to do that you sit around talking to foreign scammers for shits? I always tell myself that NEXT TIME I'm going to drag them along for an hour  but whenever I get the call I'm doing something else and don't have the time for it  I hope they phone back...
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Feb 3, 2016 10:38
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Professor Shark posted:I always tell myself that NEXT TIME I'm going to drag them along for an hour back when I was in middle school or high school idk my house got called almost every day for a few weeks by the same telemarketers. I memorised their whole pitch and then one day I picked up the phone and instead of saying "hello" and prompting them to start in on it, I started giving it to them myself. I guess they weren't allowed to just hang up no matter how obviously their time was being wasted, because I think I kept the person on the line for a good half hour insisting that I was calling from Company Name offering Service while they politely tried to convince me that in fact they were, and when I eventually hung up it was only because I couldn't stop myself from laughing.
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Feb 3, 2016 11:20
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~5 years ago i worked for a "timeshare resale/disposal" place that took a fee from people desperate to get out of their timeshares, then deeded timeshares to semi-fictive LLCs to avoid paying maintenance fees, and attempted to resell them to people on ebay. it was weird but whatever the economy was still pretty soft, it payed okay for office drudge work, and a previous work acquaintance had referred me. when I first started it seemed sort of sketch but i didn't know enough about the industry to say for sure, the more i worked there and saw what poo poo this dude got up to, the more convinced i had to get out before i got roped into some level of actual culpability. as a working class dude trying to put food on my family i wasn't able to just peace out on a whim, but eventually gave my notice. didn't burn any bridges, gave two weeks (which they bought me out of) and turned in the standard vaguely nice "thanks for everything pursuing other opportunities" type leter. i recently came to find out that as of last year the guy is locked up for a year and a day for income tax evasion to the tune of almost 2 milly, and still under the sword of Damocles from the state doj for his actual practices running the business. i remember every day in the bullpen he was loudly talking to an architect in Israel designing some ostentatious vacation home for him there, going back and forth the exact specifications for everything and all this and that "the picture window has to face the beach" yadda yadda. i can only imagine that project is on indefinite hold. Owlbear Camus fucked around with this message at 11:32 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 11:29
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It's less of a scam and more like just like a trap for stupid people (which I guess is a scam). There are these guys around town here that go door to door selling a roof ventilation system, what it is is basically a big fan in the roof that sucks in air from outside at a set rate. It neither heats, nor cools the air, just passed it through a filter - the idea is that it can slightly improve the temperature of your home in the right direction in summer as well as keep airflow to improve dust and poo poo in your house. For the price you improve the energy rating of your home, save on electricity and improve conditions in the hayfever season. Sounds pretty good yeah? The basic, most entry level model, cost around 4k, Australian. Going off their own, obviously extremely optimistic numbers, it would take eight years to recoup your investment on the loving thing, and that doesn't include the filters which have to be changed yearly as well. If you're thinking to yourself, well abigserve, that doesn't sound like a scam, and 8 years ROI isn't really that bad for housing related poo poo, here's the trick - on an 8 year ROI, the absolute best warranty they offer on it, an appliance that is intended to be run 24/7*365, was 2 years. And you had to pay extra for the second year.
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Feb 3, 2016 12:32
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Speaking of home poo poo, you know what's a scam? Home appliances that have a 1-year warranty. Never buying a Whirlpool product again, ugh.
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Feb 3, 2016 12:55
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revmoo posted:Speaking of home poo poo, you know what's a scam? Home appliances that have a 1-year warranty. Yeah, on a major appliance only offering a 1-year warranty basically sounds like a tacit admission that you should offer some token warranty, but you know your product is poo poo.
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Feb 3, 2016 12:57
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Car insurance is the biggest loving racket.
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Feb 3, 2016 13:32
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abigserve posted:The basic, most entry level model, cost around 4k, Australian. Going off their own, obviously extremely optimistic numbers, it would take eight years to recoup your investment on the loving thing, and that doesn't include the filters which have to be changed yearly as well. If you're thinking to yourself, well abigserve, that doesn't sound like a scam, and 8 years ROI isn't really that bad for housing related poo poo, here's the trick - on an 8 year ROI, the absolute best warranty they offer on it, an appliance that is intended to be run 24/7*365, was 2 years. And you had to pay extra for the second year. on that note, warranties in general are a scam. at least they are here, since consumer protection law in australia basically makes them meaningless unless they cover user error/negligence.
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Feb 3, 2016 13:33
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HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNKKKK "This is the captain speaking..."
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Feb 3, 2016 15:13
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revmoo posted:Speaking of home poo poo, you know what's a scam? Home appliances that have a 1-year warranty. USA should follow European lead and implement the same consumer protection laws. We get like, 5 or 6 years of actually warranty even though they don't offer it (otherwise they couldn't sell you their own 5 year warranty), because it's common sense that electrical goods should last more than a year. Had £500 fixes to my 2010 iMac done last year without a fuss, for nothing.
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Feb 3, 2016 15:55
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EL BROMANCE posted:USA should follow European lead and implement the same consumer protection laws. We get like, 5 or 6 years of actually warranty even though they don't offer it (otherwise they couldn't sell you their own 5 year warranty), because it's common sense that electrical goods should last more than a year. as an australian-american planning on moving to the US in about a year, I am not looking forward to the fact that retailers will basically be allowed to rob me blind any time they want and I won't have any legal recourse. you'd think a representative government with its constituents' best interests at heart would do something, at some point, ever, to prevent that.
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Feb 3, 2016 16:23
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Is this the Ed, Edd, and Eddy megathread?
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Feb 3, 2016 16:30
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:as an australian-american planning on moving to the US in about a year, I am not looking forward to the fact that retailers will basically be allowed to rob me blind any time they want and I won't have any legal recourse. you'd think a representative government with its constituents' best interests at heart would do something, at some point, ever, to prevent that. The constituents are businesses, not people, ought to know that if you're moving here
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Feb 3, 2016 16:42
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TacticalUrbanHomo posted:as an australian-american planning on moving to the US in about a year, I am not looking forward to the fact that retailers will basically be allowed to rob me blind any time they want and I won't have any legal recourse. you'd think a representative government with its constituents' best interests at heart would do something, at some point, ever, to prevent that. sounds like you got scammed, bitch!!!
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Feb 3, 2016 17:00
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scam backwards is 'macs', wake up iSheeple
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Feb 3, 2016 17:02
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if you live in a first-world nation that isn't America why the hell would you move here? Unless you're rich, that would make sense.
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Feb 3, 2016 17:31
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SilvergunSuperman posted:HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNKKKK That call is extremely my poo poo!
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Feb 3, 2016 17:41
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Doghouse posted:I used to get these young people coming to my apartment in Baltimore asking for my gas/electric bill. They kept talking about how my gas bill was split up and they just needed to verify that my service was being processed correctly or something. I remember once I just stood there and listened to him ramble and I just kept saying "sorry I honestly can't understand what you're talking about" and eventually just closed the door. To this day I don't know know what the hell they were trying to do. this happened to me recently and the guy couldn't even speak enough english to seem legit Tardcore posted:That's probably Just Energy or whatever they call themselves now, basically they sign you up for a scam energy plan. what is in it for these people? this is one of those scams where like, i know it's a scam but i don't know how
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Feb 3, 2016 17:51
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 My favorite new scam
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Feb 3, 2016 18:04
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I don't know how often this actually happens in real life, but my favorite scam is probably the Fiddle game:
As far as I can tell*, no part of this scam is actually illegal. Someone is offering to buy something for a certain price and then they buy it. If it's illegal to mislead someone about the value of something you're selling, then the victim is also breaking the law. * I'm probably wrong
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Feb 3, 2016 21:46
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Komojo posted:I don't know how often this actually happens in real life, but my favorite scam is probably the Fiddle game: Saul Goodman pulls a version of this one with a watch in Better Call Saul season 1. I assume the fiddle is just a strange example, because lol if you don't get super suspicious that 1. some guy forgets his wallet in his car but just so happens to remember to bring his violin into the restaurant with him 2. some violin appraiser just happens to be around to make an offer 3. who would ever offer collateral for this, just go out to your car and get your wallet, its not like they will immediately call the national guard to report you the second you go outside.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:10
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The last time I played eve online like 4 years ago I scammed these 2 brothers out of their entire space industry empire, literally years of work in a videogame. Stolen assets were "equivalent" to about $6000-8000 at the time (though I doubt these guys actually cashed in for all of it and it's impossible to get money back out at that rate). It would have paid for my subscription forever if I'd actually wanted to keep playing that awful game. Hopefully my intervention helped them move on with their lives All they wanted to do was join goonfleet~
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Feb 3, 2016 22:21
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not quite a video game scam persay, in that our victim wasn't the one we tricked, but in a old Ultima Online shard (a free emulated server basically) me and my friends played on, there was at one point armor dye tubs. They removed the ability to gain these items in the game, so the few existing ones were the only ones available, and they were highly sought after and valuable. This dude whose character name was Todd had one displayed on the top of his house. He was an inactive player who only logged in often enough to keep his house from collapsing. We decided to trick a GM into letting us steal it. I made a character named ToddsTamer, meant to appear to be his animal taming alt. I died, and as a ghost was able to enter his house (ghosts can walk through doors). This server didn't allow spell casting through walls, or self res at max honor, so I paged a GM and plead to him that griefers killed me outside my house, and begged for him to res me so that I wouldn't be stuck in the middle of nowhere having to find a place to res. The GM was kind enough to do this. I logged out, and several hours later when I knew a different GM would be on, I petitioned again. The armor dye tub was locked down so only the houses owner could move it. I told the GM that I was on my alt, but wanted to move my tub to my new house, and didn't want to unlock on my main, and then log over to this toon, because I was afraid it might decay (items not locked down that are on the ground decay and go away eventually) The GM obliged, and as soon as he left, i took the tub, and teleported somewhere I could safely stash it. it was exciting for me and my friends
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Feb 3, 2016 22:31
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the classic goonfleet recruitment scam goes like this: HI I WANT TO JOIN GOONS Hi I'm an official recruiter for goonfleet! First I'll need you to supply a full API key for a security audit, to make sure you aren't a spy! (this will actually allow to see how much spacegold the mark has as well as all of his assets in order to size him up for the next bit) SEEMS LEGIT Alright everything looks good! But without a sponsor you'll have to make a security deposit of <conveniently all your money> which will be held in trust by the Bank of Goonfleet. Assuming you don't go shooting blues you'll get it back soon! WOW THAT SOUNDS REALLY SMART! YOU GUYS REALLY HAVE YOUR poo poo TOGETHER! *sends all of his space gold* (EVE background: moving assets around is incredibly tedious and presents a great risk of losing everything) Now we have a freighter program to help newbies like you get your stuff out to our space ASAP so you can start making money and joining fleets! In fact once you join goonfleet people in hisec will be able to shoot you so we insist that you contract all of your belongings in the entire game from every station to us, before we even let you in! THIS ISNT RAISING ANY RED FLAGS AT ALL! *spends several hours digging through horrible interface contracting all assets in the game to the scammer* Ok great we're almost done! People will shoot you if you're in goonfleet when they see you flying out here solo so fly out here first before you even apply! Take X route and spam the password "I M G A Y" constantly in local chat so our security forces know to let you pass! Also be sure to register on somethingawful.com and post a thread introducing yourself in GBS!.... time passes .... WOW YOUR SECURITY JUST KILLED ME REALLY FAST! I DONT THINK THEY GOT THE MESSAGE! COULD YOU TELL THEM TO LET ME THROUGH NEXT TIME? ALSO THEY BANNED ME FROM SA IMMEDIATELY WHATS UP WITH THAT? HELLO? WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER ME Meanwhile if you google "how to join goonfleet" the first link is the official wiki which says in bold red letters at the top that If you gave isk to join GoonWaffe then you were scammed and you're poo poo out of luck. I'm sure idiots continue to fall for this and also they often find their ways to new "recruiters" who manage to scam them again and again with the power of sunk cost fallacy and self-delusion poverty goat fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 22:43
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Man I miss the SA posts from the people that got scammed in eve. Haven't seen one in a few years.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:08
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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ThaGrandCow posted:Man I miss the SA posts from the people that got scammed in eve. Haven't seen one in a few years. at one point ralp swore to find and ban the goons responsible if it happened again so this lands squarely on his plate
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Feb 3, 2016 23:28
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I used to love reading EVE scam stories so I decided to try it once. What an abysmal game. With that as the alternative I can understand why so many people are so stupidly desperate for SC.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:31
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Ryoshi posted:I used to love reading EVE scam stories so I decided to try it once. What an abysmal game. With that as the alternative I can understand why so many people are so stupidly desperate for SC. you really have to find your own fun in eve, since the game itself is pointedly unfun. for me this meant scamming and islamic jihad themed suicide terrorism
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Feb 3, 2016 23:33
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I never liked EVE but I miss the days when there were Goonfleet recruitment drives in GBS with tales of hysterical hedonism
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Feb 3, 2016 23:36
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Student loans
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Feb 3, 2016 23:58
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The Goatfather posted:you really have to find your own fun in eve, since the game itself is pointedly unfun. for me this meant scamming and islamic jihad themed suicide terrorism I thought it was okay for like a day since you can fly around and auto mine or whatever while watching TV or reading a book or something. If it didn't have subscription fees I'd probably log in every once in a while and gently caress around. But seriously lol at the thought of paying monthly for that (or playing enough to extend your sub with imaginary money).
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Feb 3, 2016 23:59
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