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King of Foolians
Mar 16, 2006
Long live the King!
This isn't really a scam as much as it is letting people take advantage of you I guess, but when I was in high school I had signed up to get a couple magazine subscriptions. For one of them (Men's Fitness, I think) I would get calls every couple of months telling me that for being such a good customer I had won 2 free issues of some other magazine. When I would say "ok" they would really quickly mumble out the fine print which was "now that you have agreed to your 2 free issues, we are going to charge you for the remaining 10 issues for the rest of the year.
The calls always had someone that talked really fast and were hard to hear, so i would end up agreeing with them before I even knew what was going on. It took me a time or two before I finally just kept repeating "I'm not interested, cancel everything, I'm not interested, I'm not interested".
Basically don't trust any company that calls you up to tell you you've won anything (except for a contest you entered, or something).

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roffels
Jul 27, 2004

Yo Taxi!

I doubt this is common, but it was pretty dumb.

I was in a corner store, and a man offers to pay for whatever I was buying (probably a soda) - I say "No thanks."

He leaves, i finish my transaction, and outside, he says "Hey, could you give me a few dollars?" His routine doesn't even make sense.

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL
Feb 21, 2006

Holy Moly! DARKSEID IS!


This reminds me of an Edgar Allan Poe piece Raising the Wind, or Diddling as Considered One of the Exact Sciences where he explains the concept and runs through about a dozen modern (for 1843) examples. Some of them were products of their time - I doubt a con artist could get away with pretending to be a salesman on a showroom floor in an era of cameras and coded register logins. But others sound exactly like the same bullshit people pull today. The last example, which reads like contemporaries probably knew who and/or what Poe was specifically referring to, could probably be managed with some savvy.

Not exactly a scam so much as consequence of scamming after the fact: I used to work for a utility and helped track usage theft. It was amusing what people would try and forge when we asked for legal documentation of new rental or ownership. Amazingly (but unsurprising) many owners who were renting out property didn't cover their rear end with appropriate paperwork. They were too lazy to write a formal lease, thus by the time they got non-paying renters evicted they were responsible for hundreds if not thousands of dollars in utilities because they had no legal way to show the property was rented.

Absurd Alhazred
Mar 27, 2010

by Athanatos

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Not exactly a scam so much as consequence of scamming after the fact: I used to work for a utility and helped track usage theft. It was amusing what people would try and forge when we asked for legal documentation of new rental or ownership. Amazingly (but unsurprising) many owners who were renting out property didn't cover their rear end with appropriate paperwork. They were too lazy to write a formal lease, thus by the time they got non-paying renters evicted they were responsible for hundreds if not thousands of dollars in utilities because they had no legal way to show the property was rented.

Seems like they were basically scamming themselves. In my current place, utilities are covered through rent, but in my last place, the owners just had me (and the tenants before and after me) sign up with the provider under my own name and pay directly.

Marenghi
Oct 16, 2008

Don't trust the liberals,
they will betray you
An ad I keep seeing popping up is automated binary trading. It's obviously a scam but I'm not sure which end they're taken the money from. They claim thousands of dollars back if you fail, so are they doing trading through their own platform, and reneging on an obvious lie when the time comes. Or is the bot some sort of virus and they use that to make their money.

MightyJoe36
Dec 29, 2013

:minnie: Cat Army :minnie:

Marenghi posted:

An ad I keep seeing popping up is automated binary trading. It's obviously a scam but I'm not sure which end they're taken the money from. They claim thousands of dollars back if you fail, so are they doing trading through their own platform, and reneging on an obvious lie when the time comes. Or is the bot some sort of virus and they use that to make their money.

Probably some version of a Ponzi scheme. Or a virus.

Carnival of Shrews
Mar 27, 2013

You're not David Attenborough

Marenghi posted:

An ad I keep seeing popping up is automated binary trading. It's obviously a scam but I'm not sure which end they're taken the money from. They claim thousands of dollars back if you fail, so are they doing trading through their own platform, and reneging on an obvious lie when the time comes. Or is the bot some sort of virus and they use that to make their money.

At best, you're gambling, with an ill-defined house edge that requires your short-term prediction of stock movement (human or automated) to be correct more than 50% of the time, just to break even:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2010/07/27/dont-gamble-on-binary-options/#18b6c47b1908

At worst, you're gambling with utter crooks. Such companies often simply harangue their marks into 'investing' as much as they can in one lump, and then never give it back. Either because the mark 'lost' the bet when they didn't, or because the 'paperwork' needed to release their stake suddenly becomes very onerous.

The outright scam side of binary trading largely originated in Israel, powered by the combination of Israel's world-class SEO industry (both whitehat and blackhat), plus a large, easily-recruitable pool of newcomers who usually have good English and a wide variety of other languages, find jobs hard to come by after they arrive, and get desperate enough to put all scruples aside.

Understandably a lot of people in Israel are very angry about this, and even more furious that their government doesn't seem to be too bothered by the fact that an massive international scam is busily shoring up the prejudice that Jewish people are financial shysters (Israel's current immigration policy is importing more young workers, skilled and unskilled, than it can hope to find suitable jobs for -- but there is a strong reluctance to admit this). The Times of Israel estimates that up to 10 000 people may be employed in these operations, and there is evidence that organised criminals in other countries are sending people to Israel to be trained how to do it:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-vast-amoral-binary-options-scam-exposed/

I'm now reminded of the Emergency Locksmith scam, which is truly one for the 21st Century. The blackhat SEO industry in Israel is so good that it's warping the way Google AdWords and mapping works, especially in cases where a potential customer is going to Google for a service at very short notice, and will be desperate enough to pay well over the odds. For example, a locksmith service.

The first article briefly describes the scam (basically, you lock yourself out, desperately click on one of the first few local locksmith links Google finds you, and get a half-competent guy who charges you 5x what a legit locksmith would). The second is an in-depth article and a good read for anyone with even a passing interest in SEO:

http://boingboing.net/2016/02/06/superb-investigative-report-on.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-locksmiths-may-be-out-to-pick-your-pocket-too.html?_r=0

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
I figure this is as decent a place as any for this question.

So I just got a call from PMC processing telling me that my sister is in big trouble for some official complaint that was filed against her. It seemed fishy as hell since they called me when I'm not all that close to my sister and it was a florida number, so I looked them up after. I'm pretty much positive it's a scam from what people are saying, but it's still eating at me.

I'm considering calling the number the lady gave me just to confirm they're trying to scam her, but what should I ask them?

Shrecknet
Jan 2, 2005


Sergeant_Crunch posted:

I figure this is as decent a place as any for this question.

So I just got a call from PMC processing telling me that my sister is in big trouble for some official complaint that was filed against her. It seemed fishy as hell since they called me when I'm not all that close to my sister and it was a florida number, so I looked them up after. I'm pretty much positive it's a scam from what people are saying, but it's still eating at me.

I'm considering calling the number the lady gave me just to confirm they're trying to scam her, but what should I ask them?

Have you called, y'know, your sister, to tell her possibly scary people are looking for her/have her details?

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
Of course, it was the first thing I did, I just wanted to confirm my suspicions.

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



Can you get confirmation that she's your real sister? They might be going for the long con here.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

I figure this is as decent a place as any for this question.

So I just got a call from PMC processing telling me that my sister is in big trouble for some official complaint that was filed against her. It seemed fishy as hell since they called me when I'm not all that close to my sister and it was a florida number, so I looked them up after. I'm pretty much positive it's a scam from what people are saying, but it's still eating at me.

I'm considering calling the number the lady gave me just to confirm they're trying to scam her, but what should I ask them?

This post is a bit confusing because it's not clear why you're being so vague. Is it because you're trying to not post certain specifics in case it would be damaging or embarrassing for your sister? Is it because you don't remember or understand what these people said? If it's for either of those reasons I think it's pretty obvious that my advice would be don't call. In my estimation you haven't established that this call was legitimate in any way, as in, that it was from a legitimate company or government agency or whatever.

The information you've included here doesn't exclude the possibility that you simply got a call from a criminal phone-spamming operation. If this is the case, then calling them back will only serve to let them know that your phone number is live and has a real person at the other end.

Yngwie Mangosteen
Aug 23, 2007
A real person, who is easily duped by vague threats about 'trouble' their sister is in.

Basically, you're an idiot, it's most likely not real.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH
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.

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.

Marenghi
Oct 16, 2008

Don't trust the liberals,
they will betray you
I've always wondered about girls getting desperate lads to order them stuff. Are they not worried about giving some stranger their home address?

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



Amazon wish lists don't reveal the home address at least, which is why they're popular.

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.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

mostlygray posted:

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

This one's not cool, though.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos

Captain Monkey posted:

A real person, who is easily duped by vague threats about 'trouble' their sister is in.

Basically, you're an idiot, it's most likely not real.

I realized it was just a scam, it just really threw me off at the time though since it was so out of the blue. I'm a bit embarrassed that I overreacted to it now.

grack
Jan 10, 2012

COACH TOTORO SAY REFEREE CAN BANISH WHISTLE TO LAND OF WIND AND GHOSTS!

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

I realized it was just a scam, it just really threw me off at the time though since it was so out of the blue. I'm a bit embarrassed that I overreacted to it now.

You didn't give your bank account information to someone who was annoying you over the phone so don't worry, you're not the dumbest person in this thread.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH

House Louse posted:

This one's not cool, though.

The bird was unharmed and happy afterwards. No damage, just issues with the border. It was only in the flashlight for a few minutes as they crossed. It was a last minute thing when they found that they couldn't cross the border with the bird.

She also smuggled a Coatimundi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_coati in a suitcase. It peed all over everything but made a fine pet for someone later. Not cool of course, but this was the '30's. She only smuggled a few things back from communist China in the early '80s under her dress for gifts.

Now that I think of it, she may have been a smuggler as well as a grifter. Again, too many stories.

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

I realized it was just a scam, it just really threw me off at the time though since it was so out of the blue. I'm a bit embarrassed that I overreacted to it now.
That's what makes it a good scam. Because it's *your* sister. If some stranger called me and told me Sergeant_Crunch's sister was in trouble and they needed 10,000 Rand to free her, I'd laugh and hang up on them. But if they were talking about my sister, it'd freak me out a little. Even if I still thought it was a scam.

Lutha Mahtin
Oct 10, 2010

Your brokebrain sin is absolved...go and shitpost no more!

On a related note, one thing I wish everybody in the US knew is that debt collectors are actually regulated, and there is a pretty long list of things they can and can't do when trying to collect a debt from you or someone you know. The fact that there are now loads of phone spammers probably makes things worse, because many people are becoming conditioned to just delete voicemails that sound fishy, when in fact the best thing to do when dealing with someone who claims you owe them money is to document as much as you can about every communication you send to or receive from them. Like, if the phone call Crunch got had actually been a real debt collector, this would be a violation of the FDCPA (sec. 805(b) here). There is a long-running thread in BFC that helped me get a hilariously over-the-top apology letter from a big national debt collection law firm, if anyone's interested in the topic:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3234974

Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Posting fresh from Central Park, NYC and I am pleased to tell goons that the cool-black-kid-giving-away-free-CDs scam is still alive and operating in the year of Our Lord 2016.

Dr. Platypus
Oct 25, 2007

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Posting fresh from Central Park, NYC and I am pleased to tell goons that the cool-black-kid-giving-away-free-CDs scam is still alive and operating in the year of Our Lord 2016.

I didn't know anyone thought it went away, I pass kids doing this every day on the way to work in Chicago

Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

Dr. Platypus posted:

I didn't know anyone thought it went away, I pass kids doing this every day on the way to work in Chicago

I assumed it had gone away because I never encountered it in Europe (where I live) and I thought the scam had passed before I encountered it. Maybe it is just a American spin on that scam. Has anyone encountered it outside the US?

Marenghi
Oct 16, 2008

Don't trust the liberals,
they will betray you

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

I assumed it had gone away because I never encountered it in Europe (where I live) and I thought the scam had passed before I encountered it. Maybe it is just a American spin on that scam. Has anyone encountered it outside the US?

I've not heard of it in Europe but I know people got caught by it before in America, recently too.

photomikey
Dec 30, 2012

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

Posting fresh from Central Park, NYC and I am pleased to tell goons that the cool-black-kid-giving-away-free-CDs scam is still alive and operating in the year of Our Lord 2016.
This is a scam? I thought it was people trying to promote their own music. What do they do when you take the CD? I am not interested in lovely music, so I've never taken one, but I've seen people take them with no bad juju.

Marenghi
Oct 16, 2008

Don't trust the liberals,
they will betray you

photomikey posted:

This is a scam? I thought it was people trying to promote their own music. What do they do when you take the CD? I am not interested in lovely music, so I've never taken one, but I've seen people take them with no bad juju.

The scam is similar to the "free " rose or bracelet here in Europe. You're handed the item as a gift but then they demand money for the present you didn't ask for. There's nothing to stop you not paying but they rely on the fact enough people will pay them rather than put up with the pestering.

Voyager I
Jun 29, 2012

This is how your posting feels.
🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥
I almost fell for one of the Door-to-Door Electricity Middleman scams last year, having jumped though all the hoops and been on the cusp of finalizing the agreement, when I told the salesman I needed to see the fine print of the contract before I signed it. He didn't have the details available, became visibly frustrated when I insisted that I simply couldn't sign a contract without reading it, and left in a huff. I didn't even realize the offers were truly scams until reading this thread, but I guess I managed to just barely not dumb enough to avoid it.

Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

photomikey posted:

This is a scam? I thought it was people trying to promote their own music. What do they do when you take the CD? I am not interested in lovely music, so I've never taken one, but I've seen people take them with no bad juju.

Someone in this thread said the CDs are sometimes blank or have malware on them.

Snow Cone Capone
Jul 31, 2003


I'm pretty sure "malware/trojans on a mix CD" was a central plot point on that show Mr. Robot.

I remember Nine Inch Nails did an ARG for one of their albums and part of it involved USB drives being left in like concert hall bathrooms and stuff. The whole thing was really cool and pretty involved (including crazy poo poo like static at the end of a track that revealed images when run through a spectral analysis) but if I found a thumbdrive on the ground somewhere you bet your rear end I'm scanning the poo poo out of it on an un-networked beater laptop before it goes anywhere near a real computer.

Antifreeze Head
Jun 6, 2005

It begins
Pillbug
I like going to places in the US where guys are hocking their CD because I pay them in assortments of Canadian change. Once I run out I just say no, though I've had a few people accuse me of being racist because I won't buy their CD.

If you actually like that music, I figured you could scam them back by getting some fake business cards printed up as if you worked at a radio station and exchanging those.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

Speaking of New York, there were a bunch of street vendors approaching me selling stuff on my one visit there. Are they mostly legit, or just way overpricing, or scammers?

mostlygray posted:

The bird was unharmed and happy afterwards. No damage, just issues with the border. It was only in the flashlight for a few minutes as they crossed. It was a last minute thing when they found that they couldn't cross the border with the bird.

Please don't white knight animal cruelty.

cumshitter
Sep 27, 2005

by Fluffdaddy

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

I assumed it had gone away because I never encountered it in Europe (where I live) and I thought the scam had passed before I encountered it. Maybe it is just a American spin on that scam. Has anyone encountered it outside the US?

It's still going at Venice Beach as well. I clench my fists whenever I walk by them now because simply letting your arms hang isn't enough. I've had those guys bend down and try to shove the CD in my hand like they were expecting me to reflexively grip it or something.

cumshitter fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Apr 29, 2016

Josef K. Sourdust
Jul 16, 2014

"To be quite frank, Platinum sucks at making games. Vanquish was terrible and Metal Gear Rising: Revengance was so boring it put me to sleep."

cumshitter posted:

I clench my fists whenever I walk by them now because simply letting your arms hang isn't enough. I've had those guys bend down and try to shove the CD in my hand like they were expecting me to reflexively grip it or something.

I know what you mean. I put hands in pockets because if they press something on to you and it falls then it's "Yeah, man, that CD's damaged now."

Antifreeze Head posted:

I've had a few people accuse me of being racist because I won't buy their CD.

Yeah, the guy said as I was walking away "Hey, I'm one of those good black men". Which was a sharp dig. And of course he wasn't (not strictly even a petty criminal but a huckster). I bit my tongue and walked away with a smile because getting into a dispute would a) have made me look like a prick and b) solved nothing and won over no one. :(

EL BROMANCE
Jun 10, 2006

COWABUNGA DUDES!
🥷🐢😬



That's the only way to deal with it. They say something provocative in order to get you to respond, and then they're in control. Just walk away.

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

EL BROMANCE posted:

That's the only way to deal with it. They say something provocative in order to get you to respond, and then they're in control. Just walk away.

At least with the rose/herb scam in Europe, you can always count on the local population to back you up against the gypsy no matter what :smith:

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BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

House Louse posted:

Speaking of New York, there were a bunch of street vendors approaching me selling stuff on my one visit there. Are they mostly legit, or just way overpricing, or scammers?

Counterfeit merchandise usually.

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