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Araenna posted:I got an e-mail a few days ago from a senator (that somehow ended up in my spam folder) about a class action lawsuit settlement I might be eligible for against Nigerian scammers. Pfft, only a Senator?. I got an e-mail from Michelle Obama about it. 
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Sep 11, 2016 03:06
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Got an email yesterday claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency. It said that it was an Interac email money transfer (actual thing you can use to send money to people, and have it deposited easy peasy right into their account). It looked quite impressive. Well formatted, and no spelling errors. But, there were a couple very obvious red flags: 1) They didn't bother to spoof the email header, so it appeared to be coming from a hotmail.co.uk address 2) They didn't bother to obfuscate the obviously malicious link. 3) No French translation 4) The CRA has access to my bank account on their own, and any money they have for me just shows up in there Why would they bother making the body of the email so well written, and so well formatted, but still allow it to appear to be coming from a UK email address? Better luck next time dummies.
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Sep 11, 2016 07:41
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Araenna posted:I got an e-mail a few days ago from a senator (that somehow ended up in my spam folder) about a class action lawsuit settlement I might be eligible for against Nigerian scammers. When you think about it, this is actually kind of loving genius. Who better to target for your stupid scam than people that have fallen for them before. Pure evil, but also pure genius. Kind of like those companies that offer to refinance your student loans. Edit: B33rChiller posted:3) No French translation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5l0PD80u9k Captain Bravo fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Sep 11, 2016 |
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Sep 11, 2016 08:13
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B33rChiller posted:Why would they bother making the body of the email so well written, and so well formatted, but still allow it to appear to be coming from a UK email address? um everybody knows that canada ultimately derives its power from THE QUEEN so i'm pretty sure you're in the clear here. poo poo even americans like me know about that 
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Sep 12, 2016 05:59
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Bwahahaha! That's awesome! How did I ever forget about that movie?
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Sep 12, 2016 23:59
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Thanks for those replies. So what is the economic incentive to pay for posters? I know most of the sovcit stuff is scam/paranoia/libertarian/magical thinking so what's the payoff for putting up enigmatic posters? Quote-Unquote posted:You're trying to rationalise the actions of completely insane people dude. It's a little more complicated than that. There are definitely people trying to profit from the sovcit stuff by selling informational materials, as described in the article from the Canadian judge someone linked earlier. Some people are naive and desperate and get duped. Others have always been anti-government, and this jives with their worldview as a way to stick it to the man. And yeah, some folks are just mentally ill. There's a great Planet Money Podcast on it that has elements of all of these things.
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Sep 13, 2016 19:09
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Great bit about Soverign Citizens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W_iok4UBLk
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Sep 13, 2016 23:13
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Cat Army
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I just fell for the online driver's license service scam. There's a bunch of phishing sites that pop up pretending to be official DMV sites offering online license services like renewal or address change and only wind up charging you $20 for a useless (and normally free) guidebook and hoovering up a ton of your personal information to boot. I should have seen it coming but it was late and I had a head full of Nyquil, so shame on me. Now I get to experience the joys of identity theft. At least I cancelled the card and notified all the credit bureaus and my personal bank, so hopefully there's enough stopgaps in place to prevent anything serious.
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Sep 14, 2016 14:56
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https://soundcloud.com/replyall/76-lost-in-a-cab That short podcast came out recently and is pretty closely related. Their main focus is a lost and found site, but they talk about how sites like the one you fell for can basically just pay money to scam people on google.
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Sep 14, 2016 15:19
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turbomoose posted:One that I heard about from my grandparents was this: From a while ago but too good not to share. This happened to my wife. Her grandma is 95 and got a call that she was in jail, needed bail money, and was too embarrassed to call her folks. Note that my wife is 32. Note that she has a husband she can call for bail money. The funny part of it is that the grandmother hauled rear end down to the nearest police station and raised a huge stink when they said they weren't holding my wife. Just refused to leave the station for hours and by all accounts was a real pain in the balls. In the end someone got ahold of me and I had contact info for her boss, so I got him to tell her to call grandma and assure her that she wasn't in jail.
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Sep 14, 2016 18:41
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The other day we actually had a lady get hit with the whole 'you owe money so go buy itunes cards to pay us so we don't arrest you' IRS scam at my job. I feel so bad for her, if I'd been inside where she was ringing up I would have asked why she was buying so many itune gift cards, and I don't understand why no one did, it's extremely uncommon at my job for someone to buy that kind of gift card so  . I only found out about it when I came back from being outside and service desk told me how she was trying to find out if there was any balance left on the cards (obviously there wasn't.) Poor lady.
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Sep 14, 2016 18:57
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MightyJoe36 posted:Great bit about Soverign Citizens. If this isn't P Barnes you have done us all a disservice. E This is acceptable.
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Sep 14, 2016 21:44
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This compilation is pretty great not least because the hill almost all these assholes choose to die on is a simple license checkpoint. Also, I'm still not sure that first cop isn't actually Robert Patrick. https://youtu.be/QCozh_vbYdM
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Sep 14, 2016 22:35
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Not technically SovCit, but always fun to link in these conversations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pBougV1JK4
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Sep 14, 2016 23:04
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shame on an IGA posted:This compilation is pretty great not least because the hill almost all these assholes choose to die on is a simple license checkpoint. Also, I'm still not sure that first cop isn't actually Robert Patrick. There should be a law about using a taser on SovCits. Namely, a law that states that police must taser them at any and all opportunities.
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Sep 14, 2016 23:46
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebt0l8s3aMQ&t=168s i feel that without making joinder upon my bro p barnes, i have failed to lighthouse this thread upon the sea
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Sep 15, 2016 06:07
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Cyrano4747 posted:From a while ago but too good not to share. This happened to my grandfather only I was supposedly in a jail in Mexico for drugs. 'Keep him.' *click* (He called me to make sure I wasn't actually in jail after.)
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Sep 15, 2016 11:53
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Imaduck posted:It's a little more complicated than that. There are definitely people trying to profit from the sovcit stuff by selling informational materials, as described in the article from the Canadian judge someone linked earlier. Some people are naive and desperate and get duped. Others have always been anti-government, and this jives with their worldview as a way to stick it to the man. And yeah, some folks are just mentally ill. Oh yeah I don't doubt that dude. I mean the people putting up the billboards that have absolutely no information about what it is or where to learn more, and are surprisingly difficult to find further information about by searching (in that the first few pages of results tend to be news articles talking about how stupid these billboards are), are probably not trying to profit off of sovcit crap. If they are, they're even dumber than I thought (which I thought was impossible, but I'm ready to believe). Your general lolbertarian/sovcit scammer at least provides you with some way to buy their kool aid.
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Sep 16, 2016 13:53
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Over the course of a rather long job search, I've received maybe 10 calls/emails from a company called Primerica. It's loving ridiculous. NO WHERE on my resume, in my job experience or in my skill set is there anything whatsoever to suggest I would be good at sales or slinging life insurance. I'm a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and pre-press specialist. That's all I've ever done. I couldn't figure out why this "company" kept contacting me and red flags went up right away the first time they did because I could recognize the standard MLM pitch and buzzwords. "You'll get out of it what you put in", "Your work determines your success", etc. I've even asked the last few people who've contacted me "What exactly did you see on my resume or LinkedIn profile that would suggest I would be good at this?" They talk about "work ethic" and how "sharp" and "accomplished" I seem. Seems like bullshit. Near as I can tell, I guess it's a MLM based insurance company, although I'm not sure how that would work. I guess you get "points" or whatever from people you recruit and if they sell a (probably worthless) policy, you get money from their sales. Google turns up the usual "war of the message board comments" that usually surrounds poo poo like Amway and Herbalife. Anyone know about Primerica? Are the policies worthless? Is at an MLM? Anyone else get these stupid calls? Edit: guess I could have just Wiki'd it. Yes it's bullshit. Anyone here actually try it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primerica
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Sep 18, 2016 17:24
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BiggerBoat posted:Over the course of a rather long job search, I've received maybe 10 calls/emails from a company called Primerica. It's loving ridiculous. NO WHERE on my resume, in my job experience or in my skill set is there anything whatsoever to suggest I would be good at sales or slinging life insurance. I'm a freelance illustrator, graphic designer and pre-press specialist. That's all I've ever done. Got several calls from them over the years. Same thing; nothing in my resume even remotely qualified me for a job, nor was I actually looking. I coworker of mine called Primerica "the Amway of financial advisers."
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Sep 18, 2016 18:25
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Primerica is better described as a financial services company that works like a real estate firm. They're legitimate and they'll hire just about anyone but to make a living you have to work your rear end off as a commissioned salesman or recruit others to do the same.
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Sep 18, 2016 20:15
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grack posted:Primerica is better described as a financial services company that works like a real estate firm. They're legitimate and they'll hire just about anyone but to make a living you have to work your rear end off as a commissioned salesman or recruit others to do the same. The fact that MLM schemes are generally legal does not make them legitimate. They are at best legal scams.
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Sep 18, 2016 22:53
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Jeb Bush 2012 posted:The fact that MLM schemes are generally legal does not make them legitimate. They are at best legal scams. The fact that people don't like MLM doesn't make them scams (though many are). Primerica's been around for like, 40 years in a really highly regulated industry. They've been in Canada for 20+ years, and our finance industry is much more highly regulated than in the US. I mean, "legal scam" and all that bullshit but they stand up to very close scrutiny from a regulatory standpoint. (I'm a financial advisor and run in to them on a semi-regular basis).
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Sep 19, 2016 02:40
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I just got a voicemail to the effect of "you broke the law, pay up ASAP or face the consequences, we're not messing around buddy!" Pretty standard scam stuff, but the voicemali was in the jankiest computer voice you could imagine. like "Fitter Happier" from OK Computer but female. I guess maybe if you're going to fall for that scam, you're so far gone that a rusty rear end computer voice isn't going to be enough tip you off, which is actually kind of sad to think about
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Sep 19, 2016 07:51
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grack posted:The fact that people don't like MLM doesn't make them scams (though many are). MLM is a legal thing, yeah. The problem with it is that it's a highly inefficient method of bringing a product from producer to consumer (5-10 people each taking a cut does not make for great margins!), whereas it's a pretty simple method of adding a product changing hands to an illegal pyramid scheme, thereby making it legal (Not a lawyer and not sure if I'm getting it 100% right, but I believe that's the gist of it).
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Sep 19, 2016 10:29
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Some lady better stop using an incomplete email address (mine) if she's serious about Earning Money Doing What She Loves!!!!
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Sep 19, 2016 13:17
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It's all fun and games til you start getting hate mail from people she spams... then it's purestrain gold
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Sep 19, 2016 21:31
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I had an amazing email to my work address today:Greg posted:Re: money Good old Greg.
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Sep 19, 2016 21:55
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I'd listen. He sounds like he means business.
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Sep 20, 2016 01:27
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was there an invoice attached? don't leave us hanging!! 
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Sep 20, 2016 01:41
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Griefor posted:MLM is a legal thing, yeah. The problem with it is that it's a highly inefficient method of bringing a product from producer to consumer (5-10 people each taking a cut does not make for great margins!), whereas it's a pretty simple method of adding a product changing hands to an illegal pyramid scheme, thereby making it legal (Not a lawyer and not sure if I'm getting it 100% right, but I believe that's the gist of it). MLM isn't a Ponzi scheme in the end; there are similarities but Ponzi basically paid the first investors with later investors. It looked like the promises were kept but they weren't. In MLM they aren't technically committing fraud because you are ultimately signing up to buy something and resell it. It's still scammy as hell but if I can convince you to buy something worth $25 from me for $1,000 then well...caveat emptor, you know? MLM falls into a weird grey area and I guarantee you that they consult with lawyers to keep it within the bounds of the law.
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Sep 20, 2016 02:51
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ToxicSlurpee posted:MLM isn't a Ponzi scheme in the end; there are similarities but Ponzi basically paid the first investors with later investors. It looked like the promises were kept but they weren't. Yeah, their business model is to use you to use your family and friends to buy stuff at a ridiculous markup, and convince you that the only way to get ahead is to recruit more suckers and buy more motivational tapes. Fraud, not technically, but still pretty lovely.
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Sep 20, 2016 02:57
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Griefor posted:it's a pretty simple method of adding a product changing hands to an illegal pyramid scheme, thereby making it legal (Not a lawyer and not sure if I'm getting it 100% right, but I believe that's the gist of it). ToxicSlurpee posted:MLM isn't a Ponzi scheme in the end; there are similarities but Ponzi basically paid the first investors with later investors. It looked like the promises were kept but they weren't. A pyramid scheme isn't a Ponzi scheme either; they are distinct. MLM really is a pyramid scheme with an attached product. The guides to making money on MLM are very explicit about all the money you cannot make by selling the product ever, only by recruiting. It is a recruiting job where you recruit other recruiters, period. It is a pyramid scheme. It isn't enforced for the same reason that felony poppy seed possession isn't enforced, which is institutional inertia.
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Sep 20, 2016 03:28
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Phyzzle posted:A pyramid scheme isn't a Ponzi scheme either; they are distinct. MLM really is a pyramid scheme with an attached product. The guides to making money on MLM are very explicit about all the money you cannot make by selling the product ever, only by recruiting. It is a recruiting job where you recruit other recruiters, period. It is a pyramid scheme. It isn't enforced for the same reason that felony poppy seed possession isn't enforced, which is institutional inertia. This is a good post about what is wrong with MLMs in general, but there is another piece which is even worse. The scummiest part of MLM's isn't the focus of the MLM (vacations, health potions, whatever), but the fact that once they have you, they put a vacuum into your wallet until nothing is left. Sure, you might have signed up for Primerica because you wanted a financial education and to build wealth, and you were ok with hitting up friends and family to buy stuff, and of course you redid your mortgage, credit card debt and car loans into one bundle to lower your high interest debt, and you are buying their insurance, etc. The problem comes when your upline wants more. First it is tapes or videos or whatever they use now. With MLMs, the higher ups, or diamonds or whatever they call the people at the top are worshiped. So of course you buy the videos and watch them, and sign up to get the new ones every month. Then there are the sales conferences. They are out of town and expensive, but your upline requires it and if you don't put down the cash, you lack proper motivation. All of the above happened to friends of mine. And for some MLM's the upline/downline hierarchy is stable across multiple MLM companies. So you might be buying multiple health potions, vitamines, organic coffee or whatever. Basically signing up for an MLM is like getting a stamp that says 'sucker' put on your forehead, and the organizations within the MLMs work to exploit that however they can.
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Sep 20, 2016 05:11
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MLM has the business model backwards; if you're a salesperson for a simple product, you should get paid a salary or hourly wage like you would with any other sales job. Instead, they ask you to front the costs for the product, and take all the risk if it doesn't sell. What's worse is that the products are typically just highly marked-up versions of products you can get at normal retailers for cheaper. What really makes them horrible is that pretty much no seller actually turns a profit with MLMs. quote:The nonprofit Consumer Awareness Institute analyzed available data published by the MLM companies themselves. Of the companies surveyed, they reported the least successful was Amway/Quixtar where 99.99% of distributors lose money, and the most successful was Herbalife, where 99.42% of distributors lose money. quote:In a Wisconsin lawsuit, the tax returns of the top 200 of 20,000 network marketing participants were examined by the Attorney General. The average income of this top 1% was -$900. MLMs are borderline legal in the US, and often cross the line to illegal with misleading advertising, price fixing, and pyramid scheme practices. The Wiki article actually has some good info about this. They're also often tied to pseudoscientific and otherwise fraudulent products. Imaduck fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Sep 20, 2016 |
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Sep 20, 2016 06:17
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Lutha Mahtin posted:was there an invoice attached? don't leave us hanging!! I almost got a virus from opening an "invoice." Somebody finally got lucky matching vendors and institutional email addresses: everyone at my school (teachers and staff) started getting mails about unpaid bills to the local book store. Our admin is really loving bad at paying bills and I've been confronted with 9mo bills when I've gone to the shop in the past. I swore and clicked it without thinking but fortunately Gmail saved me.
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Sep 20, 2016 06:44
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MLM schemes tend to focus heavily on the recruiting part (which is the pyramid scheme), while practically ignoring the selling of products (which is just there to make it legal). Also, they're not just using an army of lawyers to keep the MLM scheme within the boundaries of the law. Some (Amway/Quixtar in particular) have a huge political lobby behind them to keep the law from being altered to make their scheme illegal.
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Sep 20, 2016 08:25
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Sanford posted:I had an amazing email to my work address today: If he ever offers you Baileys from a shoe, you'd best stop loving around.
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Sep 20, 2016 10:50
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Thanks to the MLM de jour, I'm making more money than I ever did at my old job!! You should come work with me so you can too!! By the way, did you know that grocery stores just throw away slightly moldy food? It really helps stretch your grocery budget when you need it, which we definitely don't, because I am making six figures selling magic health water
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Sep 20, 2016 14:57
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MLM encourages guilting everybody you know into buying from you or being recruited by you. This alienates your loved ones which only leaves you with the MLM cult and nothing else. I've lost friends to it, actually; I'd ask them to quit spamming me with that crap because first off it was typically things I didn't even want and second off it was MLM. They never did then acted like I was the jerk when I blocked their phone or Facebook. It's technically true that people with enough people under them can make bank but that's only ever early adopters or founders making that. Almost nobody else does. It's like when a store tells you everything is up to 80% off. If everything is at least 1% off some previous price and one thing is, in fact, 80% off they aren't technically lying.
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Sep 20, 2016 19:35
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