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."

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

Absurd Alhazred posted:

That's weird, though; I mean, the money still gets put into their account, so it's easy to trace where it went. Yeah, you're implicated, but so are they.

Do you have to do any kind of a captcha? I've heard of sites getting visitors to do those to automate spam, maybe they're using you to "automate" some illegitimate purchase?

Speakers out of the back of a van used to have a neat wrinkle - they'd buy an ad that looked like a review in actual audiophile magazines (which had tiny readership and gave zero fucks about screening ads) and show that to marks. Real magazine, glossy pages, actual articles on other pages (well, you know, only as "actual" as audiophiles get).

My great-aunt ended up going a bit crazy and sending about half her retirement out to various hucksters: you won the Canadian lottery (send us $1,000 to cover paperwork and we'll send you your $10,000 prize!), psychic readings (once you start forgetting stuff it's really easy to be impressed with someone's hot read when they call you back and tell you everything you told them), relics of dubious origin (her being a good Catholic and all). The psychic reading stuff wasn't the friendly sort either, I believe it involved a pair who sort of good cop/bad cop manipulated her with promises of good fortune and happiness or guilt, verbal abuse, and constant hassling (calling back over and over again if she didn't send money right away). All over the phone or by mail.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 07:43

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:51

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

feedmegin posted:

I had something similar happen to me - an ad advertising a suspiciously cheap place to rent, but because of 'timewasters' they wanted me to put a �500 deposit down before being allowed to view the place which obviously they would repay if I didn't want to take it.

I assume that if I'd been dumb enough to send them the money they would have given me some random bloke's address and just not turned up at the agreed time!

Probably, but maybe if you were dumb enough to send them money they'd also see if you were dumb enough to try to buy a house they "own"? Really a timeshare or rental property, but they'll make up a story for why they'll take 25% of its worth as cash and oh, we have a great realtor, you don't need your own...

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 15:05

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

Well I mean not cash bills but some amount you could write a check for without getting a bank involved that would do due diligence.

And I know they're unlikely to target renters with this scam you just reminded me of a scam I'd heard of and for some reason I tried to segue.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2016 16:14

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

Lawsuits by creditors of delinquents have skyrocketed and are public record. Don't need to dig through garbage to see who is in debt.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 01:40

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

Regarding for-profit schools:
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/12/455749456/have-we-lost-a-constitutional-right-in-the-fine-print

The story is about binding arbitration but includes this about a for-profit school:

quote:

Tuition was about $24,000 a year. And they said, that when they enrolled, they were promised that their education would result in jobs at the end of - when they graduated. But when they actually enrolled in the school after taking out these loans, which were a big burden for them, they first of all, were alarmed at the quality of the education. So they said the classrooms despite, you know, having paid that $24,000 a year, they said they often arrived in classrooms to find that the mannequins - so the anatomical mannequins that they used to practice the surgical procedures. The mannequins would often be missing crucial organs. So in place of where a kidney should be, or a liver, they found an empty hole. And some of the more enterprising instructors tried to improvise. And one of them knitted, at home out of felt, organs to put in place of those. And sometimes they had to use photocopied pieces of paper that had the tools on them instead of the actual instruments. So they, you know, they didn't have that tactile ability.

DAVIES: So they were picking up a picture of a scalpel rather than a scalpel?

SILVER-GREENBERG: Yes, a picture of a scalpel rather than a scalpel. And then they went to graduate. So Debbie Brenner hoped that, you know, despite what seemed like the paltry surgical supplies, and the kind of sketchy education, that she would be able to get a job because she trained really hard and she thought that she'd be able to get an internship. But she finishes her coursework and she can't get an internship at all. And she ends up volunteering at a local hospital and someone takes her aside one day, she says, and kind of breaks the news. Which is they say look, Debbie, you know, we get that you're a hard worker, but you're never going to get a job because our hospital is very skeptical of all graduates of this program. And the reputation of the program is so bad that you're never going to get a job.

In case you try to sue them they have a clause in your enrollment that forces you to use binding arbitration. Guess how that worked out for Debbie and her colleagues?

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 06:50

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

JoelJoel posted:

(though not mentioning the obvious money laundering bit)

It's not money laundering, they send a check that can take weeks to bounce, but bounce it will. The funds will even be made available to you by your bank (by law) but when the mail finally gets from your bank to Sixth National Bank of Bumfuck and back, your bank will retrieve the funds from your account.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 14:04

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

You win your girl's necklace back, but they steal your act and tour the world under your name.

https://youtu.be/l-O5IHVhWj0

Shell game isn't always run with zero winners. You might even turn up 2 balls. After all, if you guess correctly they just have to reveal the other ball.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 03:23

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

Jasper Tin Neck posted:

I recently got called up by a telemarketer who pushed a magazine that supports a hotline for bullied kids.

The scammy part is that the hotline is only barely open and run by completely untrained people. The company printing the magazine pockets the vast majority of the profit from their overpriced mag but presents their operation as charity. Since you do receive a poorly edited quarterly magazine, it's technically not fraud though.

I told the guy to go gently caress himself. Of all kinds of frauds, charity frauds are the worst.

A guy was soliciting donations for a domestic violence center a block or two away from my college campus, but when I asked to see the pamphlet he was waving he told me to "stop wasting his time" and clammed up. I saw he only had one pamphlet, walked away without giving anything, but somehow it wasn't until I got home I realized there was basically no way he was legit. And then I kicked myself because I'd missed my opportunity to tell him to go gently caress himself.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2016 00:27

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

AlbieQuirky posted:

The tingle means it's working!

I think the people who sell and promote that poo poo really believe in it, because it was a common treatment in the 19th century and earlier. Of course people treated syphilis with mercury and kept people with cholera from drinking water back then, too, but hey.

There's a really good book called Marketplace of the Marvelous that discusses why so much quackery was so popular in the 19th century (spoiler: actual medicine was pretty crap, and sometimes doing nothing or even doing basic things like giving people water to drink was better than the mainstream treatments available) and why it's still popular today (Dunning-Kruger effect, magical thinking, poor understanding of science, statistics, and risk analysis).

Last I heard mercury treatment actually worked and side effects were usually less severe than neurosyphilis, but less effective or safe than modern treatments.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2016 14:18

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

It certainly has a strong attraction to watch advertisers

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 04:00

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:51

kaschei: Oct 25, 2005

Actually advertisers have no idea what will or won't work and rely on focus groups for exactly that reason.

You don't need a focus group to tell you how a chemical reaction will play out because we understand chemical reactions pretty well.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2016 05:27

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