Scammers

[Martin Hash]

I love a good scam: the more sophisticated the better. I’m not quite sure what my feeling is when I discover I’ve been scammed: Embarrassment? Chagrin? Shame? Actually, what I feel is admiration that the con caught me: I’m a tough one to fool because I think everyone’s working an angle, but sometimes they’re not and I’m an eternal optimist & seeker after experience. Luckily, in all the scams & hoaxes, I haven’t actually been taken advantage of (that I know of): just at the last instant I don’t call back that phone number to get free tires, or open that link in an email from my bank. Facebook is the breeding-ground for the best scammers: often in the form of beautiful young women who want me to Friend them. I’m too smart for that, I thought…

A couple months ago I listed our In-law suite for rent on Facebook Marketplace because I was curious if there’d be any interest. There was but we reconsidered and let the listing expire after a week. Interestingly, I was still getting queries weeks after: I didn’t respond but eventually I got to wondering how these people even knew about the place? I finally clicked the Respond button to find out and got into a conversation with a young woman. She asked a bunch of benign questions which I answered but the exchanges continued.

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I finally clicked the link to her page: Yikes! This was a phishing expedition.

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Curious, I went back and looked at the personal pages of some of the other inquiries: yep, scammers, all beautiful, young, single women. These gals must target lonely guys renting rooms. They expect the sex-starved marks to look at their pages, like what they see, and OnlyFans it from there. The women are nice & chatty, build up an online friendship then ask for a loan to move or something along those lines. I recollected a couple interactions I’d had that fit the scenario. Damn, that’s a good play: fooled me. While I was writing this another query for the room came in: I must be on a list. This time the first thing I did was click the link to her page.

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[C-Mag]

I appreciate a good scam as well. I enjoy scammer flicks from the Sting to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Sure it's not cool when the little old lady gets taken for $100K for a $1500 furnace, but all scams are interesting because they are thinking crimes, based on knowing a certain type of persons psychi and weaknesses.

Years ago one of my daughters who is pretty had her pics stolen off Facebook along with her identity and it was used in a scam. Young pretty US Soldier stuck in Europe or the ME, need money for some tragic event. They ran the scam for a couple years. I fielded a bunch of phone calls from strangers who managed to track me down to try and help my daughter. Who was just fine and in my home. It's weird getting a call that your daughter is in trouble and you try to piece together what they talking about.

Those scammers were praying on patriotic Americans who wanted to help a pretty young Soldier in trouble. Plenty of people that would fall for that one in the US.

[Haumana]

My favorite tv show was Masteminds about smart criminals until they get aren't and get caught.

Each 30 minute episode features one true crime story. The profiled crimes generally involve large sums of cash or merchandise and, more important, extremely unique and/or elaborate methods of criminal operation which were never before seen by law enforcement agencies. With a few notable exceptions, most criminals profiled in this series were caught within a couple of years of committing their crime.

https://reelgood.com/show/masterminds-2003