Gulilble People Reveal The Dumbest Scam They've Fallen For
It's hard to tell what's real and what's fake in today's world, it's no wonder people are getting scammed! There are some pretty skilled scam artists out there, but let's be honest, you fell for it in the first place. Perhaps a little more thought and some research would have prevented the scam all together.
namey___mcnameface asks:
What dumb scam did you actually fall for?
a new meaning to stretching every penny
In high school I worked at a sandwich shop. I was at the cash register. Woman pays with two rolls of dimes. We were very busy so I threw them in the drawer until later. When i got a chance to do so i broke them open and they were full of pennies.
You might ask why I didn't notice the size difference, well it was all pennies except the ends and I wasn't paying attention.
Totally fell for it
My shame:
In a hotel, the hotel phone rings at ~630 am. I pick up. Lady says the payment system crashed and she needs my payment info again. In my sleepy logic-free mind, I give her my credit card
Go downstairs to check out. They have no idea what I'm talking about the system crashing.
What happened was, a scammer called up the hotel front desk and asked for a random room number, which happened to me mine and the desk transferred them to me. So, the hotel payed for my stay.
Was able to cancel card. They had only changed a hundred or so bucks to it and got it back from the bank.
I'm usually very skeptical about things, but I fell for this one hard.
Classic
"If you tell me I won't get mad" - my Mom
Anyone can make $5 on the street
When I first moved to this city I was meeting some friends for brunch, and I parked on this side street. Started walking toward the restaurant and this guy yelled after me "ayy!! It's $5 to park here!" and I was like "Oh shit, I'm sorry I didn't know!" and then gave him the $5. Then at brunch I told my friends about it because I was like jeepers, your parking enforcement is really intense here and very intimidating! and then that is when they told me that I was just scammed out of $5. Parking on those streets is free. I just gave $5 to a guy in a vest because he told me it was $5 and had a vest.
Sometimes things just don't work out...
I backed a video game on Kickstarter where the makers just disappeared.
Too quick to act
I pulled into a Target parking lot with my window down. I had literally JUST parked and this lady comes up to me to ask me to buy her a cab (really just give her money "for a cab") because her boyfriend left her at Target. She didn't have any bags, and she said she didn't feel like walking. Whatever, an uber would be cheap and I don't know if she is lying, so I ordered her an uber. So I go in and get what I needed, and the lady hadn't gotten in the uber yet. She said she would just rather have the cash. So I lied and said I don't carry cash, and she wouldn't even take the uber. I had to cancel it after like 5 minutes so I got charged the fee.
When you thought it was going to be something else...
I was at a music festival and bought a shitty local rappers mixtape for $40 instead of $5. He finessed the h* out of me and I didn't even realize it until I was back at my tent. Still pissed about it to this day - but at least I have his CD somewhere.
Lebo Soprano, if you're out there, your 42 track mixtape full of 30 second songs is garbage.
When you think you are doing a good deed...
This was a couple of years ago now. I lived near a gas station so I was walking home one day and a block or so away from the gas station an older lady comes up to me and asks for 10 bucks because she filled her gas tank up but forgot her wallet at home. (In Canada they allow to pump before paying) I didn't have any money on me at the time so I rushed home to get money for her.
On the way back I noticed she didn't even have a car...At this point someone nearby stopped me and told me they had seen me talking to her and that she does this all the time. My cynicism towards humanity grew a few levels that day. I just wanted to help out!
A little research goes a long way
It was summer, I had quit my job in the middle of the (college) school year because I hated it, and had a near maxed out credit card with jobs hard to come by. A bit desperate, tried to join a website to get people jobs pet/house/baby sitting. I put in information for pet sitting. A couple days later get an email about someone in Australia getting ready to move to my area and something something about their dogs getting there first. I don't remember the details. Multiple messages were traded, until around midnight, sitting on my bed with a laptop in my aunt's basement I get this sinking feeling and google pet sitting scams. I found d* near an identical script to the messages I'd been recieving.
At the very least, I caught on to the scam before I'd lost anything more than an hour or two's time.
Convincing enough to go with it
"This is Microsoft calling..."
I was extremely skeptical about it but I went through with it anyways
looking back on it, probably not the best decision
A friend talked to me seem very desperate, tells me that he lost his venmo account and how he needs money to pay his rent and no way to receive it, I didn't think of it at the time because we are both international students and I was like maybe he isn't fully settled. I was just like sure I'll help, next thing I know, my venmo account got banned and its because he didn't need money for rent he was doing some fraud shit but I don't know the detail, when I think about it now I'm like was I really that stupid? but oh well.
Played
As a kid on Runescape a player told me "if you give me your password I'll give you mine." He was about 35 levels higher than me so I did it.
R.I.P gamingbutterfly67
When you tried to win but you lost
I gave money to ex friend to put towards a stock about 10yrs ago.
He told me we lost.
When you didn't read the details
FreeCreditScore.com. I was trying to show my then girlfriend that I had a better credit score than her. Didn't know it was $25/mo until $200 later.
That must have been hypnotism
Years ago I worked as a cashier and one day a costumer paid normally for the product and while I was counting the money he said: Let me hold that (pointing his head to the money) and I gave him a $100 bill. "Thanks" "You too, have a nice day" Only noticed minutes later. - I still don't know if he pulled out a hypnosis thing on me -
This had to be the result of a scam...
I once accidentally bought a yearlong subscription to chickens magazine
Totally played
As a teenager, I was working alone in a small store. Some guy came in and brought about $9 worth of stuff to the counter. He went into his wallet and then said something like, "Shit, I'm sorry man. I have to put this stuff back. I only have a 100 dollar bill." I looked at the cash in the drawer and said, "It's fine. We can break that for you." Later that day, the owner of the store took me aside and showed me how I had taken a counterfeit c-note and given the guy back 91 dollars in actual real money. As I looked at it closer, I realized it wasn't even a good counterfeit. The printing was blurry and the bill itself wasn't even physically the right size. The store owner was very cool about it and didn't chew me out or anything, but I felt stupid.
The workout equipment lies...
When I was younger, I was really into martial arts. I saw the Bruce Lee biopic, the one with Jason Scott Lee. There was one scene where he had electrodes attached to his chest, and said something like, "It's like doing 200 pushups in a minute," or whatever. I was like, "wow!" Not long after that, I bought a similar product off an infomercial. Total scam. I think they might have actually been sued for it, too. Probably could have gotten my money back if I signed on to the class action suit.
Never sell in Russia
About 15 years ago I shipped a monitor I had sold on eBay to an "unregistered" address messaged to me by the high bidder. The address was in Russia. A week later the payment I had initially received was revoked, and I was out $250
