Posted on 02/18/2024 2:23:09 PM PST by nickcarraway
Everyone thinks they’re too smart to fall for a scam until it happens to them.
Today, you might be making fun of the financial-advice writer who went viral for putting $50,000 in cash in a box and handing it to a stranger. Tomorrow, you or someone you love could be falling for a less dramatic scam. In her article for New York Magazine’s the Cut, journalist Charlotte Cowles describes in detail how she fell for an elaborate scam that used fear, technology and her data to convince her it was real. A caller posed as someone from Amazon, then transferred her to someone posing as a Federal Trade Commission liaison, then someone claiming to be from the CIA and finally the scammers convinced her to withdraw cash and hand it over to a stranger outside her home.
The end result sounds wild on its own, but broken down step by step the scam did include the kinds of convincing details that frequently trick people. Here’s what we can all learn from this scam.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Rule #2: there is no law that says you have to answer your door.
You've just been trained to do these things, like Pavlov's dogs.
Rule # 1: Trust no one.
If it sounds sketchy, it is sketchy. Buying gift cards to pay back someone who over-refunded you? No.
Send money to a Nigerian prince who contacted you out of the blue? No.
IRS going to "turn off" your social security number? No.
Some young blond comes up to you and starts chatting you up in a room full of younger and better looking people? You're the mark.
When I feel in the mood, I answer unknown numbers in Chinese. It’s fun for me and it confuses the people that called.
What I wished would happen is to have those call centers burned to the ground and all the workers jailed for at least a decade.
Look up “scam baiters” on You Tube. There are a slew of channels that expose these scumbags and show how they operate. They are also hilarious the way they toy with the scammers. Kitboga and Scammer Revolt are 2 of my favorites.
When you get such calls do this:
Act very interested but give out no information, then say. “Oh, that’s so interesting. I’ll let my husband take the info from you. He works for the FBI telephone fraud division.”
I’ve done this.....they hang up so fast, dont even say goodbye.
That there is a sucker born every minute?
I always look before opening it but I answer the door with my right hand opening it. In my unseen left hand is my Glock 19.
Unknown caller...
Me: Brandon’s body shop.
Hello, Brandon’s body shop may I help you?
This is Hunter may I help you?
Hello...?
Click.
5.56mm
Liberals are idiots???? One reason they are idiots is because they are so sure they are the smartest person around that of course they couldn’t be scammed in such a manner.
However, this story really seems so far fetched that I wonder if it is actually true or meant to be an example warning of the Amazon scam to the person’s readers. Maybe she wasn’t getting enough attention and was worried about being laid-off so came up with this column in hopes that it would go viral and increase her readership numbers.
Given the warnings by every financial institution (I get warnings from my bank and cc companies) and the occasional article from news-sites, I have a hard time believing someone in her profession truly had not heard of the various Amazon scams. Also, bank tellers are taught to question large cash withdrawals to help customers avoid this very thing. But again, the teller may have thought this was a professional woman of reasonable intelligence so didn’t need the warning.
I don’t know, but something seems a bit off to me.
In November 2011, Paul Frampton, a theoretical particle physicist, met Denise Milani, a Czech bikini model, on the online dating site Mate1.com. She was gorgeous — dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a supposedly natural DDD breast size. In some photos, she looked tauntingly steamy; in others, she offered a warm smile. Soon, Frampton and Milani were chatting online nearly every day.
Did I just read that this brilliant woman is a financial advisor columnist or something? Really?
NO legitimate government-related agency is going to call you on the phone in a demand for money, period.
They won’t ask for cash, gift cards or your bank account number. Anything else and you can treat it as a scammer.
Exactly, I don’t answer call unless they’re from my family and my close friends.
Very few people know how to actually get to my house and that is by design.
Several friends I served with overseas were convinced the stripper was in love with them...
“I’ve done this.....they hang up so fast, dont even say goodbye.”
A guy I worked with used to let them talk for a while, then when they paused, he’d say, “I’m naked. What are you wearing?”
They always hung up.
So, I do different things when getting scam or unwanted calls. SOmetimes I answer, Officer O’Malley, FBI... or I answer with non-sequiters—after they go through their spiel, I say” “ I like riding in rented cars”—or I say “Let me get my Mom.” (I am a senior citizen btw) I say other things too that come to mind, sometime sthey involve liking meat-loaf or I tell them I have no friends, or I live in the woods without electricity—blah, blah blah...Or one of my favorites is, I let them go through their bit, and I say: “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
The phone invariably goes click...
Good.
I’ve done this.....they hang up so fast, dont even say goodbye.
They’ve claimed “I’m with publisher’s clearing house” and I said “no.” This repeated 3 or 4 times and I said you’ve called a government phone number. Then they said “F*** the government” and hung up so they can’t be too bad.
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