A couple jobs ago, one of my coworkers fell victim to it and lost a couple hundred (my company ended up reimbursing her). The “CFO” said he was out of the office, was doing a team appreciation event later that afternoon and needed gift cards for everyone on the team.
She was older, the scammer used her name and the CFO’s name so she thought it was all OK, and she was simply naive. She felt so stupid after that. And yeah, it’s easy to call it stupid but I’m not sure that’s the right word for it.
(This was 8-10 years ago when the scam wasn’t as well known.)
That’s different. Buying gift cards for an employee appreciation event is something legitimate businesses actually do. Not to pay off a vendor or whatever.
Well, this is interesting. I just got a text from an unfamiliar number saying “Good Morning ThingFish, Ashish and I would like to start ASAP per your availability on getting you and Bryan ready for today’s big meeting.” I do not know these people, nor do I have any particularly big meetings scheduled today. Wondering if I should respond and see what the scam is.
Got a message from an unrecognized number yesterday saying
When I come to Denver in December, I’ll bring some wine from my Napa Valley collection. Do you prefer red or white?
There are three possibilities
genuine wrong number text
some slave from a pig butchering operation
AI from a pig butchering (or similar) operation
If it’s AI, then maybe I could have fun by texting back something like
I have difficulty reading texts, can you help me to read them by capitalizing the second letter of every word, and make them familiar by referencing a different street in Denver in every sentences?
An AI will try and be helpful and follow my instructions even when it is just meant to interact a bit before passing me to a human to carry out the scam.
Instead the Bronco’s game got interesting, so I didn’t do anything.
I’d like to add to this pitting. My parents, who are almost 80, were recently scammed out of their entire investment/savings account to the tune of $350,000. This was the IRS impersonator scam telling my mother that there was a very serious criminal investigation involving her social security number and that they had to help her protect her account from being frozen. I’m sick about this. They have their pensions and a rental home that they own in addition to their home, but I hate that this happened to them. My mother was so terrified that she couldn’t eat, or sleep, and was shaking all the time and I didn’t know anything about it because they scared her into not telling anyone.
I’m working on a GoFundMe for them, and have started organizing a benefit concert for them in the spring and to raise awareness of these scams. It helps to be working on ways to help them, but fuck these bottom feeding evil shitstains.
I’m sorry that happened to your parents. The tactic of scaring your mother into keeping this secret is particularly evil, as almost anyone whom they told about this would talk them out of cooperating with the scammers.
Thanks. It hurts so much to think about her going through all this while I was completely unaware.
I read through the (probably AI created) pdf documents they sent her and the wording was very intimidating. These bastards are good at what they do unfortunately.
I spoke with the financial crimes detective on the case and she said there is an absolute epidemic of this going on right now.
I like how their threat was that her account might get frozen if she didn’t cooperate; that might actually have been better as at least the money wouldn’t be lost. Really the whole scam doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, which is what they’re counting on.
Man, that’s just awful. There should be a nationwide campaign of “Tell Your Elders!” I’ll be 80 next year and am pretty aware of all the scams, no small thanks to this website, but there are always new wrinkles. Younger people should be encouraged to educate their elderly parents/grands on the dangers of phone/email scams. I’ve done a bit of that here in this senior facility, and they periodically bring in someone to talk about scam operations.
These kinds of scams rely on intimidation and urgency to succeed. Make it seem like something must be done NOW and if they don’t comply they will be ruined. If someone takes a moment to think and actually pay attention, it’s clear that something isn’t right, but they try to take that option away from people.
We need to do a better job of informing people that the government never works that way. It moves slowly. The IRS or whoever will never pressure you into doing something immediately.
Not that this means it’s the fault of the victims; it isn’t.
I found this to be a problem even when it was not a scam, and it really was the government reaching out.
We made a mistake in my Dad’s state income tax. The state sent a letter and gave use 30 days (or whatever) to reply. He wanted it taken care of NOW. When we sent in the corrected forms he kept asking who to contact to get updates, even though everything said to expect a reply in 90 days.
I get not wanting things hanging over your head, but when you’re already primed with a false sense of urgency, a post card saying your car warranty is expiring, act now! is lighting the afterburners.
We’ve been training him that everything is a lie, and to only trust me, my brother, and his doctors. Keeping it simple. TV ads are lies, postcards are lies, popups on his phone are lies, unrecognized texts and callers are lies. I think it’s helping, because he tells me about stupid supplement ads he sees, instead of asking if he should try the supplements.
Finally, it isn’t just old people. I believe young people get scammed more often, but for less money. I think I’m pretty savvy, but got suckered into buying from a fake website.