Scam (Internet and Otherwise) Omnibus Thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1161

One of my Japanese friends is chatting online with a scammer.

A couple of days ago, the scammer sent this text:

That’s right, it’s a Tropical vessel on that route. You seem to know shipping lines, which is a good thing. No pirates so far, thankfully. Although we received signal of an attack on a vessel passing through higher-risk areas, our Captain was able to direct us through a safer route. I’ve previously witnessed pirate attacks on different occasions and can confidently say that it’s not a pleasant experience, the most recent attack resulted in the deaths of 5 members of my crew.

We have been busy offloading the product, while the remains are being shared amongst myself and two senior colleagues, that’s how we make extra money each time a shipment is made. I’m sharing this information with you because i trust you, so please keep this a secret between us, okay?

So the senior people get a share.

Today, the message:

Hello dear, i’m doing well and you? Today i met with the local buyer and sold my share of the crude for $1,950,000, but I’m disappointed because the buyer was unable to pay via BTC, which is the standard and safest method and instead, handed me cash because most of the local buyers are uneducated and find it difficult to conduct transactions online. We’ll start sailing back tomorrow and when i return home, i plan on getting you an expensive gift since you make me happy and i want you happy as well.

So the crew member’s share is almost $2 million!! That’s just the “extra money” they make.

My friend knows it’s a scam and is playing with the guy. This isn’t her first rodeo and she strings them along for a while. But it will end soon.

1162

US $2M weighs 4400 lbs.

1163

That can’t be right. Not if you assume $100 bills. Each bill is about 2 grams so about 20 kg, or 44 lbs.

1164

Yeah – I didn’t realize I was calculating for $1 bills. It’s too early in the a.m.!

1165

1166

I know I haven’t posted here for a while, the advance fees scams have moved to asking for payment on first contact. No payment, no further contact.
I have attracted the attention of romance scammers but their messages tend to be insanely long but I can keep them going for weeks. Who knew I could be so good at playing a desperately lonely old man?

I did get a message today from someone wishing a long list a happy new year. (And now the idiots are responding to the email with “reply all”.)
He neglected to make the recipient list a BCC so I went through it all and found some interesting names.

First off, I spotted some obvious references to our own @Mangetout.

mange_trout
John Warosa [john.barosa.xxxxx@xxxxx.com]
Manfred [manfred.barosa@xxxxxxx.com]
Davis Bon [davis.bon@xxxxxxx.com]

Then some that might be potential scambaiters.
Notay Honaypout
maru_kobayashi
Ass McCock
spambox[spambox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com]
2 different emails @malspam.uk
scameru@[xxxxxx.com]
'Uge Wanka [simon.hallett@xxxxx.uk]
Samuel Langhorne Clemens van Keamstards
Rob Johnson [spamcollector84685@xxxxxxxx]
penisman
Basil GoLightly [cherkicentral@xxxxxxx]
(Breakfast at Tiffany’s)

1167

Got a text from my mom, “Microsoft is going to call me back at 4 about my computer getting hacked.” Knew that wasn’t good. I told her to turn her computer off. Of course, she’s willing to follow complicated instructions for an hour over the phone from some stranger, but when I give her a direct and simple instruction, she does something else. Unplugging and closing the lid on the laptop at least put it to sleep, so it was off the network, but “turn it off” means turn it off…

To start the story, her Apple computer started beeping, and had a big window up saying it was hacked and to call Microsoft. The guy at the other end walked her through installing Hoptodesk and Anydesk; which are remote desktop apps that can record her screen and keypresses.

Then, after a delay to investigate, the guy told her that her private IP address had been made public, so she was going to have to change her passwords! He told her to not expect anything to happen for 15 days, and after that things should be cleared up.

She claims she was suspicious, but it was the guy telling her “not to tell anyone” that she says made her realize it was all a scam. Of course, she didn’t text me that she had been scammed, but that she was expecting a call back later that day…

So to recap, my brother and I both are computer experts (or whatever), but instead of calling either of us, she called the number that was beeping.

Offline, I uninstalled the remote desktop apps, ran some scans on the computer, and poked around in the settings. It doesn’t look like there are any scripts or anything to redownload stuff. I also installed the LuLu reverse firewall, to warn me of any outgoing connections. I think it’s clean.

1168

This time props to my mom who did the right thing in response to a postal mail scam the same day as the events in my last post.

She received a letter that was an urgent message from her bank, except for the fine print where it said it was not affiliated with her bank. She needed to contact them immediately about her mortgage, call this number!

Then there was something that looked like a check for $199, except for the fine print where it said “not a check”. There was a place on the front of the not-check for a signature, but no contract weasel words or anything. Just decoration I suppose.

She called the bank directly, not the number on the form, and they told her that its a scam they’ve been getting reports about. They told her to call the police non-emergency line to report it, even though that was just a way for the police to get a record of how frequent these things are.

I really hope she called the bank directly, and not the number on the letter, because the bank did a good job verifying that my mom was who she claimed to be, but that does nothing to verify the bank is who they claim to be.

1169

I have a close friend that answers calls from these hucksters all day. She answers every call politely, tells them that she is not interested, then asks them politely to please take her of their list. She of course is seeing an increase in these calls and her phone’s mailbox is full.
And yes, I have told her what she is doing wrong.

1170

It’s a joke name, sir.

1171

As I’ve mentioned before, at the grocery store where I work we’re often the last line of defense for people who’ve been suckered into sending cash to scammed via gift cards or wire transfers. We got a new variation on the scam today.

Woman comes in, wants to buy $2500 in Apple cards. She speaks little English and can’t explain what they’re for. We call the assistant manager, who speaks Spanish, over to talk to her. It comes out that “ICE agents” called her and threatened to deport her friend to Colombia unless they got a payoff.

I’m not surprised that scammers are taking advantage of the blatant corruption and illegality being perpetrated by our government right now, but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised if in this instance the scammers actually WERE ICE agents.

1172

Just wanted to mention it’s that time of year again for TurboTax related scams.

I’ve spent all morning working with my parents (600 miles away) because while they did recently install the new version of TT, they just got called by someone claiming both their systems (one of which isn’t even online), their phones, and many of their files are corrupted and immediately tried to sell them emergency AV and firewalls, but that they could give a discounted price. Since we’re moving into that time of year, be mindful and watch out for others in your friends and family.

1173

Amusing mistake by today’s scammer.
Using pictures I’m very familiar with. Whoever this woman is, there’s a metric shit ton of her photos in the hands of scammers.
She’s either a doctor or a nurse, quite a few are of her in scrubs or surgical gown ,mask and cap.

However, this time the claim is she’s a dentist. The scammer missed a crucial detail. Can you spot it?
I’ll spoiler the answer below the photo.
Imgur

I never knew Vagina dentata was real

:wink:

1174

Uh, yeah. That would be the rig for treating vagina dentata.

1175

Scammers are going AI. I didn’t get these personally, it’s on the website in the warnings.

Imgur
Imgur
Imgur

1176

What weirds me out is that said images would be expected to reflect the information the AI has been fed. I’m not sure if I’m more terrified that it’s an accurate reflection (the plastic skin and the hyper thicc lips) or if some human curated the image generation thinking that was the perfect image.

Either way, creepy.

1177

I found a tiny, generic thumb drive left in the back of a Mac monitor I was given from a client. I looked on the drive, and there were a couple of files I thought she would need, so I emailed them to her. Then I noticed that the drive said that it was 2TB !!. I figured that if it was truly that big, it was probably pretty expensive, but before I gave it back to her, I wanted to confirm that the drive was real. So I ran f3write on it. The drive was very slow, so I had a bad feeling to begin with. I filled up about 50% of the drive before I had to quit, but I figured that if it was fake, it wasn’t going to be a 1TB drive advertising as a 2TB. I ran f3read, and it failed at the 32nd file, so it’s actually a 32GB drive, and I will be destroying it.

These fake flash drive scams are really bad. Worse than just getting ripped off by buying a drive that is sold as a larger drive, but being sent a smaller one. The capacity-spoofing scam can cause unretrievable data loss.

1178

My dad has some age related memory and cognitive issues. He lives independently, but has trouble with some things.

He called me to tell me about the a text conversation he had with a young Asian woman. Uh oh. It started as a misdirected text, but then they got to chatting. Double uh oh. At this point I’m waiting for him to ask me for help setting up a fake crypto account. It didn’t turn that way, though.

She’s going to be in the US soon, Austin, (where he used to live, and where his phone number is from) what a coincidence!, He’s not there anymore? She’s also going to be in Denver (where he is now) what a double coincidence!

She got him on Facetime, which is how he knew it was an actual young Asian woman (or at least a young Asian woman filter). This is where the scam fell apart. My dad realized there is really no legitimate reason an attractive young Asian woman would want to meet up with him. Crisis averted. If she’d been 60, he’d have probably fallen for it.

I’ve relied on his cheapness and inability to manage complex computer tasks to keep him safe, and so far the losses have only been a few hundred to extended auto warranties.

1179

Received a call from a local health provider/hospital. While I had been making regular payments on my $7000.00 in billing; my account must have … I don’t have any payments much less to this provider. Hung up, called the legit folks - others have been reporting the same account mixup scam.

1180

I fell for one, fortunately the maximum damage should be limited to $50.

The short version: I made a purchase at a copycat/fake website, and am now waiting for the credit card dispute to be resolved.

The long version: I blame Duck Duck Go, and overzealous bot blocking on websites. Obviously not my fault!

I was shopping for jeans, and the best price I could find online was from some western store I’ve now forgotten. On their order page, they have a thing that says “you can pick up your order at Boot Barn.” So I thought I’d check Boot Barn to see if I could just buy them in store.

This was all on my ipad. As one does, I just typed “boot barn” into the browser bar, which then searched Duck Duck Go, and gave me some results. One of the results was bootbarn.com, but going there presented me with a “you might be a bot, so we’re blocking you unless you can do a thing” type captcha. I did the thing, and then I just got a blank page. No amount of reloading or messing about got me past the blank page.

Next result from Duck Duck Go was for bootbarnofficial.com. That instantly took me to a normal looking store website. It occurred to me that maybe bootbarn.com was the name squatted site, which is why the real one had to use bootbarnofficial, which sounds more like a Youtube channel name. The website had a big banner saying “Seasonal clearance sale, up to 80% off”. Great luck, the exact jeans I want are on sale for $18.

In hindsight, possibly too good to be true, but clothes start with a huge markup, and then can drop to very low prices, and everyone is still making a profit. My initial survey found the jeans selling for anything from $80 down to $30 ($49 at the brand’s site), so $18 seems low, but once adding in shipping and stuff it worked out to $25/pair, which is low, but not extremely low compared to other sites.

Place my order, get an email back saying 5-7 business until shipped. We’re all spoiled by Amazon, but whatever. A few days later I get a tracking number from “One Line”. My tracking app doesn’t recognize it, and a search shows One Line does cargo containers. I joke that we’re going to get a 40 foot container of jeans delivered. The bootbarnofficial website still shows it hasn’t shipped though.

I start to get suspicious, but figure I’ll wait out the 5-7 business days before doing anything. Check my card and the charge was made by a company in Hong Kong. Uh-oh. Email the customer service on bootbarnofficial to cancel my order. No reply.

Contact Citi to dispute the charge. Their customer service doesn’t seem to understand that I’ve fallen for a scam, but will dispute based on not having received the order in the designated time.

The jeans are now in stock and on sale at Amazon for $32, so I buy my two pairs. So much for my attempt to avoid them.

I figure there is a good chance the dispute will be settled in my favor, particularly if I can talk to a person who actually understands what happened. There is a very small chance I’ll get a notification that I have a container of 20,000 jeans waiting for me in Long Beach.

ETA: bootbarn.com still gives me the captcha, but the shopping page now loads. Duck Duck Go does not show bootbarnofficial.com in at least the first page of search results.