I always wondered who might be lured into giving their hard earned money to a random scammer. I work with one such person. Nice guy, but must not be aware of all the dishonesty and thievery that the bad guys are willing to commit to make/steal a buck.
He claims he was doing some normal run of the mill porn surfing when his screen suddenly flashed a large Department of Justice logo on it and just froze there. Moments later a message was seen telling him he was in trouble for something or other and that the only way to regain control of his computer was to send $300 to some paypal account and the DOJ would release control of his computer. The message alluded that this fine was in lieu of some official court action or something.
He paid it. And his computer remained frozen even after several restarts and after waiting several days.
I couldn’t help the poor guy because he told me after it happened. He contacted his bank and they said have heard of the scam and are trying to get money back for other folks too. He wasn’t the only one. They couldn’t stop or reverse the payment for some reason.
You’d think in today’s age the bank could easily trail the money (electronically) and find the owner of the paypal account and get the funds back. I don’t know.
Have you or anyone you know been an innocent victim of a scam?
I just wonder how common this is for the scammers to actually recieve a payment.
I had this virus just the other day. it is a bitch to remove. My IT folks had to go in twice. The screen said the FBI had locked my computer for either child pornography, illegal downloading or illegal spam, and if I paid $200 via paypak or moneypak they would unlock it and give me 7 days to fix the problem before charging me.
While I can see some people being caught by it, there were so many red flags (besides the fact that I hadn’t done any of the listed things). First, the FBI isn’t going to send you a notice if you are doing something illegal; they will just show up and take your computer. Second, any official letter from the FBI will not contain images of two serious-looking men leaning over a computer and one of a computer keyboard with handcuffs on top. Third, I doubt the FBI takes paypal or paypack. Finally, they spelled cybercrimes “cibercrimes” in one area.
A friend of mine is “dating” a guy she met online. Supposedly, he’s a Russian immigrant who left NYC and is now in St Louis and selling real estate. She’s in Miami.
When he asks for money for his sick mom, I’ll be chuckling to myself.
I work with a guy who admitted to buying V1@gra online (from spam emails). When I asked him why, he answered it was too embarrassing to talk about with his doctor.
Why he wasn’t embarrassed to tell me is a mystery.
My mom and her boyfriend. They decided to click on one of those ‘scan your computer for viruses’ popups after seeing it frequently, “just to see what would happen.” :smack: Of course it claimed to scan the computer and reported ‘OMG viruses!!!’ and they paid some kind of fee to ‘fix’ it.
I told them to please, please, make sure to check their credit card statements to ensure that they weren’t being charged a recurring fee (and dispute it with the bank if they were, and suggested disputing the original one too), and to bring the computer to the Geek Squad at Best Buy to make sure it was OK. I live too far away to be their free tech support, but considering Mom only retired recently and worked with computers at her job, I didn’t think they’d do something like that!
You mean the job offer I got (to process mailings for a guy in Europe) isn’t legit? There is also a guy who will pay me $600/week to drive his sick father to the hospital!:eek:
Haha yes I remember this happening to me a few times looking at some run of the mill porn. On the one I saw, it turned your webcam on and displayed a live image of you and everything. Very creepy.
Of course I knew it wasn’t really from the DoJ and I managed to get it off my computer. But yeah I don’t understand why ANYONE would send money to these creeps. You cannot pay off the government when you do something illegal.
Not that I’ve ever replied to one of those emails but I think I’d rather get taken for $$ then get some pill in the mail & ingest Og-knows-what into my body that I fully suspect is not the supposed drug that one ordered.
Not internet but a craigs list scam where a friend was offered a job.
The company was supposed to send him a computer for the work but they said they had run out so they sent him a check to buy one. It was for too much money and they asked him to cash the check and send back the difference.
Somehow the bank caught it so he wasn’t out the money but his account was frozen for quite a while, right before Christmas.
I know a real stupid guy. He fell for the Nigerian scam, he fell for AMWAY, he fell for, “I’ll buy your motorcycle on ebay, but here is a check and send me the difference” and he fell for Rainbow vaccumes. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize he is the stupidest person I know.
I posted an ad on Craigslist for a roommate. One of the replies I receieved was from a “good Christian woman of 23” who was moving to MN from Nigeria for a software project. She would be willing to pay for the room sight unseen as she needed a place to live immediately upon arrival. I thought, okay, could be legit. I’ve worked with Nigerian women on software projects and gotten along with them just fine, but… it niggled at me. So I sent a reply saying that I would be happy to rent the room to her but she needed to know that I only accepted cash as payment.
I work with someone who I have requested not click on any links before checking with me or the tech guy. He’s had to cancel two credit cards and change a bank account because he’s so gullible.
This happened to a friend who uses her computer mostly to play games, including gambling. She got a “You have a virus” popup that wouldn’t go away until she paid them $100. The thing was devilish. Shutting down didn’t even stop it.
She had paid with her debit card, but she called the bank the next day and was able to stop payment before it went through.
ETA: I was surprised that she paid up so quickly. I’d been trying to convince her to spend $40 for AVG, and she thought that was too much money for virus protection. But she spent $100 rather than wait a few minutes until she could call someone to see if it was legit.
Here’s a thread from several years ago, in which choie watches and blogs, while her neighbor get “plucked like a chicken” (post #50) by a Nigerian scam.
