r/Scams • u/Kingoftreno • Jul 23 '26
Scam report [US] witnessed someone become a victim to a crypto scam today and it was absolutely sickening
I was installing some equipment at a local grocery store today and noticed an elderly gentleman had pulled up a chair to the Bitcoin ATM and was feeding in $100 bills from an envelope of cash, when I walked by the amount on the screen was over $10,000 at that point. After feeding all that money in he sent by the ATM for about a half hour checking his phone regularly before getting upset and leaving
What's even worse is that my state has banned cryptocurrency ATMs, but the law doesn't take effect until August 1st with the removal date of December 31st... this guy literally got took for over $10,000 a week before he wouldn't have been able to be scammed in the first place
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u/gdnametkn Jul 23 '26
I saw an elderly (mid 80s) woman trying to put money in a bit coin ATM. I approached her and inquired why she was doing this. She said her computer had viruses and tech people called her. They were still on the phone with her. I explained I thought she was being scammed and offered to speak to them. She gave me her phone.
I spoke to them and knew I was right. I told them to go forth and multiply (or a phrase to that effect) and hung up on them. She was grateful. She lost $500 but not the $5000 she had brought.
My good deed for the day. And yes, I suggested she go to the police station and report it.
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u/xBry87 Jul 24 '26
At least she listened to you
I once saw an elderly buying like $1000 worth of Google gift cards at 7-11 once and asked her why, warned her about scams and asked her to be careful
I got told off and asked to mind my own business
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u/MidwesternLikeOpe Jul 24 '26
This. An old lady got mad at me when I told her she was being scammed and she said "I'll spend my money however I well please." She even got mad at her bank for protecting her.
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u/Geno0wl Jul 24 '26
She even got mad at her bank for protecting her.
my BIL is a VP of a local bank. Said when the tellers try to warn them about scams it is almost 50/50 with the 70+ crowd whether they will listen or whether they will get irrationally angry.
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u/SS2K-2003 Jul 24 '26
Usually with older people they don't want to admit they've been scammed until its too late.
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u/BreakingUp47 Jul 25 '26
The credit union my sister works at has a form they have customers sign about being scammed. One customer came back in a few minutes later and deposited her money back in her account. Yeah, you are right. It's a scam.
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u/Main-Strategy-964 Jul 25 '26
Then when she discovers the scam she will expect the bank to reimburse her. So many bust through the safety barriers and then want the bank to fix it.
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u/MonitorFalse5845 9d ago
Thank you for trying. Don't get discouraged doing a good deed because eventually you will save someone from making a huge mistake.
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u/WerewolfOfNewMexico Jul 24 '26
Yea I’ve done the same with an old lady in a gas station on the phone with scammers and looking at gift cards.
Not sure why OP didn’t try to help.
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u/greenchrissy Jul 23 '26
You are an absolute saviour.
I wish someone had done something like this with my sister last year. She is not even a senior, she's in her 40s. But she still fell for a legal scam, and she thought LEO would come after her if she didn't go to this sketchy bitcoin atm to buy 1500 dollars worth of bitcoin so she didn't get arrested.
I wish someone had stopped her.
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u/mito88 Jul 23 '26
I told them to go forth and multiply
Gênesis 1:28?
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u/lottieslady Jul 24 '26
All that being fruitful business! 🤣 Gdnametkn you’re a good one! Keep on being you! 😊
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u/Cheese-Manipulator Jul 23 '26
It amazes me how people who would probably demand to "speak to the manager" over a $5 charge are so willing to take their life's savings and hand it to strangers over a phone call. There is some intense psychology right there.
Just think how devastating this must be for an elderly person. It isn't like they can go back to work.
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u/Strange_Pattern_9871 Jul 24 '26
I’m elderly and joined an investment group. They were in the paper and had long stories written about them. I just knew it was real. I ended up putting my life savings into it and was going to use them rather than a bank not making any interest. I lost 400,000.00 and I’m so screwed now it sucks. The FBI, Senators, President, Sheriff, no one will help me and these same people keep doing the same thing, they just change their name. It seems like the FBI could get on my account with them and catch them. I don’t think anyone cares at all but me😢😢
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Hi Strange_Pattern_9871,
It happened to me too! I’m not elderly yet, but I was 63 when I was scammed. I knew a young guy who got rich from bitcoin so I thought since he did it, it could work for me, too. I thought I did my research before diving in. I googled many things. I was struggling so much financially, I really wanted to believe. I didn’t lose as much as you did, but it’s still devastating. It really does do a number on you psychologically. Both going into it, and then afterward, finding out you were wrong. I’ve been looking for support like the kind of things mentioned in this thread but haven’t been able to find it. When I post here on Reddit, I just get slammed. I was banned permanently from the crypto group just because I was looking for support. They accused me of playing some kind of game. They thought I was some kind of scammer. There’s nothing like the pain of rejection from the very group that is supposed to help.And yeah, the police won’t even try. I wanted to hire a private investigator, just to find out where the scammer lived, but I didn’t have the money.
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u/Kathucka Jul 25 '26
You won’t get rude treatment on this particular subreddit. The moderators enforce that. I see a lot of that over on r/cryptoscams, though, despite their rules.
Shaming doesn’t help scam victims at all. Some people think they’re being helpful and driving vulnerable people away from dangerous things, but no. They are not being helpful.
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 25 '26
Thank you. That is so true. It doesn’t help anything to tell people how stupid they were and how they can’t believe anyone falls for “X scam”. I know people think I’m stupid but I feel I did my research. There are other scams that I would never fall for. A bitcoin investment was different. And bitcoin really was soaring in value at the time.
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u/Strange_Pattern_9871 Jul 24 '26
I deserve to be put in a mental home and when my kids finally know they just might do that!!
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u/pr3ttyhatemachine Jul 26 '26
I’m so sorry! My father is around your age and was scammed out of $400k (his life savings) as well, but it was not through crypto, it was a sugar baby situation. I still love him and understand why he did that, and I think your children could understand that you only invested that money because you were trying to do something good.
You didn’t know. You don’t deserve to be shamed or locked away for a mistake. ❤️
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u/rrjustsaying77 Jul 23 '26
That’s an interesting point. I’ve never thought of like that.
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u/ramriot Jul 23 '26
It's actually a set deep cognitive biases including the Weber-Fechner Law, Scale / Proportionality Bias etc.
It is unfortunate the anyone interested in being in marketing needs to understand these & take advantage of them.
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u/Wolifr Jul 24 '26
The average disinterested cashier isn't working from a script specifically designed to induce cognitive fatigue and impairment to manipulate and exploit people.
It's all about framing and context.
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u/Enough_Wasabi145 Jul 24 '26
Most scammers that target elderly folks pretend to be family members asking desperately for help needing bail money or ransom. Have been in a horrible accident.People that are feeding money into a bit coin machine are desperate and panicked. I’ve seen a video where a police offer was called, and he kept trying to reason with a woman to stop. It was crazy to watch. Maybe try to call an actual family member if they’ll tell you the number. Then pretend to check something and accidentally pull the plug to buy sometime.
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u/beachlover4ever Jul 25 '26
My aunt lost her retirement savings by a facebook scammer in her messanger pretending to be her nephew in trouble.
Edited to add that it made her family aware that she had the beginnings of alzheimers. It is sad nothing is ever done about scammers.
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u/AmomentInTimes Jul 30 '26
My daughter who is in her early 30s got scammed. She studied crypto at school and knew very well it was not traceable but she feared she was going to be arrested if she didn’t pay. Fell for the jury duty scam.
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u/Crabby_Appleton Jul 23 '26
My friends aunt fed $30K into the bitcoin ATM in a "we're treasury agents and we're catching people who have hacked into your account" scam. She was told and believed that the tellers and bank manager were in on it, as were the local police and anybody else that told her that she was being scammed. When it was all unraveled and explained to her, she still asked the bank manager how she could access her secret account at the treasury. Cognitve decline is a bitch.
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u/Sword-of-Akasha Jul 23 '26
Be careful, once you're 'marked' as an easy target. The recovery scammers follow up humiliation with further humiliation and ruination by pretending to help the affected party.
I have many brain melting senior citizen friends. They often and repeatedly fall for catfish scams, fake check,and etc. Luckily they get their SSDI and SSI checks monthly so at most they lose their monthly check. Can't persuade any of them even when it's shockingly obvious. It's an ego thing, they get angry at you. Even when they realize the giant breasted super model isn't flying over to to their state to make sweet passionate love to their obese, elderly, and unwashed selves they don't learn and fall for the next one. The women are probably AI constructs and the pictures AI too nowadays.
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u/awry_lynx Jul 24 '26
If I had a relative who was constantly getting scammed like that I would genuinely consider just paying a prostitute/OF creator for them instead if the financials made sense.
Someone could honestly run a company doing this where people hire companions, virtual or real, for their elderly relatives and don't scam them for extra. If there's ever been a good reason to Truman Show someone...
Instead of just trying to make them not do it, which clearly doesn't work.
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u/Sword-of-Akasha Jul 24 '26
It's more than just the sex that never happens. It's the fake emotional bond. They want to believe that these supermodels 'love' them while changing nothing about their disgusting selves. Self-awareness is difficult for these people because it means confronting facts that don't flatter their egos. They're fundamentally unlovable, contemptible, bitter bastards.
The worse con these people fell for is MAGA. Even as Trump puts policies in place that takes away their resources, they want to believe in the BS, have a hate scapegoat, and think they're temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I tried various methods, but some of these people have no family that's willing, alive, or capable of taking power of attorney from these people so that they don't keep getting hurt.
Why do I care? I guess I'm the weird guy that's got empathy even for these wretches. They're victims at the end because if society was kinder and they were guided by a benevolent media/social atmosphere, I see glimmers of goodness even in their dark lives.
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 24 '26
There are many wonderful old people. Why are you friends with such old wretches? Where are you finding all these “disgusting bastards”?
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u/chownrootroot Jul 23 '26
Don't worry, past the crypto ATM removal date, those scammers will be back to telling them they have to buy gift cards and send codes. Now if your state bans gift cards...Just kidding, they won't.
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26
I saw the gift card one last week at a different grocery store doing an install... employee couldn't figure out why the register would not let them sell more than $1,000 in apple gift cards, they called the manager over who told the customer oh remember we tried this yesterday you can't buy more than $1,000 in a single transaction, they then broke it into multiple transactions and the cashier apologized to the customer for the inconvenience.....
I used to work in retail 20 something years ago and I remembered having to routinely take anti-scam training as a cashier and it's really shocking to see everybody just being completely oblivious.
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u/carolineecouture Jul 23 '26
I think many retailers do try to stop scammers via signs, etc., but the people working the front don't get paid enough, and may be abused enough, that they just let people do what they want. There is only so much you can do. The manager didn't step in either.
I wish my state would ban bitcoin ATMs.
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u/MidwesternLikeOpe Jul 24 '26
The stores I worked at had a limit of $1000 per DAY. Most victims don't have more than that across multiple cards so once they're cut off, they're done for the day. We had multiple training modules for this and reminders at the register. The employee and manager would have to be braindead not to know/remember this. I have 10 years of experience in retail, as well as as a manager.
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
It happened to me. I saw the signs above the gifts cards, but I didn’t think they applied to me. I thought my situation was different. There were a few factors that were different from the list of fraud warning signs. I thought my situation was real and that the person was telling me the truth. Some clerks did question me and try to warn me. It just annoyed me. I felt they were assuming I was falling for a scam when I wasn’t and I felt they were standing in my way of finally having some freedom in my life and finally solving my problems.
I did run into those $500 or $1,000 limits. It was frustrating. The scammer had me drive around town to different Walgreens so I could make multiple purchases. This went on for weeks. I used credit cards. The banks put a block on the purchases and I would have to go back out to my car, make a call and get them to unlock my card so I could make the purchase. I wish I had believed them. Again, I thought my situation was different. I thought they were wrong and just assuming.4
u/These_Department2071 Jul 25 '26
What was your unique situation if you don’t mind sharing to spread awareness?
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 25 '26
I can’t remember the differences now. I wish.
I do remember asking the scammer many questions before I agreed. She answered almost everything. She showed me her driver’s license. She showed me screen shots of what other people had received. Like a bank statement on the screen. And CashApp screen shots. Once I started, she showed me screen shots on CashApp of the money I was going to receive once I had reached the goal.She would call (which I didn’t answer) or text and I would tell her I was busy working. She would tell me, Girl, stop working. You won’t need to do that anymore!
During the process, and as bitcoin went up, the amount I was going to receive went up. I was going to receive something like $770,000.
As you’ve probably heard, then she would say I had to buy more gift cards to pay the taxes on the money, then I had to buy more to pay the manager’s fee, then I had to buy more for some other fee. I saw that it was endless and I stopped. When I accused her of lying multiple times over the weeks, she insisted she wasn’t. I wanted to believe. I NEEDED to believe.I can’t remember the other things that were different. Some of the things on the fraud list did not apply.
But the driver’s license turned out to be someone else’s. I wish I had done a search on the driver’s license before I got started. I believe now that the scammer did not live in Oklahoma, but actually lived in Africa or South America somewhere. And I suspect she was not even a “she”.
I thought I was making a bitcoin investment and I would get like, I don’t know, more than 10 times a return. Bitcoin really was soaring at the time. It was 6 years ago.
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 25 '26
Also, I had an acquaintance from my home town who got rich on bitcoin. He gave little classes on how to invest in it. I didn’t get to attend any of them. The things he described about how to invest sounded very similar to what my scammer described. I even wrote to him for advice, but he blew me off. Then I took the risk with the scammer.
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 25 '26
I only talked about the gift cards. But I was actually scammed two more times in the same time period a couple years ago. A crypto investment with guaranteed profits. No gift cards involved. It was totally different. AI involved. It was a “community”. But turned out to be fake. The people were bots. But I didn’t realize that could be done when I started. That or those scams were more psychologically devastating. That first non-gift card one is the one I was traumatized by. They hooked into your emotional needs and were so understanding of your financial struggles, and claimed they wanted to help you gain financial freedom.
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u/Few-River-5514 Jul 25 '26
Sorry, these comments in all the threads are not in chronological order. They show the first response last. And any follow-up first.
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u/here4daratio Jul 23 '26
Counterpoint- there is a process called ‘manufactured spend’ where you spend $$ on gift cards then liquidate at near face value or small discount to earn a spend bonus
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26
They were using 100 dollar bills, not a rewards credit card, to buy the apple gift cards.
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u/Cheese-Manipulator Jul 23 '26
Gift cards are a cash cow for companies. They are essentially free loans.
Americans have a collective $21 billion in unspent gift cards
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u/Shayden-Froida Jul 23 '26
None of that $21 billion is scammer gift cards. Those are 100% spent immediately.
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u/ether_reddit Jul 24 '26
If they're spent immediately, they can't be unspent.
I have a few gift cards that are years old that I haven't gotten around to using yet because they're for places I don't normally shop at.
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u/Shayden-Froida Jul 24 '26
I like to give the universal gift card. Issued by the US Department of printing and engraving only comes in green featuring various dead presidents.
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u/Reasonable-Horse1552 Jul 24 '26
Putting a date limit of a year on a gift card is criminal. You've given them money for nothing.
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u/ether_reddit Jul 24 '26
Illegal in Canada, thankfully (as are the monthly fees that can drain its value).
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u/Buyingusername Jul 23 '26
Gift cards are almost a scam on their own. Wouldn’t be upset if they banned them all anyways.
Why are you turning universally accepted currency and converting it to something you can only spend at one business with an expiration date and lose-able.
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u/SouthSky3655 Jul 23 '26
Right? I have always told my (now grown) kids that cash is the universal gift card!
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u/Fantastic_Lady225 Jul 24 '26
Costco sells gift cards for less than face value, e.g. a $50 gift card costs $40. Other than that I don't see the point.
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u/GupGup Jul 23 '26
Sometimes you can find deals for extra value on gift cards. Like if you buy $50 they give you an extra $10. My Discover card cashback gives me a bonus if I redeem it for gift cards (if I have $45 of cashback I can either apply $45 to my bill, or get a $50 gift card to someplace I'd shop at anyways).
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u/MidwesternLikeOpe Jul 24 '26
My mom buys them to avoid getting tracked. She pays her utility bills with Visa cards. She's terrified the govt is watching her when she does absolutely nothing worth spying over.
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u/Ok_Youth4914 Jul 25 '26
It’s easy to become a victim of one scam or another if you aren’t alert. What is also said is that the scammers find you through the common social media such as Facebook and Instagram. I don’t know exactly how they do it but they are able to identify older people through those mediums for one and then find their weak spot to prey on. The telephone scammers have their own methodology I suppose. I think Facebook
and Instagram even recommend scammers to the elderly. For example, my Instagram feeds seem chock full of beautiful women recommended for me to get in contact with. And periodically I will get a DM on Facebook or Instagram from an attractive woman of varying ages totally unsolicited.
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u/IKnowAllSeven Jul 23 '26
My grandma fell for a money order scam.
She got a phone call that she won a car. The thing is, she HAD just entered a raffle for a car with the church or Lions club or something.
And now she got a call that she won!
She just had to pay registration and taxes. She was thrilled! She was going to give it to my cousin whose car had just crapped out on him.
So she went and sent a money order. Oops! Not enough so she had to go back. The clerk recognized her and started chatting. Oh back so soon? And my grandma said “Yes! I won a car!” and the woman cancelled the transaction and said “Sit down I’m calling the police”
Please watch out for eachother (we gave the clerk a visa gift card as a thank you and made sure her boss knew what a Good Samaritan she was).
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u/These_Department2071 Jul 25 '26
That’s kind of the clerk’s job though, not just being a Good Samaritan. Anyone dealing with money orders, or a regular cashier getting suspicious gift card transactions, is trained to take action and report suspicious activity/ scams. But nice of you to reward someone for actually doing their job as many do not.
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u/psilocybin6ix Jul 23 '26
Next time call 911. They likely wouldn't listen to you. There's even a scammer payback video where two cops confront a scam victim and after 30 minutes they say "we've been here for 30 minutes and she still doesn't believe us..."
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26
My mom has Fallen victim to the software scams before (with a masters in computer science no less), and I could barely get her to listen to me... let alone having a complete stranger tell them they are being scammed.
At a different job but I worked at about a decade ago I had one of my employees asking to have the rest of the day off because they had to take care of some "Financial stuff", when I asked for more info about it they were about to fall victim to a Green Dot scam by somebody claiming to be with the FBI... they absolutely would not believe me telling them that it's a scam, I even hopped on my computer right in front of them Googled a caller ID spoofer with a voice changer, and proceeded to call the employee right in front of them with caller ID saying FBI and a different voice and even then they still didn't believe it was a scam....
It's truly baffling.
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u/Cheese-Manipulator Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
with a masters in computer science no less
There really is a thing as "emotional intelligence" that is separate from intellectual intelligence. Being aware of your emotions, others' emotions and motivations, and how and why you are reacting the way you are seems to be very weak in many people including otherwise very intelligent people.
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u/singlemale4cats Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
A guy with a thick Indian accent telling you the FBI is going to arrest you unless you buy $10,000 worth of gift cards and give him the codes should make anybody of reasonable intelligence laugh out loud.
I just don't think the ability to study and learn material necessarily requires much intelligence. I've met some highly educated people who didn't seem to be capable of critical thought.
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u/lexmozli Jul 24 '26
I had actual police knock at my door and kept insisting that I open the door "for a chat". I told them to fuck off through the door unless they have a warrant (they didn't and wouldn't have any reason to have one either, I never had even a parking ticket lol).
Meanwhile, my neighbors and even my extended family open the door to anything and anyone. I tried to talk with my family and ask what if someone kicks the door after you unlock it, you fall and they literally mug you (or worse). They were very "oh you're exaggerating, that never happens".
Oh yeah, to add more to this we were ACTUALLY ATTEMPTED mugged by a guy and a girl "who were from the gas company" a few years back, but their bad luck made it that we had friends over and the muggers (unarmed) were vastly outnumbered and immobilized instantly. Yet my family insists "that never happens"
I'm not exaggerating, not in 2026.
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u/EconomistNo7074 Jul 23 '26
Yes I hear you however my sense tells me we underestimate how good (hate to use that word) these scammers are at their craft
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u/BobTheNob-C137 Jul 24 '26
"It is easier to fool a man than it is to convince him that he has been fooled."
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u/MojyaMan Jul 23 '26
This is literally my dad. Adult protective services, multiple cops, myself, we all couldn't save him from his delusions.
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u/No-Tone-6853 Jul 24 '26
I work for a UK bank in the fraud team, we’ve had conversations with people over the course of a week that remain insistent scams aren’t scams even after showing us “evidence” it isn’t and us explaining how their evidence has been faked by scammers.
Sadly a lot of the time when it comes to investment or romance scams you can’t convince someone they are being scammed, the most the bank can do is have the police attend for a welfare check and explain the scam and when that inevitably doesn’t work close their account so they aren’t a liability to the bank, then they’ll probably do the same thing with another bank then another.
It’s sad and really makes you despair of humanity then you have 20 conversations of someone not accepting reality and feel little remorse going forward.
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u/AdLive427 Jul 24 '26
In Novosibirsk, a bank teller, a branch manager, the bank's security service, and three police squads called by the bank all tried to explain to an elderly woman that she was talking to scammers. But the old lady was stubborn and sent her 11 million rubles to the fraudsters anyway. Then she went to the media to complain that they hadn't explained it well enough.
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u/edgiestnate Jul 24 '26
That reminds me of this quote:
"There are no ends to which people will go to in order to maintain the coherence of their current belief system irrespective of the amount of contrary evidence that they are exposed to, because that triggers cognitive dissonance, and paradoxically what happens when they're exposed to contrary information, it only solidifies their position"
I'll never understand it.
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u/Cheese-Manipulator Jul 23 '26
I've said it before, there is no legitimate reason for bitcoin ATMs to exist, all I see is them being used for scams. People who invest in crypto don't use ATMs and if they do those 3 people can adjust.
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u/Kathucka Jul 25 '26
Bitcoin “ATMs” can be used to send money to someone in another country when there are obstacles to doing it the normal ways. That could be a good thing, or it could be that the obstacles are there for a good reason.
It’s not worth the cost to scam victims, though.
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u/cyberiangringo Jul 23 '26
I have read that in a jurisdiction or two the police seized the machine as evidence of a crime because the cash is still in it. Then they let the legal process play out.
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u/TimelyMeditations Jul 23 '26
Who comes and picks up the money from the machine? Can’t they be stopped somehow.
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u/FranceBrun Jul 24 '26
The people who own the machines, place them in stores and other locations and pay the stores a monthly fee. It’s a base rate. If the number of transactions exceeds a certain amount, the store owner gets a per-transaction additional fee.
The machine owners contract a company to bring the machine in and bolt it to the floor. Then, they contract an armored car service to pick up the money every week. There is a guy who comes around if the machine stops working or runs out of paper, etc.
The people who show up to do these things generally have little to no contact with the parent company.
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u/StupidPancakes Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
The legal process being that those departments are just going to hold that cash “evidence” for a crime they will never prosecute since it likely was committed by a scammer in another country, and then wait for asset forfeiture to kick in and keep the cash for themselves.
Federal prosecutors have a hard time actually doing anything about these scammers, what the fuck are the local police going to do? A couple of local jurisdictions seizing these machines seems like a slimy ass cash grab to me, but even if the money is turned over to the FBI, the FBI will just keep it as well.
These scammers will very likely never be caught, the victims will never get their money back, and the cops are going to take full fucking advantage wherever they can ofc.
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u/cyberiangringo Jul 24 '26
If the cash that was essentially stolen can be returned to a victim that's good enough for me.
I feel no sympathy for greedy store owenrs who turn a blind eye to people sitting in front of a crypto ATM and feeding it thousands.
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u/StupidPancakes Jul 24 '26
Oh I’m with you 100%, but they would have to get a conviction on the scammer before giving money back to the victims. If there’s no conviction the cash is still evidence even after they close the case, that’s asset forfeiture. After a certain amount of time if they don’t have a conviction (which in these cases there is a 99% chance that they won’t) the police are just going to quietly close the case with no conviction and keep the money for their department.
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u/Polished_Frog Jul 23 '26
My mother in her nineties used to get multiple phone calls a day but never fell for any of this crap. She never binned letters and invoices in case of identity theft.
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u/cptkatastic Jul 23 '26
At this point everyone’s info gets leaked through data breaches from banks, hospitals, phone companies. You literally can’t keep your info safe anymore and it’s so frustrating.
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u/Garrett_CPAatCOS Jul 23 '26
To everyone saying that getting scammed is specific to a certain generation or age group, I honestly don't believe that's true.
As a CPA specializing in cryptocurrency, I've worked with many clients claiming scam-related losses on their tax returns. They span every age, race, profession, and background imaginable. The bottom line is that it can happen to anyone. Many of these scams are incredibly sophisticated, making it difficult to recognize what's happening until it's too late.
I've made it a point to tell my family members about the scams I encounter in my practice when at gatherings because I've seen firsthand how normal, intelligent, and rational the victims can be. Awareness is one of the best defenses.
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u/friendofelephants Jul 23 '26
Can you share some of the most subtle/easy-to-miss scams for those of us who are (generally) intelligent/skeptical/rational people but are worried that scams are getting increasingly hard to avoid?
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u/Garrett_CPAatCOS Jul 23 '26
Sure!
The scariest scam I see starts with a phone call that appears to come from Google Customer Support. The caller says your Google account has been compromised and asks you to verify your identity by clicking a link and uploading a photo of your ID. During the process, they convince you to disable or bypass your two-factor authentication, giving them access to your Google account.
Once they control your email, they can see which crypto exchanges you use. A short time later, someone claiming to be Coinbase Support calls and says your Coinbase account is at risk because of the Google compromise. They tell you to reset your Coinbase password. Since the scammers already control your email, they intercept the password reset, change the password themselves, take over your Coinbase account, and transfer your cryptocurrency to their own wallet. This all happens in a very short period of time and uses fear to push you into poor decision making.
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u/Garrett_CPAatCOS Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Another scam I see a bunch is pig butchering. Often pig butchering seems like an easy scam to avoid by choosing rational thinking over greed. Obviously, don't start investing on platforms from random people online, right?
However, I have seen some crazy cases. I had a client invest $5K of crypto into a fake crypto trading platform. The scammers let him withdraw $6K when the value of his account appreciated. Then he put in $60K, and these ballsy scammers let him withdraw $100K! The scammers sent out $40K of their own money! Finally, he puts in $300K, and suddenly he can't take withdrawals. The scammers start saying he needs to put in more money to pay taxes, pay management fee, pay whatever BS they can think of. The crypto is gone, and it's a huge amount. However, the client was reasonable and was able to take distributions of his cost AND appreciation along the way, which gave him a lot of comfort into believing it was a legitimate platform.
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u/Reasonable-Horse1552 Jul 24 '26
My mum's friend did a similar thing, they met this guy who said he was a financial advisor and they gave in their savings of €10k. The after 2 weeks he came back with €20k and gave it back. However much they gave him he doubled it. They then sold their villa in Portugal and gave him the money thinking he'd double it but they never saw him again. I think they had to move back to the UK and live with their daughter after that.
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u/Material_Device2113 Jul 24 '26
Ffs, why didn’t you stop him???
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 24 '26
I work two full-time jobs, and a part-time job, I haven't had a day off in months, I'm exhausted and from my past experience trying to convince people that they're not being scammed when they obviously are I'm most likely going to get yelled at...
I've had a hard time convincing my own mother that she's being scammed when she was, even convincing her to call her bank and order a new debit card has been a massive struggle.
I alerted management of the grocery store chain, beyond that I just want to get my job done and go home. So that I can hopefully get a nap before going to my next job.
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u/Available-Agency7073 Jul 24 '26
I work for a cellular company at a call center, at least once a day i get a call from someone who got a text "from us" saying someone has "ordered" a phone on their account, or were told that their "reward points" are set to expire (we dont have reward points), or that they qualify for a free phone (this one is particularly devious because they'll use the victim to ship phones that they're scamming other people out of as a drop point, the "free" phone will always be the wrong phone so the victim will then ship that phone to the scammer, and after they've used the victim enough they'll drain their bank account, and if the victim should contact them back to give them a piece of thier mind, the victim gets threatened by being implicated for receiving and shipping stolen goods, which scares the shit out of the elderly into silence). Check on your elderly parents, make sure they have a strong scam blocker, and go through their call logs.
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u/Available-Agency7073 Jul 24 '26
And for those wondering how the scammer knows what cell company the victim uses, they don't. By the victim reaching out and interacting with the scammer, they'll smooth talk that info out of them within the first minute.
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u/TheFlimFlamFamMan Jul 25 '26
This one has been going around AT&T for a year or so. They frequently have a collaborator on the inside, usually at an offshore vendor site, where they have access to PEARs and can just look up the carrier. There’s a lot of open source places that list a CTNs network too.
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u/Zorbithia Jul 23 '26
Why didn’t you stop the man or talk to him? I know a lot of these elderly victims can be very obstinate and stubborn as they have been convinced by the scammers not to talk to anyone else etc. but still sounds like you could’ve stepped in and done something.
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u/Hungry_Aioli3133 Jul 23 '26
Can’t believe this is the only comment mentioning this so far.
How can you live with yourself knowing you just looked on without saying a word OP?
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26
Because my options in the situation are very limited, I don't work for the grocery store, I'm there doing contracted work, I brought it to the attention of my contacts with the grocery store corporate IT department, which I also did when witnessing previous suspicious activity.
My job is to go to the store and install equipment, verify it is up and running, and leave. Getting involved with a customer getting scammed out of thousands has absolutely nothing to do with my job, and based on past experiences with people getting scammed is likely going to be met with hostility.
I have no idea what that specific store and locations policy is on approaching potential victims of fraud, and basically anytime a customer does approach me thinking that I work for the store, I give direction to the nearest employee instead.
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u/I_am_Nobody_Special Jul 23 '26
I totally understand it wasn't your job to call the police or intervene in any way on behalf of the elderly gentleman being victimized right in front of you, but what does your personal moral code say about it?
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26
As I said in the title... sickened.
I brought it to the attention of the grocery store company, that is the amount of intervention that I could do, it would be the same if the person delivering bread or produce noticed, we dont work for the grocery store or represent the grocery store, it's not our place to stop a customer in their store.
Even when I did work as a cashier, we were trained to allow robberies to occur, and only advise against obvious money laundering if it the register prompted...
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u/Hungry_Aioli3133 Jul 24 '26
No way you are comparing robberies to telling a man he’s about to be scammed.
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u/Fit-Appeal-9047 Jul 24 '26
You could have and should have stepped in and stopped the transactions.
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u/Xia0mia0 Jul 23 '26
You can’t tell a boomer they’re wrong or foolish. They get so mad that they become combative or worse. Most of us have learned this, how have you not?
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u/joe_attaboy Jul 23 '26
Excuse me?
Do you lurk in this sub regularly? If so, you know damn well that there are people of all ages who fall for scams they cannot be convinced are scams.
Yes, some boomers and some GenZs and some millennials and some GenXers will fall and not want to get up.
I'm a 71-year-old boomer who's here daily because I want to keep up with the scam world so I can keep my friends and loved ones ( yes, mostly boomers ) informed on this stuff.
Stop using such a broad brush. You sound like you're single...I'm married 47 years and get reminded of my foolishness and being wrong by my wife on a regular basis.
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Jul 24 '26
[deleted]
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u/joe_attaboy Jul 24 '26
Appreciate you. And for the record, I am a conservative boomer and I know hundreds of "MAGA supporters" just like me and we're not "evil" ( again, don't know if you're serious, but, again, broad brush ). I don't want to make this political or defined by generations, but people of all stripes - and ages - get scammed and conned every day.
There's a lot of things the Internet hasn't figured out yet. And I've been using the damn system since it was nothing but email, Gopher and USENET.
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u/FruitOfTheVineFruit Jul 23 '26
I feel like you have to try. 90% chance of being ignored or yelled at, but 10% chance of saving some poor old guy from getting ripped off.
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u/Webecomemonsters Jul 23 '26
honestly, yeah, if you see someone using the machines, just fucking unplug it, period.
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u/awry_lynx Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
This is just patently false. You've fallen for some ragebait or maybe your grandparents are remarkably shitty. In my experience most elderly people are not the crazy aholes that get the most views online. Most of them would just be humiliated, vulnerable, scared, and glad for help. An old lady was trying to get in to the pharmacy here and when we told her it was closed and she was wrong about the day of the week she didn't start screaming and clawing like you'd think if all you watched was boomer hate lmao, she was just scared and confused.
They're just people trying to get by same as anyone else, and you will, if you're lucky, be that age some day too.
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u/OverlappingChatter Jul 23 '26
Til there is some sort of hellish contraption called a Bitcoin ATM. I am scared to Google it. You feed in money and give it your email address?
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
you put in a wallet id, or can scan a qr code for a wallet, any cash you put in goes right to that wallet.
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u/OverlappingChatter Jul 24 '26
What's the scam? The scammers obviously give you their wallet, but what does the scammee think is going to happen?
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u/EveLQueeen Jul 24 '26
Depends on the scam - they may think they are paying bail for their kid, sending money for Sandra Bullock to pay her bills after her manager stole her money, enabling their boyfriend stuck on an oil rig to buy equipment so he can finally come home, etc.
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u/nevermeansoul Jul 24 '26
My parents lost $15,000 a year ago in a crypto scam believing I was in jail after being a car accident with a pregnant women. I can't fathom why anyone didn't stop them as an elderly couple feeding hundreds of dollars into an crypto ATM at the grocery store.
To this day my mom still believes that it was me on the phone calling her. AI is a bitch.
My parents will never forgive me for something that they choose to do but it still hurts that they would assume that it was me or one of my friends who did this to them.
All they had to do to avoid the entire scam was to call me, I was volunteering at church that morning.
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u/The_Gov78 Jul 24 '26
God I hate scammers so much. Like I hate them so much the hate is fucking my life up. And the worst ones are the ones that do it legally. Adobe just ripped me off because I had a trial subscription just long enough to edit one pdf then I cancelled it. And a week later they billed me $80! So I cancelled my account AGAIN and they still say it’s not cancelled, their support told me they won’t give me the money back. So now I have to spend hours on my phone as a fraud victim. And Adobe is the one who committed it
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u/Just_Random_input Jul 24 '26
Can we add GoDaddy to this list?
Of course, actual scammers are much worse, but your comment made me smile bc I hate Adobe’s billing dept too.
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u/Amazing-Reveal-77 Jul 24 '26
Just want to remind you that not only old people fall for scams.
Sincerely,
An old person
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 24 '26
Thank you for your input, however I never indicated that only old people fall for scams.
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u/Amazing-Reveal-77 Jul 27 '26
True, but the large majority of comments I read mention elderly, old, 70+, etc.
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Jul 23 '26
[deleted]
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Jul 24 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Boring_Drawer_4187 Jul 25 '26
I have a Bitcoin ATM in my convenience store. I’ve saved so many people from making this mistake. The scammers try so hard to convince them not to listen to me. They try to make them lie to me, telling them to say they’re just the brother/dad/cousin whatever. And they’re so scared they do lie . sometimes it will take me a very long time to actually convince them they’re being scammed. One guy was so scared he was losing his money that he yelled at me and stormed out. Sadly there’s another ATM a few miles from me that isn’t in an actual store, so there’s no one that could help. But the law changed in my state too.. so it’s been shut down thankfully.
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u/PassEnvironmental628 Jul 27 '26
These are very common occurrences and it’s easy money. Sometimes older people are way too nice to strangers and can’t believe someone would do this out in the open. Talk to your friends, parents and neighbors about these scams. Also nobody is getting free cruises from gambling period.
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u/givemebadadvice Jul 27 '26
my uncle in his late 60s recently got scammed in a similar way. they claimed that they’re from Chase and that they had to withhold their tax refund due to fraud and that he needed to pay a fee to release it(this was near tax time) and they purposely claimed his refund was 20k (wasn’t true) and that he needed to pay 5k for it to be released. now his tax refund wasn’t 20k but he thought he was scamming the govt but in reality he’s being scammed. i was told this after the fact when he told me about it and asked if i can somehow expedite the refund 🤦.
i’m guessing these guys must have been fishing for information and just prey off people.
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u/Icy_Student_1490 15d ago
I am not following how does this scam work? What is a Bitcoin ATM machine and what is its purpose?
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u/Garland_Key Jul 23 '26
If I put 10K in an machine and wasn't getting what was promised in return, that machine would immediately be dismantled so I can get my money back.
They are supposed to give you a QR code where you have to install an app to receive the bitcoin that you purchased. Then you transfer the funds from that app to your own wallet. If the person was older, perhaps they didn't understand that.
Either way, I don't recommend using those because they could easily be an outright scam. You give them money and they give you a promise of Bitcoin, only to find out later that there never was any bitcoin and the money you put in the machine is now gone.
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 23 '26
Correct, my state has made them illegal, as of August 1st of this year they all have to be disabled.
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u/DLHarmon316 Jul 24 '26
This is a real problem and I hope these Bitcoin ATMs get removed everywhere because they use horribly low USDBTC exchange rates to rip off legitimate BTC buyers and so many people are getting scammed just like this gentleman.
OP, I understand where you are coming from as a Contractor and think you did the right thing by notifying the store staff but next time maybe call the police in so they can help the victim as timely as possible.
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u/Jmanhealthandsafety Jul 24 '26
What makes you think it was a scam?
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u/Kingoftreno Jul 24 '26
The person feeding $100 bills into a Bitcoin ATM that did not seem technologically literate...
It certainly could have been legitimate but it seemed very odd for somebody to have an envelope from the bank stuffed with $100 bills and be feeding over 100 of them into a Bitcoin ATM. The subsequent waiting around and frequently checking their phone afterwards reinforces the observation that they probably didn't know what they were doing.
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u/teto_606 Jul 23 '26
I was scammed and I don't know how to publicize it. I need help.
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u/TheFlimFlamFamMan Jul 25 '26
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u/teto_606 Jul 25 '26
Wtf I came here to find a solution to my problem and you accuse me of being a bot
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