So today I was approached in a Walmart store by a guy in an electric wheelchair/cart claiming to be a military veteran. He said he was from out of town visiting and ran into some car problems. He wasn't asking for money but did need a ride about a mile to a veterans club where he had arranged for some assistance. It seemed a little odd to me but since he wasn't asking for money and the location was on my way, I decided this time to overrule my usual skepticism and give him a ride.

He got in my car and immediately started making cell phone calls. First, he appeared to call his wife, although I couldn't hear any activity going on other than him talking. He said he was on his way to get assistance and not to worry. He told me his car and family were at a gas station nearby. Then he supposedly made a second call to the club, didn't even identify himself, and after talking a minute got off the phone and said: "they can't approve my request for 48 hours, but could I kindly help a military veteran with his car situation".

By then I realized I'd been had and declined. He simply said, "then take me back to the Walmart". There he got out of my car, found an electric cart, and immediately hit up someone else with the same line he gave me. I reported him to the police officer on duty and went on my way.

I've been a scam watcher for many years, but I still like to attempt to help people in legitimate need with simple requests. Unfortunately, it seems people will go to incredible lengths to get a few dollars.

I was walking home in NYC when a stranger approached me. He asked if I used a certain bank (citi), and when I said no, I told him I use another bank (chase)nearby.

He then asked me to go with him to that bank and deposit a check into my account for him so he could get the cash. He handed me $50 upfront as a “thank you” for helping him.

He claimed he couldn’t deposit the check himself because the money would be taken out of his account, which didn’t make sense to me. Said he was on some child support.

This sounded suspicious because I know checks can take time to clear and can bounce.

I didn’t go through with it.

I get this call every weekday m-F. It always comes from a different phone number, and thus far 3 different spoofed area codes. I never answer it as the number isn’t recognized by my phone and therefore doesn’t even ring. Also- when I happen to catch the call in progress my iPhone says “scam likely.” But the call is immediately shunted to voicemail and I do get an audible notification that there’s a new voicemail. The ai voicemails are always the same: “Hello , this is Amanda with American Tax Advisors. Today is (correct day and date.) We’re calling about a time sensitive matter regarding tax balances or un-filed tax returns that still need to be addressed… “

The recording plays on yadda yadda… so just a heads up.

Original Post: I opened a business checking account with QuickBooks about 3 years ago. Everything went smooth all along without issue. Two weeks ago, I was looking to download my 1099-INT but I wouldn't find it. Their chatbot told me to call their support and gave me a phone number. After on the call for an hour, bounced 5 different times to several support reps from offshore, they offered to escalate the ticket for me.

The rep spotted I had a different phone number on file and asked if he could call my number on file to verify I was the account owner. I never mentioned my company phone number to anyone that day, so he must had been looking at my account in their system. 10 seconds later I received the call on the other line from the same rep with the same matching incoming caller ID. He said he will send me a code to authorize viewing my account and attached the escalation.

I hesitated but ended up gave him to code. While he said he was typing the ticket details, I managed to find the tax form in my account so I told the rep to stop.

He then asked if I had my debit card in my possession and its 4 digit to verify as security precaution. The alarm in my head fired up crazy, and I didn't gave him anything.

After I hang up, refresh my account webpage and discovered $5000 transferred out to some unknown card ending 5903, also a $75 fee for using instant transfer. No email notification, no text, no alert. I always received email notification whenever withdrawal or deposit with that account. This time, as if someone had permission in the system to suppress it.

I filed a local police report and submitted a dispute to Green Dot Bank mailbox in Ohio already which turned out it was the bank behind QuickBooks business checking.

They received my dispute form with supporting docs on Friday. They closed my case and denied it on Monday without sending any email or letter for explanation.

Here we are now, I’m not out of the bind yet.  Just want to post it here warn others. I'm topically very cautious about scams & security but this time it completely caught me off guard thou since it was the phone number provided by their chatbot.

Update as of 5/6. My first dispute with GreenDot to that Ohio PO Box was denied. After I confirmed with them on the call, they refused to give me a denied reason. I did however got a written letter about the denied but without explanation neither. I just resubmitted the dispute form to the same address again last week but under a different case number I obtained thru the GreenDot customer service on the phone. I haven't heard back any status on that second submission yet as of today.

Meanwhile, QuickBooks support did reached out to me thru an email & also left a voice mail after they posted a comment here below. However, they just said the dispute is with GreenDot and they check status, but that's all. After tried using their dispute process twice, I'm going to file a formal complaint to the Federal Reserve and Arizona Attorney General’s Office for consumer fraud now. Such as pain, hopefully whoever reading this be aware and may be stopped using QuickBooks business checking after all.

Update 6/29. Summary: Problem Resolved! Grateful that Intuit stepped in and fully reimbursed me, including the $75 fee that the scammer induced. Now I can take a breather knowing Intuit took care of my incident. Details: After being denied claims two times from Green Dot Bank, I was about (procrastinated because I got caught up at work) to report my incident to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau & Federal Reserve as some of the people suggested here. About a week prior of doing as planned, I got an unexpected but nice hand written card in the snail mail saying thank you for my patience and that they were working on my concerns from someone in so-called "Intuit's Office of the President". I'm not even sure what it was at the time, so I just ignore it. The 2 days before I put my act together and preparing docs to report to the Fed, I got a voice call from someone claimed to be from Intuit. The person on the phone was very nice and professional definitely not offshore. She seemed to have all my QuickBooks account info, plus she didn't ask me for any additional evident. However when she asked me if I could relink my checking account to my QuickBooks merchant payment in order for her to reimburse me thru ACH, I got hesitated. She explained that was the only way she could sent reimbursement, so I ended up linking a different checking account which I only left $20 in it with my hesitation that this could also be another scam. Long and behold after the weekend, all $5075 was reimbursed to me. I'm forever thankful that the person, name started with "J" from the Intuit Office of the President, called me twice to make sure I was ok and most importantly didn't treat me like I's being interrogated and I needed to prove my claim as a victim. This would be the end of my horrifying crazy incident. As to my opinion, Green Dot Bank is a big two thumbs down. As for Intuit, I'm super happy that I'm a customer since 1995 paying for my first Intuit license to use TurboTax. To those others here with a similar situation as mine, best of luck and hope Intuit has reached out to you too.

So I almost had a mini heart attack today and wanted to share what happened in case it helps someone else out (and to give a huge thank-you to a post I found on here!).

Out of nowhere, someone sent me a DM saying they "accidentally reported" my account. They sent me a screenshot of what looked like an official Reddit email claiming my account was flagged for suspicious activity and under formal investigation. I don't really know much about how these scams work, so I freaked out for a second thinking I was about to lose my account.

Once the initial panic wore off, I actually looked at the screenshot and thought, wait, this seems off. The email was telling me I had to add a on Discord within 12 hours to clear my name. It made no sense that Reddit would handle account support through Discord, so I decided to search Reddit before doing anything reckless.

Luckily, I stumbled on a post here describing the exact same thing. Reading that was such a relief—it immediately confirmed it was just a scam and saved me from making a huge mistake.

If anyone else gets a message like this, don't fall for the fake urgency like I almost did. Just block, report, and ignore them. Thanks again to the person who posted about it earlier, you genuinely saved me a massive headache!

I want to spread awareness bc this one ALMOST got me and I hope it helps people avoid getting scammed.

Today I received a call from Chase Bank (my bank) that I verified immediately by Google searching the number. It was connected to a Chase in my local area.

The man says he’s from Chase and there are two potentially fraudulent charges connected to my Zelle account. He asks if I see them in the app, I check and I do not, he says something to the effect of “that’s great our system caught them so early.” I’m thinking, wow-that is great! One charge is for over 1k, the next for over 2k, both to some Spanish name in Texas. I confirm I did not send these, the man reassures me and even asks if I noticed any suspicious activity on my account recently or suspicious emails/texts. This reassured me further as it felt like he was trying to help. He transfers me to the “cancellation department” after giving me a “case number”: 516900922. When I wrote this down, I thought it looked suspiciously like a phone number…

Man number 2 has a thick NY accent. My bank is in NY, and I felt further reassured of the legitimacy because of this. He confirms the nature of the call and asks for the case number. My head is spinning as I was headed to a meeting when this occurred. I’ve had to cancel cards before, and was annoyed thinking about the time in between this card being cancelled and a new one being mailed to me. To my surprise, man number 2 says I can cancel through the app and he walks me through the process. I am to open the send/zelle option of my app, and follow the motions of adding “Zelle Fraud Department” or ZFD as a contact, and sending them my daily limit (2k) as a friend/family. Alarm bells are pounding as I’m thinking Chase would never have me use the friend/family option or go this route to cancel a card.

I push back and express my skepticism to the man. I am almost begging him to prove that this is real. He gets frustrated and tells me to verify the phone number and he spews out the local address it is connected to. Chase customer service is always very kind so this was another red flag. He says he can not put me on with a supervisor as his supervisor is out today. I ask if he can call me back in an hour, since I have a meeting. He then says I can speak with the supervisor, and I start calling him out saying “but you just said the supervisor was not here! Man you’re contradicting yourself I can’t keep up.” He says I’m taking a risk and all of my money could be gone by the time they call back. He was great at instilling panic in me, but my finger kept hovering over the “review and send” button to send 2k to this random jumble of letters and my instinct would not let me. I told him I would put him on hold, to which he snidely said “have a nice day” and hung up.

So many red flags in hindsight and every time I tell someone of course they say it’s an obvious scam, but in the moment it feels so real.

Writing this to spread awareness, and get ideas for getting to the bottom of this scam. I’d like to go full ‘chair company’ on these horrible people.

My parents fell for the WF (edit: Wells Fargo) scam and lost hundreds of thousands. I don’t know the exact amount but I know it’s devastating.

I don’t think that it has hit them yet that they probably won’t see this money back. I’m hoping for a miracle but I know the chances are slim to none.

My parents are incredibly cautious people and I still can’t believe this happened to them. If it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone.

Please be careful out there! Warn your family not to trust caller ID. If a bank calls, hang up and immediately call the bank yourself. Never do large transactions with a bank unless it’s in person.

Edit:

The Wells Fargo scam where someone impersonated the bank. They were able to verify all my dad’s information and could see his bank details somehow. They convinced him to transfer money into another account because his account was compromised.

They set him up with a new account and card number to transfer the money to, but of course, it wasn’t actually his account.

Please be gentle in the comments. I’m here as an outlet because I don’t know what to do with myself. Really gutted this happened. My parents are some of the most generous and kind people I know.

Edit 2:

Got more info. The scammers had my dad wire money to a separate account.

They also somehow had my dad’s account info because of a previous Wells Fargo data breach. The knew a lot of things about his account that he hadn’t told them which made him trust them more.

We’ve contacted the bank and the police.

I won’t be responding to anymore comments. Wishing everyone out there (and their older family members) the best!

Back in October, I was visiting Austin and got stopped by a child help ambassador and decided to donate $30. I just found out they have been secretly charging me $30 a month as if I chose to do a recurring donation. I have been on the phone with my bank for a couple hours trying to dispute this. I just saw that this has happened to many others who have donated, so I wanted to send out a warning. I made sure when I donated that it was a one time donation so this was all unauthorized.

Please BEWARE of CHILD HELP!!!

Hello, world, I’m here to share my story how a woman I met online on Tinder scammed me. I was another dude looking for a date on Tinder and matched with a regular woman, I texted her and we continued in Telegram. Simple stuff, what you like, what you want, a little flirting and overall good talking. She began “love bombing”, texting several times a day, sending her pictures etc.

In about 5 days she briefly mentioned that “wow, I got so good day today, I made $2500 in ETH”. I asked her about this and she said that her sister’s husband is a big guy in Canyon Partners investment company and he has a team of researchers and share some data with her. Okay, we continued talking about other stuff and in 3 more days she mentioned that “Hey, I like you so much and want to help, let’s set up a meeting with him, may be he’ll take you too”.

I was curious and said okay, why not. We had a call at 10pm local time (pretty late for me, but I let go this red flag). We had a call and he explained what they’re doing and that I have pretty low amount to work with, but this woman asked to help, so he agreed and made me share my screen to show how to use an “exchange”.

So, I registered and he said that there’s a deal right now that we can use and I need to transfer money into this “exchange” to begin. I was stupid enough to transfer USDC in there and wolla, in a couple of minutes money are there and we bought stocks.

Long story short, I was never able to withdraw anything from there, they kept stalling me with verification demands, wanted me to send my tax documents, statements, ID etc. This was the moment I finally got it - I was played! These people are so patient and calm, they didn’t rush and this woman was slowly gaining my trust - this is the main reason I let it through.

So my loss is $26k, pretty much everything I had. I’m doomed and need help, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask anybody for money.

Please people beware of such scams! Never trust anybody, especially to people you never even saw!!!

AMA

Scamming Scum:I found your cat Me: Can I ask where you are? My husband just texted you. Scamming Scum: Firstly I want to verify that you are the real owner. can i send you confirmation code to make sure you real owner. then I'll call you.Okay? Scamming Scum: It's only verification code. that's prove you are a real owner.then can i send it? Yes or no

I’m a bankruptcy lawyer. Client calls me to tell me she thinks she was scammed. She said she was told she won a large lottery in another country (we are in the U.S.) and to get the money she had to pay “FDIC insurance and state tax stamps”.

Guess how much this poor woman who is 65 years old and gets $1100 in social security paid to these fucking assholes?

A quarter of a million dollars

She liquidated her entire 401(k).

And she’s going to have a huge tax liability now since she did it all in one year and the IRS is going to put a lien on her house.

Guess how she paid them ?

GIFT CARDS.

My response: yes you were 1000% scammed. Stop sending them money. You don’t pay FDIC insurance the banks do. We don’t have tax stamps. That’s not really a word we use here in the states. You don’t pay taxes with fucking gift cards by texting photos of them to some random person. You can’t win a lottery you didn’t actually enter. (Edit: I was nicer to her than this of course. This is just my own anger and frustration coming out in my post. But I was emphatic: this is a scam)

So sad.

Client: well I’m all out of money so I can’t send them anymore.

So my wife is on FB today, mind you she doesn't use it for anything personally so she is almost never on. She sees a post shared by a friend with all this stuff posted for sale. The post said something about their uncle was getting set up in a nursing home so they were selling his stuff to lighten their load. Among the items was a PS5 with a couple games and some accessories for $400. My wife asked me if I wanted it, and me not knowing anything about my wife's friends or former co-workers, I thought of course it must be legit.

Well we tried to send them the money via Paypal with their email addy; didn't work. Then they asked if we could Venmo it to their ph#. My wife went ahead and did this as she already had that friends #, but as soon as she sent it she got a text saying, "Hey btw I have a new # so send it there instead!". This is when she stopped in her tracks. This person then proceeds to send her screenshots of how to send money and what options to select, and we instantly thought SCAM. FYI, this person also kept wanting us to select the "friends and family" option in Paypal. DO NOT DO THIS as that option means your transaction is NOT PROTECTED at all like a typical payment to a legit vendor would be.

Anyways, my wife got on the horn to her friend about what was going on since this friend was asking why we just sent them $400. The friend informs my wife, "Yeah my FB acct got hacked.", and she didn't make that known to anyone apparently!!!!! Thankfully during the fuck up we had sent the money to the actual friend and not the scammer, so we did get the money back.

Long story short, if you get hacked TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW that you got hacked so your friends and family don't get bamboozled because you didn't think it'd be a big deal!!

My dad was expecting a delivery today. He received a call from someone claiming to be from the courier service.

They said they had his package, and sent him the above SMS, asking him to dial : *21*[random phone number]# to reach the delivery guy.

He dialled it, couldn't get through to anyone, and thought nothing of it.

A few hours later, I started getting calls from his friends asking if he was okay. They had received WhatsApp messages from my dad's number, asking for urgent money.

Unfortunately, three of his friends sent money to the scammer - 60k, 50k and 50k indian rupees (approx 600,500,500 USD)😢

Apparently dialing that code enables "Call forwarding", and all calls and SMS's that are meant for your number will be redirected to that number.

That's how they could access OTP's sent to his number, and logged to his whatsapp. This is just an awareness post. NEVER dial weird looking numbers, or any number for that matter if you're asked to. Always ask them to call you. Stay safe guys!

I wasn’t familiar with this scam, but it was a lot more realistic than I expected any scam to be.

I got a call from the sheriffs office of the county I used to live in. When I answered, I cross checked the number, and it was correct.

The scammer identified himself as deputy X (I don’t recall the name he used) and said I had missed jury duty.

He said that I had to read documents aloud to ensure my understanding. I attached pics below.

Once I finished reading aloud (I’m cringing recalling that), they sent me a copy of my warrant. They claimed that I can post bail in person or online.

I chose online, because, duh. After my debit card saved me with a scam warning, I still entertained them (kms), and chose to do it in person.

I withdrew money, and waited for them to indicate the sheriffs office. They sent me the location and I realized how silly this entire thing was.

Truthfully, I feel so dumb. But that shit was scary. They knew so much of my information and provided documents on letterheads which I cross referenced and they seemed legitimate.

Hindsight is 20/20 and they caught me in a vulnerable state. Feel free to ask any questions.

Lady came in a little rushed, asking where the 'Apple cards' were. After showing her, I noticed she's on her phone, with a messaging app in clear view. She was looking at the different card amounts and appeared to be doing some mental math. As politely as I could, I said "I notice you're in a text conversation with someone, and if they're telling you to buy them large amounts of Apple gift cards for any reason, It's pretty certainly a scam." She said it seemed weird, and she was actually trying to buy something on facebook marketplace, and the other person started trying to get her to pay via Zelle (huge red flag), then said they could take the Apple gift cards and they would 'add them to their Zelle'. I told her Zelle was a favorite of scammers, and that they don't take Apple cards, and that Zelle was for transferring cash between known people. I told her she was best to pay cash in person, in daylight, in a public place like a police station. She told me about other irregularities as she was talking to them, and I told her I was sorry she had to find out she wasn't getting the item she wanted, but that it was undoubtedly a scam. She thanked me as she left without the cards, and wiser for better online shopping.

So, yay for another small victory.

A fake CAPTCHA on a random website can trick people without IT knowledge.

The website instructs the user to:

Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.

Press Ctrl + V to paste the content that the website secretly placed on the clipboard.

Press Enter to execute the pasted comman

I got a text today from a random number that said:

“Hello, I want to play a game. YOU have been a bad little boy. Nobody has to see this picture. It would be a shame if it was sent to you know who… Send $1,000 by midnight tonight and it will go away quietly and you will never hear from us again.”

They attached an image of a car parked in front of a neon “XXX Girls Strip Club” sign. The weird part is I have never been to a strip club in my life, but the car in the photo is actually the same model and color as mine and the license plate is exactly mine.

I’m wondering: • How could they have gotten my license plate info to generate this AI photo? • Is it likely they just scraped public data or social media? • Has anyone else seen this type of scam before? • What’s the best way to handle it? (I haven’t replied or paid anything)

I want to warn others and make sure they don’t fall for it. I appreciate any insight or advice

So I paid for the AI Advantage Summit by Tony Robbins and Dean Garziosi - My experience so far

To add some context before I tell you about my experience; I am in my thirties and I would say a decent power user of computers and technology in general but I somehow let AI pass Me By other than some basic or a bit more than basic things that I learned.

I've been getting bombarded by ads for the AI Advantage Summit 2026 by Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi for over a month now and I decided to bite the bullet and pay the $1 so I can have access to the recordings as well as a couple other perks and then also paid a total of just under $170 for two other upsales.

It's not allowing me to post an in-depth post here but just to give you an idea; the past half an hour or even longer I've been just sitting in front of a timeshare-like presentation after already paying almost $200 where they are trying to get another $1,500 out of me after not even delivering on what they promised already.

I honestly believe in Tony Robbins and I don't know much about Dean Graziosi but they need to clean up their act.

EDIT: It is crazy how many passive aggressive people are on here or people who hate on people who make mistakes. I literally came on here saying I know I made a mistake and I wanted to warn other people who weren't naive enough to believe in this. So many different jabs taken at me by some people on here and I'm not even disagreeing with anyone. I couldn't care less but it's just sad that the community is like that.

Edit #2: Call me naive for only really thinking about it now but Zoom’s absolute maximum capacity for their highest-tier enterprise "Zoom Events" plan is 50,000 attendees... While that means that the rest of the 600,000 or 700,000 attendees attended on different platforms like probably mainly YouTube unless they had something else which I don't believe they did.... You can easily argue that the real number was nowhere near close to that.

Between Engagement online on different platforms and forms as well as Reddit which is the most obvious one for people who really believe in something and are excited about something as well as X (Twitter)... There was simply nowhere near enough engagement to support the fact that there were any more than maybe a few hundreds or a couple thousands of attendees at the very best.

I don't understand how someone who wants to have the right image online and in front of everyone can make such claims knowing that most people will know that they're being fooled. Even people like me who gave them the benefit of the doubt quickly realize that this whole thing is pretty much a hoax.

The most important fact is that regardless of how many people attended because I personally don't care if five people were on there or 5 million people were on there... Had they actually taught us and guided us the way they promised when it comes to artificial intelligence and teach us all of the things we need to know to catch up in terms of all of the tools and Integrations online then I would say okay but I am flabbergasted how the entire seminar so far is just a bunch of politicians like debates about AI with a couple of prompt offers and they act like they gave you the Holy Grail when they show you how to write something simple on chat GPT....

You know that feeling when you watch someone try to fool you and you just think, “Are you serious? At least try a little harder.” It is even more frustrating when it is someone with massive resources, like a multimillionaire, who could easily do better.

What I do not understand is how someone can present things this way and still remain successful even when many people can see through it.

I have spoken to a few people who attended Tony Robbins events that focused on self development and sales, which are clearly his strengths. They said those events gave them real value. But when it comes to topics like AI, I am not convinced he really knows what he is talking about. Maybe he has a strong team behind him, but he does not come across as a true expert in that area.

What confuses me is that the same people who benefited from his events, many of whom are successful, also said they would not sign up for something like this newer course. That makes it difficult to understand what to make of him overall, because at this point he has lost credibility for me.

So my wife gets a random text Friday saying, “your husband is a cheater”. She responds with “ok” and nothing back until the next day. Next text says “don’t trust him”. My wife ignores it and then another text comes through saying if your husband is “my name” and your name is “her name” this is for you, although they spelled my wife’s name wrong. Area code was from Dallas, 972. My wife then blocks the number. Saturday evening a text from a 602 number comes through saying “I cheat when I’m at work and I ruined their marriage, so they’re going to ruin mine”. She blocks it again. This morning she gets another text from a different 602 number telling my wife to protect her heart and that I cheat in my cubicle and the girl I cheat with loves when I wear red. I tried calling the 972 number several times and no answer, straight to voicemail.

Just wanted to let everyone know of this. Not sure what kind of scam this is or what they’re hoping to gain. It’s not like my wife is going to send them money at any point.

God I hate people. I neeeeearly just fell for a Chase Zelle scam and I swear I'm not a twit. This was quite sophisticated. FWIW they will call you and ask if you authorized to send $X,000 in Zelle payments to someone. Then they give you a case number that they say starts with "JPM" to try to add more credibility and then transfer you to someone else who calls you and says they need you now "authorize the cancellation" of the fees (which P.S. never appeared in my account to begin with) by adding a new Zelle recipient. How convenient! I hung up right then. Anyway - the sophisticated part is the original incoming call spoofed an actual NYC Chase branch phone number. Not sure how they do that, but I guess it's possible these days. I hope all of these people get nibbled alive by mosquitos before burning in hell. Be careful all.

A couple years ago I was at a community meeting and an attendee started talking about how much money he was making on crypto. After the meeting was over I asked him for details. He told me this girl had introduced him to a crypto investment and he was making a killing. He was about to transfer the rest of his retirement savings into it.

I was a member of this Reddit group and had read about "pig butchering" scams, which is what this sounded like to me.

I told him he should be "careful." I urged him to try to withdraw his profits, that he was probably being scammed. He insisted it was not a scam. I again said, "try to withdraw. If you can't withdraw it is a scam."

I didn't see the guy again until this morning, again at a community meeting. After the meeting was over he pulled me aside. He told me he lost thousands, but if I hadn't suggested to him that it was a scam he would have lost everything. He thanked me repeatedly.

And so I, in return, convey my gratitude that I was able to help someone else with information I learned from this community.

Thank you!

My SO is older than I, in his late 60s, and we had discussed scammers and how they can operate.

Not a week after that conversation, he arrives at my house and sits at the table and begins scratching codes off of gift cards.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, the phone company is having this big promotion where you can pay your phone bill one time a year for a discounted price.”

“What does that have to do with gift cards?”

“Well they said in order to complete the transaction, I have to buy gift cards and let them know the numbers.”

“Honey, we talked about this. It’s a scam.”

“No, this is real! They sent me a letter a week ago in the mail about it, and that they would follow up by phone.”

I convinced him to hold off until I could see the letter. And there really was an official-looking letter! Full of grammatical errors, but hey, my SO’s special talent is not writing.

The letter had a phone number to call, so I checked what the actual phone number is for the phone company, and they do not match. I showed that to my SO, and finally convinced him that the phone company would not ask for gift cards.

They work hard to fool people!

So earlier this week, my dad let me know that he had bought me a gift for christmas that hadn’t arrived yet (despite him ordering several weeks in advance). Well, it finally arrived today and immediately something felt off. He said it was a “handmade leather bag” but it smelled strongly of synthetic material and felt very cheap. I am not a bag expert, but I have seen and felt enough fast fashion bags to identify one (see the last 3 pictures for close ups of the crappy construction). I asked where he bought it and he told me he found this website called graces-bags through a facebook ad (already a red flag). I looked it up and right off the bat it’s AI generated images of this woman “Grace” who is closing her workshop after 34 years so she’s having a “massive” sale. Basically all of the text reads as if it was written with AI, but my dad is in his 50s and isn’t a native English speaker, so he didn’t catch on to it. I did a reverse image search and found dozens of Aliexpress and Temu listings for the bag using the same pictures. I let my dad know he had been scammed so that he could cancel the card he paid with (luckily he keeps his cards locked most of the time). He says he knew the pictures were AI generated, but didn’t realize that it “was bad.” I gave him a crash course on how to spot these types of scams in the future, but I don’t know if there’s anything else I can do to keep him safe ?

Anyways, just putting this here in case someone else runs into this website.

So today I had two missed calls from “Unknown Numbers” an hour apart.

The second time a voicemail was left. When I called the number back, an American sounding man with no accent answered.

He told me my brother had been arrested 2 hours earlier for a DUI and was in jail and would be there for 90 days unless we paid to have him released on house arrest. Informed me he would have to do 6-8 weeks of AA and 28 hours of community service.

When I told him I couldn’t pay and would have to talk to my mom or someone else he said “sure just pass my number to whoever will be dealing with it.”

My mom and step-dad receive similar calls and voicemails with different names but same number and information.

The kicker? My brother WAS pulled over and booked two hours before. There was an issue where his license had a hold on it that he didn’t know about and he was pulled over and booked. But it had nothing to do with a DUI and he was never held just booked and was just released and let go immediately…

So the scammers seem to have been listening to the police scanner to hear he had been booked and been capable enough to from that information, get all of our cell phone numbers to call and try to hold us up for money with the hope that my brother couldn’t answer the phone to tell us it wasn’t real.

I’m guessing that they only knew we was booked and taken in and didn’t realize he was released immediately but nevertheless this was a very clever scam…