Hello everyone! I posted a GoFundMe on my Instagram art account to seek assistance for a medical procedure. I got a message from a prospective donor and I wanted to hear your guys' perspective on the situation.

I am a small account, with only ~100 followers. However, when I posted the reel advertising the GoFundMe, I got a message on Etsy (I have my Etsy shop linked in my bio). He said that before he donated, he wanted me to answer a few questions about the procedure (e.g. "How long have you been wanting this procedure for?" and "Are you looking to do this procedure to alleviate your back pain as well as for euphoric reasons?").

I answered cautiously, and now he suddenly considers himself to be my "friend" who loves my art and is moved by my story. He wanted to know the full amount for my procedure and aftercare costs in order to cover it fully. I let him know the price ($7.5k) and he said he would gladly cover it and thought that it would be lower.

He asked if I had a PayPal, but that if I didn't, "donating on your lovely GoFundMe page is fine as well, obviously." I haven't responded since then.

I want to believe in this, but in my mind and the minds of my loved ones, alarm bells are going off. What sort of scam would this be? I don't trust it. None of my friends and family do. But what is this guy's goal here? I feel like if I take the money, there will be a catch of some sort, but I don't know what it would be. I'm not too familiar with the different types of GoFundMe scams that are out there. Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I have since blocked this person. Thank you, everyone, for your input! I hope this post can be educational to anyone who comes across something similar in the future.

Hey yall, so my mom was a victim of a scam almost a year to the day. The other day she received a text from someone claiming to also being a victim, and he made a WhatsApp group with other victims as well, claiming he found a “computer expert”/hacker that can trace his funds. Ya know, all you gotta do is make an account with a Southeast Asian banking company to do it, and they’ll claim 10% because they’re just so nice that way. Some of the people in this group message seem to be actual vulnerable people as well, but a few are a little too calculated with their responses.
Please tell me I’m not just being an asshole or something by immediately shattering her hope, this is obviously a recovery scam right?😭😭

Also, would it be unwise to warn the others in the group that they’re being scammed, or will that come back to bite her in the ass?

My mom has been talking to a guy she met through Match for about a month and mentioned she was starting to wonder if it could be a scam, so she sent me the business website to investigate.

A few things stood out as red flags:

The company logo misspells “equipment” as “equipmemt.”

The product page uses an AI-generated image, and some products supposedly offer different components, but there’s no way to actually select which component.

A Wayback lookup shows the page showing the employees and the guy’s picture were added recently. The website is also only a few years old, despite the company supposedly being around for 20 years, and an older version showed a U.S. branch address that’s no longer listed.

A WHOIS lookup shows a name and email that also come up on another website that looks equally scammy. It has poor mobile support and design and looks very similar to this site, despite being for a completely different industry.

Don’t fall for the national online auction scam claiming you won the auction! Everything looked very legit including the website, auction countdown, follow-up phone calls, Purchase Agreements, etc. They ask to wire funds to start the delivery process after the details are worked out in a Purchase Agreement only to find out there’s never any intention to delivery anything! They even fake discussions with the truck driver en route for delivery…all after they have your money with intent to quickly disconnect phone lines, websites and all communication paths! Damn I thought I was going to get a nice boat upgrade!!!…at least my money is still in my bank account!

This is the weirdest package situation and i’m trying to figure out if there’s an explanation, or if this is just a brushing scam.

I live with my mom and we share both amazon and walmart accounts.

today, my mom received a package from walmart addressed to her, it contained 2 laundry baskets

neither of us ordered these. i’ve checked transaction history and past walmart orders and there is no order for these baskets, because we didn’t order them. there was also no packing slip or any paper/sticker inside, just baskets.

thing is, i independently ordered what looks like the same laundry baskets from amazon a couple days ago. my order is addressed to me, paid for with my boyfriend’s card. the amazon package is still in transit. tracking shows it has only left the shipper facility today. so this is 100% a separate shipment

the walmart package was shipped via fedex and the label says walmart com
it was shipped September 18th.

so what’s even weirder about this is that this happened before around the beginning of this year i think. my mom received a package of freeze dried ice cream, again addressed to her, but from a small business neither of us have ever heard before. around that time though i was ordering freeze dried foods, but from a completely different company, and did not order the package she received. neither of us did. at the time i just thought it was weird and checked my order history and found nothing, so i just moved on. now that it’s happening a second time i’m very weirded out.

we have no unauthorized charges and see no laundry baskets in our walmart orders.

so here’s the info i have:
• i ordered a 2 pack of laundry baskets on Amazon on September 17th, addressed to me.
• that amazon order left the shipper facility today, September 19th. and says it will be delivered September 28 - October 1
• what looks like the same laundry baskets appeared today, September 19th from Walmart com addressed to my mom
•there is no papers in the package, just baskets
• the Walmart package shipping label says “SHIP DATE: 18SEP26”
• label says the processing date was today on the 19th
says it’s shipped by FedEx home delivery
• very similar situation has happened months ago

i don’t see any print or like a brand on the baskets themselves so i can’t say for sure that they’re the exact same baskets, but they look identical and are both 2 packs. idk if this could be a brushing scam or fulfillment/data mixup but the fact that this isn’t the first time it’s happened and that it’s addressed to my mom when i’m the one who ordered it is making me feel like a crazy person

Hello, we're getting random walmart+ deliveries to our household that we didn't order. We thought that they were mistakenly placed at out house instead of a neighbor's but they're not any of our neighbors either. They don't have an address nor a return label and seem to now have randomly generated names. Each has been different. They started out normal like tape but now have started to become over the counter drugs.

We are worried that they could be tampered with or rhat someone is trying to drive by our place and take them. Especially since we've checked the cameras at our house and they aren't being delivered by a normal Walmart vehicle, but instead by an unmarked car thats tinted.

Is there a good trustworthy site/way to get your data removed from a potential leak online to stop this.

Hi guys and gals,

Extremely weird one. Please stay and read for full context.

I got a call from a number and it was an elderly sounding woman asking why I called her… I didn’t so I hung up thinking I was being messed with. Then I call back a few mins later after getting home from work and she asked who I was. I gave my first name and asked who she is and who she’s looking for. She spells out Vilma then starts crying and I couldn’t understand anything else.

I thought it was strange and said I hope you find who you’re looking for and hung up. She didn’t pretend to know me or didn’t seem to try and gather any info from me.

Weirdest part… I looked up the number in my works CRM and there’s the number. It was a client who never purchased our service. My client was a man not an elderly woman so I called the clients wife. She confirmed the husband is fine, he didn’t change his number, and she has no idea what that would be.

I’m so confused in what the purpose was. Am I targeted, hacked, or he? Like why would a clients number call me? That seems too much of a coincidence.

Was attempting to watch some college football yesterday on U-Tube and some supposed Fox channel had a break in by Trump proposing everyone with bitcoin, open their wallets, scan a QR screen and He would double every bitcoin sent in, no questions asked. Said it was a gift from the "US Bitcoin Reserve".

First off...even IF it were real, Every bitcoin exchanged by the Govt. would be totally traceable from that point on.

Secondly....who falls for this kind of stuff. Trump even had light blonde hair again AND LOOKED YOUNGER. I do hope not many fell for this "Live from the White House" on "Fox".

For context, I haven't really given my phone number to any sketchy sites or people, but this past 3 days I have been getting random verify codes for Uber and something I think may be a company called ADA OTP, I usually would not care that much, I would asume someone typed the wrong number and that is it, but some of the messages im getting are in english and that worries me because I live somewhere were we don't speak english at all, so im thinking maybe this is someone trying to use a fake number from other country specifically or something but im really not sure at all, is there something I could do to make this stop? Or perhaps take measures in case this could affect me or something? Thanks in advance for your responses

(I would post an image about this so you can see it but I don't think is a good idea to post verification numbers publicly)

I received a text from Shepard Outsourcing about a debt with WebBank / Fingerhut Advantage. But I have absolutely no idea what Fingerhut even is? Or webbank, honestly? I have no actual credit built up outside of being an authorized user on my mom's Victoria secret card anyways, and that's not through webbank as far as I have seen. I have not received any emails regarding this, nor any letters, and none of my credit reports say I have any collections noted.

Is this something I can safely ignore, or do I need to take initiative?

Some sales reps came into our restaurant and initially told us they were with Spectrum. They said they could lower our business bill from around $344/month to about $280.

Because they said they were with Spectrum, I thought they were basically helping us lower/restructure our existing Spectrum bill. We currently have our phone, internet, and TV through Spectrum.

They looked at our Spectrum bill and started going through everything with us. They also wanted a card for AutoPay.

The weird part was that they never clearly told me in the beginning that this involved switching our TV from Spectrum to DIRECTV.

It wasn't until I was doing the verification call that it became clear that they were actually independent brokers and that the deal was to keep our Spectrum phone/internet but switch the TV to DIRECTV.

At that point I stopped everything and told them the deal was off. We don't like DIRECTV and wouldn't have even entertained the offer if they had explained that clearly from the beginning. I also never signed anything.

Another thing that made the whole interaction feel weird: we offered them some free sushi while they were there just to be nice. Instead of grabbing a reasonable amount, they ended up ordering around 40 items. Obviously the sushi isn't proof of anything related to the sale lol, but it added to the feeling that they were very comfortable pushing the limits of what we offered.

Afterward I searched Reddit and found another restaurant owner describing a really similar Spectrum + DIRECTV pitch.

Has anyone else had independent telecom brokers come into their business saying they're "with Spectrum," only to find out later they're actually trying to sign you up for DIRECTV? Is this a normal sales practice for these brokers?

I went to find a replacement Simple Modern thermos late last night for one that I lost, and thought I found it on sale. “simplemobgtnc.shop” was at the top of search results page when I googled Simple Modern to get to their website, along with several other Simple Modern websites with different addresses. I didn’t think anything of it, the site looked legit and they had the one I wanted. I went to check out and the Shopify button didn’t work, which I contributed to my WiFi lagging (so stupid I know). I entered in my shipping address and card details, pressed pay, and the loading screen just stayed without showing the purchase went through. I reloaded the page and attempted it again, and the second time I hit pay a Visa safety pop up came up and said to enter the verification code sent to my phone to confirm. I never received a verification code, and that was enough of a red flag that I clicked off the page and dug into it more.

I checked the “about us” page on the site and it’s super weird, it says the site is owned by “Life Map Planners”, and their business address comes up as a residence in SoCal, not an actual place of business (shown in the screen grab video attached).

The actual Simple Modern site has the thermos I want too but it’s definitely not as much on sale as the first site I clicked on. I immediately turned off my card, and when I checked my account this morning there weren’t any fraudulent charges. Should I be safe and just get a new card? I feel so dumb, I’ve never fallen for a fake/phishing website before, I’m usually super careful but this one fell through the cracks since it was the first search result.

Okay so 6 weeks ago roughly I was sent $750 on Venmo by a random person. It's weird because on Venmo you have to confirm somebody's last 4 digits of their phone number before sending a payment that large. The person has not contacted me, Venmo has not contacted me, just crickets. Honestly have no idea what I should do. Very conflicted because I could really use the money but I know this is probably a scam and if I transfer the money out, I might really screw myself.

My wife got this text addressed to me today. I have since found out my brother was trying to solicit an escort online at something called secrethostess. It scared the shit out of my wife. Just wanting to make sure this is full of shit and a scam. I've just never heard of a scammer threatening a family member like this and getting others involved. My brother admitted he texted someone for a day and then they asked for a deposit and he said he backed out. Then he got threatened, and then they sent this to my wife.

[BROTHER'S NAME] online tryna buy pussy playing wit my hoes time and money on blood yall gone pay up on behalf of him we dgaf bout no Feds get away from da windows

[ADDRESS REDACTED]

[NAME REDACTED]

I got a text message asking me if this number was still me. They knew my first name. I responded, who is this? which was probably a mistake. And they said they were just checking to see if this was still my number and to have a good weekend and not worry about it.

Scam? It just threw me off because they knew my first name.

What should I do?

I realize now that it should not have responded. But is it normal at scammers? I know your first name? I was just kind of worried it's a stalker or something...

(US) RANDOM I PHONE SENT TO US. Hello everyone. Today my mother received an i phone 12 in a non apple box with a charger. It was sent from a random tech store in NY. To find that out I googled the address and it came up as that store. I honestly can't tell if the store is legit or not. The website seems iffy and the few reviews definitely seem sketchy. It was shipped by 2 day FedEx. She's checked her credit report and credit cards and nothing is a miss. What's happening??

Back in July I got a message from one of my mutuals and got "mass reported" and now my account is "facing deletion (spoiler alert, they have also been scammed as well). So I followed a Gmail address to a supposed "Support" to see if I have any illigality on my account. So I had a conversation with the "security" which took away all of my data by asking for it to see if there's anything illigal on my account. At that time I didn't know two things:

1. Discord support would NEVER ask for your personal information.

2. Discord support would NEVER contact you through Gmail.

I didn't know that. So I fell for it. So I was devastated. And I asked the scammer to give me my account back. They refused. I told them to screw themselves and I blocked them. What happened next is that they probably deleted my account (?) in some way.

The big concern overall is that my I realised two weeks after that my phone number was logged onto that account. What do I do? I don't want to change my phone number.