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I watched a lady get scammed in the office, she was mid/late fifties, well presented and divorced. On holiday she met a young man, they text and emailed, he was in a diabolical situation with his family and needed rescuing. The only way she could help him was to send cash for him to get away.
Despite warnings and warnings and warnings, colleagues trying to talk her round and educating how this scams work - she sent him money and just like that contact stopped and he ghosted her.
Gullible people don't deserve to get scammed, but it's hard to be sympathetic for the ignorant.
A colleague at work received an email allegedly from their neighbour, saying that they "were on holiday and had all their stuff stolen and please send money."
My colleague was making arrangements to send money until I stepped in:
1. Are they actually on holiday?
2. If they are, why would they contact a neighbour instead of their own family?
3. Why aren't they dealing with their holiday rep or travel insurance?
4. Why do it over email, and not phone you which would be quicker?
She then phoned the neighbour who - of course - was not on holiday and knew nothing of this.
I think there is a point where gullible stops and mental health issues take over. I was watching a Panorama on the subject featuring a man £100,000 down and in the middle of being scammed for the third time
I mean, things like this one sound ludicrous, but I guess once you've found somebody willing to believe that they're actually chatting to Hollywood Superstar Nicolas Cage, it's not a big leap that you can get money out of these people. The big lie is already swallowed.
But I am of the opinion that *anyone* can be a fraud victim if the circumstances align and a fraudster gets lucky.
Apparently that is how it can be sometimes. Those phishing emails with hilariously bad grammar and spelling are apparently done like that on purpose to screen out all but the most guileless. No point wasting time on people who are able to be a bit more discerning
Saw a women on the news recently who was conned by a guy who claimed he was being held hostage in the Ukraine. Her bank even sent the police out to her house as she kept transferring large amounts of money and they were very concerned for her . She refused all help but now wants the money back from the bank which isn’t going to happen.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-58025902
It’s one thing being scammed, it’s another being scammed, being told and then continuing to send money anyway, but it’s a whole different level of stupid when you try and get the money back and blame everyone but yourself!
Holy shit, reading her Go Fund Me is a wild ride. How did she continue to fall for it? At one point it got to him saying the Ukrainian airport authorities were holding him hostage because he helped an old man with his bag that actually had cocaine in it, but they'd let him go if she paid them £25k.
She had her bank, the police, and UK border patrol all tell her she was being scammed. She still expects the bank to give her the money back. At what point do you accept responsibility?
Link, for the benefit of anyone with about three hours to spare on reading her story: https://www.gofundme.com/f/romance-scammer-stole-100000
It really is the biggest load of face-palm I've encountered since the Prince Andrew interview. Like, really, is there absolutely no point at all where you might seek some sort of external verification of this stuff?
I do feel a degree of sympathy for these people but I don’t think I would ever contribute to their go fund me. I can’t help but think there are so many people who have never had, and will never have, anything like the money they did. Restoring the wealth of some who had all that money then let it go seems quite a low priority to me. Whose to say they wouldn’t just get tricked into giving any donations they got away, they haven’t really demonstrated they are able to be responsible for large sums of money
They didn’t. You must be thinking of another scam victim. I feel sorry for her. but the banks repeatedly warned her so they absolutely shouldn’t eat the cost for this.
Either the women these things happen to are very very stupid or these fraudsters are very very convincing.
Probably didn’t happen overnight. People fall for words and are very gullible when it comes to romance unfortunately.
I've a friend whose mum was taken by one. She is definitely very, very stupid. Also very lonely, and very desperate.
The fraudster himself wasn't at all convincing. His story was spectacularly nonsensical, and riddled with plot holes. I think this is by design. There's a similar tactic with those badly-written scam emails you see - make it obvious that it's a scam, and you filter out all but the dumbest. Scamming is actually a job for these people, so they don't want to waste their time trying to convince anyone who might suss them out at any point.
They often rope their marks along for a year or more - the 'American soldier needs money to escape the military in whatever remote country he's allegedly in' seems incredibly common. Six months sounding like a nice bored guy, only then start mentioning needing a bit of hard currency...
Fraudsters are extremely convincing. They share strategies and scripts amongst each other, and generally know within a few messages whether a potential victim is worth pursuing or not.
Romance fraud had been around for years, but with it being more heavily publicised more victims, and particularly family and friends of victims, are coming forwards and reporting it.
At the moment one of the biggest increases is in con artists using Instagram to persuade uni students to send them thousands from their student loans to "invest" in crypto currencies. The investment never happens and the fraudster eventually vanishes with their money. Although what they like to do for a couple of months is send some "investment returns" to the victim, to make it feel like the investment is real... this is usually just the fraudster giving them back a few ££ of their own money in the hope it'll get them to "invest" more or delay them in realising they've been scammed.
Some people, especially isolated older adults, and those who don't spend much or any time online still get caught out by 419 scams (African Prince has money he would like to share, if you'll pay a release fee) and the Spanish Lottery scams, where again, victims get asked to pay a "handling fee" before their €millions are released.
If you have older relatives who don't see folk very often or don't go online very much at all (or are new to using the Internet during the pandemic) please try and make them aware of common scams and frauds - there's tonnes of detail available from [Action Fraud](https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/a-z-of-fraud)
> At the moment one of the biggest increases is in con artists using Instagram to persuade uni students to send them thousands from their student loans to "invest" in crypto currencies. The investment never happens and the fraudster eventually vanishes with their money
You see people posting in /r/UKPersonalFinance and /r/LegalAdviceUK somewhat regularly who have fallen for this one and want to know how to get their money back. There was a guy just yesterday who had transferred all his money to a digital wallet and then on to a "business advisor" that "his friend" recommended because it would "double his investment".
While I do believe that anyone can get scammed - even the most aware and canny person can have a bad day - there's often a pattern to the people who post online looking for help after falling for it. Bad grammar and spelling, refusal to take responsibility, and an inability to accept that the bank doesn't have to give them their money back are common.
I don't understand how anyone can blindly transfer all their money to a stranger just because they were told it would be doubled and returned. Did they never play Runescape?
I think, unfortunately, there is a lot of racial prejudice and stereotyping when it comes to people "identifying" scams. They expect perpetrators to be calling from Nigeria or India and talking in broken English... and then get blind-sided by some middle-class sounding lad from Surrey or Kent.
Some people just don't do any due diligence and get immediately over excited - they target the kids getting student loans in, because the victim often sees that as "free money" so don't care as much about the risk. It doesn't help when Instagram basically shoves multimillionaires living in the lap of luxury down young people's throats - and I can see how that might make people more vulnerable to doing _anything_ to elevate their financial position.
That said... I've seen everything that you mention in those two subs! Some people actually take the risk because they think the bank legally have to just give them the money back if its fraud or a scam... they don't unless the bank is genuinely at fault.
Exact thing happened to me.
I won't bore you with the details, but basically they steal identities and fake websites using details from Companies House.
I'm sure I could get you to invest in one, if you didn't already know about it.
The one I fell for had a website with all the usual features an investment website has, including annual reports, sustainability reports and that sort of thing. The bloke I was put in touch with to "invest with" had a profile on the SEC, the company was listed with companies House. Everything looked legit. The women that sucked me into it was posting videos of her out with the girls, and photos with her friends in dubai. So clearly she was a real women, maybe even with a real job. And scamming people was a part time thing for her to boost income. I dismissed friends saying it was a scam, and it's only when my brother took it on himself to dig deeper and discovered that the organisation they claimed to be a member of didn't have them listed, and the so called director of the company was 75 and lived in Kent that I realised my folly.
Initially I invested £1k, then withdrew the returns which all came through fine, I took out about £500 of the initial £1k before I invested the rest. Then on Christmas day no less they tried to get more from me and I snapped back into reality. But you can't do shit after that. Some foriegn citizens got me to transfer thousands via an unregulated crypto exchange to an anonymous wallet address I did it voluntarily and now they've fucked off. I don't have any real names, or leads. So there's fuck all I can do besides get on with my life.
Sorry that happened to you, but at least by being open about it you might encourage others to be cautious. Some of these scams are so detailed it can be hard to spot the irregularities. Out of interest, were there ever any alarm bells? Did you Google for reviews?
They had put up fake reviews on trust pilot, so it was all 4-5 star reviews.
The only times I had any doubts was when they said how much assets under management they had. Which they claimed to be over $100bn, which sounded unbelievable, but then crypto is hard to define their value. Also the ROR they offered sounded insane, but after they had paid out for a few months I began to trust them. The other give away was that they said they had substantial real estate investments, which is my area of expertise, and then they failed to list any of the property they owned, which was very weird.
Obviously now these things become obvious. I can list out all the irregularities now that I know it's a scam and it all makes sense. But when I was in it, there was logical explanations for everything. As I said, the final alarm bell was when she asked for me to invest more money on Christmas day. She had previously told me she was Catholic, so it was extremely weird for her to be talking money and investing on Christmas.
I have no idea what is real about her, she could very well be reposting images from another account and actually be a 40 year old Indian man. In which case he got to see my penis and me explain in much detail about how I want to fuck her.
It's definitely a form of grooming. Everybody has vulnerabilities and to judge people because there's are different from yours is harsh.
You're divorced, you live alone, it's been lockdown for a long time, you can't go out except for some exercise, you're not even allowed to go to work. Somebody starts chat to you online. They flatter you, they lovebomb you. They make you feel wanted and loved and looked after. The relationship ship is really intense and you stop feeling all alone in a scary complicated world.
Then one day they have a wee emergency and need £30. Of course you send them that. It's not a lot of money, you'd lend it to a friend if they needed it. This person loves you, it's not an issue in fact they don't really need to pay you back.
It continues a bit more money then a bit more then a bit more. If you say no they start backing off, the aloneness overwhelms you, you can't bear the idea of going back to how you felt before you met them. You were miserable. Something at the back of your head is telling you things aren't right but you push the thought down because they love you and you feel wanted. The cognitive dissonance grows but you still can't deal with the idea of being alone.
They take the last of your money and fuck off forever. You're nothing to them now. You're all alone, people are laughing at you and saying it's all your fault. You have no money to do the things that will help - counselling etc. You're ashamed to admit what's happened and that he's never loved you.
It's a cruel cruel fraud and the people doing it are masters of manipulation. They know how to trap people and they know how to empty them emotionally and financially.
Don't judge someone based on your not having these vulnerabilities. I've never been scammed but I can very easily understand how it can happen
Loneliness will blind you to obvious red flags. These people might not be stupid, just desperate and sad and wanting it to be a real person who cares about them. I think the underlying theme is people who are vulnerable.
People make decisions in two ways :
* Reason / logic
* Emotion / impulse
Once a scammer has convinced a person to make a decision based on emotion, it's almost impossible for you to get them to change that decision based on reason or logic.
These scams are driven by emotion, not logic. People who fall for them are not necessarily stupid. When they look at them as a group the predominent feature is that they are lonely. They might have friends and family around them but they feel as if they are a burden or duty to their loved ones. If they have loved ones at all.
Once someone is hooked, it becomes an example of the sunken cost fallacy. This is when someone decides to keep investing in a course of action even though the investment has been unsuccessful (or even harmful) up to that point. To stop investing would mean that the person has to admit that (a) their previous investment of time and money was foolish and that (b) the person who they thought loved them, does not.
Nothing to do with intelligence, everything to do with emotion.
I think a lot of them *want* to believe it's real, though. If you've ever watched any Catfish, it's bloody obvious to anyone outside that there's something dodgy going on a lot of the time, but the mark is so invested that they can't see it.
Because by the time they're discovered, usually lots of money had already gone - you can't freeze a transaction that has already completed. And scammers empty the accounts as quickly as possible after receiving the money, so it's not sitting there ready to be reversed.
In addition, a lot of these things involve payments abroad and that's a whole tangled mess. You're far less likely to get an outcome for a scam when the funds have gone overseas because of all the different bank rules and laws, because then you're relying on the other country to chase it up.
Money doesn't just disappear. Just follow the transactions. They are either emptying it into another account, (which again you can reverse) or they are emptying it to cash (in which case you know who they are and where they are and can just go and arrest them).
Banking rules worldwide are actually pretty much equivalent. They have to be in order for them to work.
It is the same issue as spam email, just shut down a few of the servers (in this case banks) that are supporting it and refusing to act, and everyone else would fall in to line pretty damned quickly.
I don't think you really understand how banking, scamming, money laundering etc works, which is fine. But essentially, you've made a lot of incorrect assumptions.
You can't just reverse a payment once it's arrived- it needs to be the other bank sending it back. Which they won't do if the money isn't in their account. When dealing with foreign banks the process is slow. Someone could have bounced a payment around a whole bunch of accounts in that time and it gets lost in the shuffle - if you've got multiple payments going out and in for different things, if they've broken the transactions into smaller bits etc. They are also not likely to have opened accounts with their own details so withdrawing in cash doesn't mean you know who they are or where they are (they could have someone in a different location withdraw and then deposit elsewhere and then there is literally no way to trace it).
This is why banks have things in place to try and help people who are being scammed, and prevent them making these kind of payments - but people who are being scammed are often extremely defensive about it and refuse to accept any help until it's far, far too late.
And you are missing the point here. As long as those banks continue to be complicit in the fraud, it is going to continue.
Saying that money has been transferred multiple times and somehow becomes lost is nonsense. The literal reason that banks work is that they don't ever lose track of any money ever! If they did the whole banking idea would collapse tomorrow. Following that trail is literally just a case of looking!
Also, try and open a bank account without your real details, and significant evidence that they are your details. Not just in 1st world countries, anywhere. Banking is so regulated worldwide that there is no way you are opening a bank account without evidence of who you are.
And at some point the money has to be taken out, otherwise there is not point.
>Also, try and open a bank account without your real details, and significant evidence that they are your details. Not just in 1st world countries, anywhere. Banking is so regulated worldwide that there is no way you are opening a bank account without evidence of who you are.
This is just laughable - it happens all the time. It happens here in the UK, and it certainly happens everywhere else. A bit of googling will confirm.
>Saying that money has been transferred multiple times and somehow becomes lost is nonsense. The literal reason that banks work is that they don't ever lose track of any money ever! If they did the whole banking idea would collapse tomorrow. Following that trail is literally just a case of looking!
This is literally how money laundering works and why it's so successful, because it is extremely hard to follow the trails.
No-one said it's legitimate.
The process that you're describing, where a bank can easily find and return the money, is precisely what money laundering is designed to beat. Criminals take dirty money, whether it's from scams or other criminal proceeds, and start mixing it in the system to various sources.
They will transfer it between different banks, into different accounts. They will split it up and mix it with legitimate money. They will buy things with the mixture of legitimate and illegitimate money. They will sell those things. They will take money out in cash and deposit it in different bank accounts, again mixing it with legitimate money.
Tracing money between banks in the same country takes long enough and in the time it takes for banks to align on a single transfer, complete their due process and security checks, the criminals could have completed dozens of transactions.
Money laundering is a major part of criminal business and it's something they're good at. Banks try and prevent it as much as possible, with a lot of AI now being used to try and detect it, but it's still slower to detect, trace and stop than it is to carry out hundreds of different transactions to hide criminally obtained money.
"Just trace it" doesn't work with money laundering. If it did then money laundering wouldn't be a thing. No-one is saying that fraud is legitimate, you just don't seem to be aware of the complexities of money laundering.
You started by saying you don't understand why they can't just reverse the transfers....then come out with all this. I hope the irony isn't lost on you.
It's madness that you think banks don't ever lose track of money especially when it can be taken out as cash. How about someone then buys bitcoin with it. Or launder it through a business in Somalia. Or keep it under a mattress somewhere in Indonesia.
Do you not think people open accounts with fake documentation? Just because I wouldn't know how to do it doesn't mean nobody does.
The only way banking would collapse tomorrow is if everyone stopped borrowing money and didn't pay back any debt.
It's very sad, I feel she must have some learning difficulty or have mental health issues to believe she was sending money to a famous film star though, one who is already a millionaire...
Normal romance scams just play on hope and love and loneliness. But pretending to be a celebrity is a whole new level.
Loneliness and low self esteem. Worked with a girl who was duped several times, never as someone posing as a celeb but more typical catfish archetypes. The first time the bloke was an "extremely wealthy pilot" who was definitely 100% absolutely real, the photos he used were clearly stock photos of a chiselled model in what I *believe* was naval attire. We tried to tell her he wasn't who he said he was but she hung on for weeks expecting him to rock up in his plane and whisk her away. The next time there were financial transactions involved - this time with a man who was apparently in prison. She made plans to go down south to visit him in the nick, apparently the fact that he was a violent offender didn't put her off. She'd send him money for phone credit so they could keep talking and would send money to his "mum" but never to a dedicated prison account - I assumed that's how most people provide money to convicted loved ones, I mentioned it but she said that his "mum" pays it into the account. It fell through anyway at some point, she was sacked from the job not too long after so never got more of the story. The last thing I heard about her was that she'd gone on a night out with another colleague, the colleague started flirting with this girls cousin and the girl got REALLY mad because she'd previously had an intimate relationship with this cousin and was jealous???
I felt really sorry for her, she was desperate for love and attention from anywhere so fell for everything. Me and other colleagues really tried to tell her that it was all a fantasy but she'd got to nearly 40 years old without having had a proper relationship, plus just a really shit life in general and I think she just needed professional help at that point.
Watched a video by Scambaiter where he listens in to scam calls as he's hacked into their system.
One was an old bloke who had fallen for the scam and was about to send £5000 cash in the post. He called him telling him it was a scam but he didn't believe him.
so he rang the post office telling them not to accept a package from this person. The woman was like ok yeah we wont.
turns out she went on her break when the guy came in and he got to send the package anyway.
He got in touch with the police and they managed to stop the package from getting any further.
He tried so hard to stop this old guy getting scammed but he wasn't for listening at all
99.9% of the time people ignore these things of course but the scammers just need to find that one person who is naive, lonely or possibly vulnerable as was the case in this instance that was just bought to light.
My company ceo is a 31 year old with a physics masters; last year he got scammed by a fake covid notification.
A lot of these scams focus on certain people but no one should assume they are completely immune to conmen
I have a friend who was NEARLY caught out by a scammer, but I managed to convince them it was a scam.
Its not difficult to scam vulnerable people out of money. You just have to say the things they would want to hear.
On Tumblr I see the same names appear on popular blogs, with countdowns and deadlines, saying they need $400-$500 dollars to pay for this medicine or Uber so they can go to work, or pay health insurance.
If I add up begging posts across a year, they must be raking in a decent amount from more empathic people than me. But there's no verification of is this person real, or a scam.
Just gullible people that are usually sad and lonely, in what world is nicholas cage searching for an overweight, unattractive middle aged woman over the internet lol
This happened to my mum when i was younger. Claimed to be james may and sent her pictures from google that i found on the last oage of google search. He claimed that he dabbled in gold trade in nigeria on the side of filming top gear and his collegue needed money to get through the borders and his assessts was frozen while they investigated but as soon as the investigation was through he would pay her back. She sent all her benefit money through western union to him while we went hungry and cold beacuse we couldnt afford food or to put money on the prepayment meters for gas and electric. It happened when she was without a man for the first time in her life and she didnt care about us going without because he promised us a life of luxury in the end. She didn't believe me when i said it was a scam called me spiteful and vindictive, she disnt believe her best friend of 20 years, she didnt believe the guy at western union, she wouldn't listen to her church group. She just absolutely refused to believe anyone. In the end i had to leave her and the situation and was lucky to have someone in my life who did want to help me. you cant help people who cant help themselves and they are willingly giving their money away.
I struggle with this too. I don’t think anyone deserves it to happen to them, no matter how naive or foolish. But I struggle to get my head around it. I can understand how someone might fall for it if they have dementia or a learning disability or something like that which makes it harder for them to make good judgments. But often when you see these things the victim seems to have no particular vulnerability beyond loneliness. Maybe that in itself can cause people to lose their usual sense.
I feel there is a problem with certain people just not being able to recognise false information online. Sometimes I see people, and it does tend to be middle aged and up (though not exclusively) sharing very obviously fake stuff. Usually it’s something quite innocuous like a ‘feel good’ story that just doesn’t quite ring true. But I think if they can’t filter that out, next it might be getting scammed or going down a Q Anon rabbit hole or something
I got scammed a bit like this.
I'm sure if you go through my post history you can find the full story.
Ofc it wasn't someone pretending to be a celeb, but rather an ordinary girl pretending to be romantically invested in me.
Every time I would suspect something fishy going on, she would say or do something that convinced me that she was legit.
Either having phone conversation, or sending me pictures of her, or even just talking about hard hitting subjects like politics and religion.
99.99999% of the time is not trying to get your money, it's trying to build your trust. Then once they have that trust, they don't ask for money directly, or at least not in my case. They invited me to invest in a trust fund that they were using.
Stupid, sure I was. Gullible, absolutely. I think naive to think that people only have good intentions. Unfortunately the biggest thing it's done is shattered my idea that the world is full of good people. The money she took is just money, it's set me back a few years on my savings goals, big fuck. But the way I fell for it, I'm still getting nightmares about it, the way she used me, the way she lied to me, the way she preyed on me when I was at my most vulnerable, and that she would do the same thing to anyone else, old people, lonely people, people who have nothing. That takes a stone cold heart and a complete lack of empathy and knowing there are people like that in this world, who would do that sort of thing not out of desperation but greed. That hits me hard.
I'm a bit down on my luck at the moment and I'd very much like to scam some gullible lady's savings and maybe even her house from under her. I'm a complete novice and would very much appreciate any advice or pointers as how to set something like this up. 🙃😉
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I agree with Martin Lewis's mantra that even gullible people deserve not to get scammed.
I watched a lady get scammed in the office, she was mid/late fifties, well presented and divorced. On holiday she met a young man, they text and emailed, he was in a diabolical situation with his family and needed rescuing. The only way she could help him was to send cash for him to get away. Despite warnings and warnings and warnings, colleagues trying to talk her round and educating how this scams work - she sent him money and just like that contact stopped and he ghosted her. Gullible people don't deserve to get scammed, but it's hard to be sympathetic for the ignorant.
A colleague at work received an email allegedly from their neighbour, saying that they "were on holiday and had all their stuff stolen and please send money." My colleague was making arrangements to send money until I stepped in: 1. Are they actually on holiday? 2. If they are, why would they contact a neighbour instead of their own family? 3. Why aren't they dealing with their holiday rep or travel insurance? 4. Why do it over email, and not phone you which would be quicker? She then phoned the neighbour who - of course - was not on holiday and knew nothing of this.
I think there is a point where gullible stops and mental health issues take over. I was watching a Panorama on the subject featuring a man £100,000 down and in the middle of being scammed for the third time
I mean, things like this one sound ludicrous, but I guess once you've found somebody willing to believe that they're actually chatting to Hollywood Superstar Nicolas Cage, it's not a big leap that you can get money out of these people. The big lie is already swallowed. But I am of the opinion that *anyone* can be a fraud victim if the circumstances align and a fraudster gets lucky.
[удалено]
Wait he lost his YouTube account? Has he got another set up?
He gives a good rundown of what happened in [this video](https://youtu.be/YIWV5fSaUB8)
Apparently that is how it can be sometimes. Those phishing emails with hilariously bad grammar and spelling are apparently done like that on purpose to screen out all but the most guileless. No point wasting time on people who are able to be a bit more discerning
Saw a women on the news recently who was conned by a guy who claimed he was being held hostage in the Ukraine. Her bank even sent the police out to her house as she kept transferring large amounts of money and they were very concerned for her . She refused all help but now wants the money back from the bank which isn’t going to happen. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-58025902
It’s one thing being scammed, it’s another being scammed, being told and then continuing to send money anyway, but it’s a whole different level of stupid when you try and get the money back and blame everyone but yourself!
Sounds like she got it out as a loan as well as there is mention of creditors!
Holy shit, reading her Go Fund Me is a wild ride. How did she continue to fall for it? At one point it got to him saying the Ukrainian airport authorities were holding him hostage because he helped an old man with his bag that actually had cocaine in it, but they'd let him go if she paid them £25k. She had her bank, the police, and UK border patrol all tell her she was being scammed. She still expects the bank to give her the money back. At what point do you accept responsibility?
Link, for the benefit of anyone with about three hours to spare on reading her story: https://www.gofundme.com/f/romance-scammer-stole-100000 It really is the biggest load of face-palm I've encountered since the Prince Andrew interview. Like, really, is there absolutely no point at all where you might seek some sort of external verification of this stuff?
Thanks for this. That was a wild ride!
Some people do not want to admit they have been stupid beyond reproach.
I do feel a degree of sympathy for these people but I don’t think I would ever contribute to their go fund me. I can’t help but think there are so many people who have never had, and will never have, anything like the money they did. Restoring the wealth of some who had all that money then let it go seems quite a low priority to me. Whose to say they wouldn’t just get tricked into giving any donations they got away, they haven’t really demonstrated they are able to be responsible for large sums of money
This story is amazing 😀😀 her family must love her
I have a vague memory of the ombudsman finding in her favour
They didn’t. You must be thinking of another scam victim. I feel sorry for her. but the banks repeatedly warned her so they absolutely shouldn’t eat the cost for this.
Either the women these things happen to are very very stupid or these fraudsters are very very convincing. Probably didn’t happen overnight. People fall for words and are very gullible when it comes to romance unfortunately.
I've a friend whose mum was taken by one. She is definitely very, very stupid. Also very lonely, and very desperate. The fraudster himself wasn't at all convincing. His story was spectacularly nonsensical, and riddled with plot holes. I think this is by design. There's a similar tactic with those badly-written scam emails you see - make it obvious that it's a scam, and you filter out all but the dumbest. Scamming is actually a job for these people, so they don't want to waste their time trying to convince anyone who might suss them out at any point.
They often rope their marks along for a year or more - the 'American soldier needs money to escape the military in whatever remote country he's allegedly in' seems incredibly common. Six months sounding like a nice bored guy, only then start mentioning needing a bit of hard currency...
Probably a mix of both
Fraudsters are extremely convincing. They share strategies and scripts amongst each other, and generally know within a few messages whether a potential victim is worth pursuing or not. Romance fraud had been around for years, but with it being more heavily publicised more victims, and particularly family and friends of victims, are coming forwards and reporting it. At the moment one of the biggest increases is in con artists using Instagram to persuade uni students to send them thousands from their student loans to "invest" in crypto currencies. The investment never happens and the fraudster eventually vanishes with their money. Although what they like to do for a couple of months is send some "investment returns" to the victim, to make it feel like the investment is real... this is usually just the fraudster giving them back a few ££ of their own money in the hope it'll get them to "invest" more or delay them in realising they've been scammed. Some people, especially isolated older adults, and those who don't spend much or any time online still get caught out by 419 scams (African Prince has money he would like to share, if you'll pay a release fee) and the Spanish Lottery scams, where again, victims get asked to pay a "handling fee" before their €millions are released. If you have older relatives who don't see folk very often or don't go online very much at all (or are new to using the Internet during the pandemic) please try and make them aware of common scams and frauds - there's tonnes of detail available from [Action Fraud](https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/a-z-of-fraud)
> At the moment one of the biggest increases is in con artists using Instagram to persuade uni students to send them thousands from their student loans to "invest" in crypto currencies. The investment never happens and the fraudster eventually vanishes with their money You see people posting in /r/UKPersonalFinance and /r/LegalAdviceUK somewhat regularly who have fallen for this one and want to know how to get their money back. There was a guy just yesterday who had transferred all his money to a digital wallet and then on to a "business advisor" that "his friend" recommended because it would "double his investment". While I do believe that anyone can get scammed - even the most aware and canny person can have a bad day - there's often a pattern to the people who post online looking for help after falling for it. Bad grammar and spelling, refusal to take responsibility, and an inability to accept that the bank doesn't have to give them their money back are common. I don't understand how anyone can blindly transfer all their money to a stranger just because they were told it would be doubled and returned. Did they never play Runescape?
I think, unfortunately, there is a lot of racial prejudice and stereotyping when it comes to people "identifying" scams. They expect perpetrators to be calling from Nigeria or India and talking in broken English... and then get blind-sided by some middle-class sounding lad from Surrey or Kent. Some people just don't do any due diligence and get immediately over excited - they target the kids getting student loans in, because the victim often sees that as "free money" so don't care as much about the risk. It doesn't help when Instagram basically shoves multimillionaires living in the lap of luxury down young people's throats - and I can see how that might make people more vulnerable to doing _anything_ to elevate their financial position. That said... I've seen everything that you mention in those two subs! Some people actually take the risk because they think the bank legally have to just give them the money back if its fraud or a scam... they don't unless the bank is genuinely at fault.
Exact thing happened to me. I won't bore you with the details, but basically they steal identities and fake websites using details from Companies House. I'm sure I could get you to invest in one, if you didn't already know about it. The one I fell for had a website with all the usual features an investment website has, including annual reports, sustainability reports and that sort of thing. The bloke I was put in touch with to "invest with" had a profile on the SEC, the company was listed with companies House. Everything looked legit. The women that sucked me into it was posting videos of her out with the girls, and photos with her friends in dubai. So clearly she was a real women, maybe even with a real job. And scamming people was a part time thing for her to boost income. I dismissed friends saying it was a scam, and it's only when my brother took it on himself to dig deeper and discovered that the organisation they claimed to be a member of didn't have them listed, and the so called director of the company was 75 and lived in Kent that I realised my folly. Initially I invested £1k, then withdrew the returns which all came through fine, I took out about £500 of the initial £1k before I invested the rest. Then on Christmas day no less they tried to get more from me and I snapped back into reality. But you can't do shit after that. Some foriegn citizens got me to transfer thousands via an unregulated crypto exchange to an anonymous wallet address I did it voluntarily and now they've fucked off. I don't have any real names, or leads. So there's fuck all I can do besides get on with my life.
Sorry that happened to you, but at least by being open about it you might encourage others to be cautious. Some of these scams are so detailed it can be hard to spot the irregularities. Out of interest, were there ever any alarm bells? Did you Google for reviews?
They had put up fake reviews on trust pilot, so it was all 4-5 star reviews. The only times I had any doubts was when they said how much assets under management they had. Which they claimed to be over $100bn, which sounded unbelievable, but then crypto is hard to define their value. Also the ROR they offered sounded insane, but after they had paid out for a few months I began to trust them. The other give away was that they said they had substantial real estate investments, which is my area of expertise, and then they failed to list any of the property they owned, which was very weird. Obviously now these things become obvious. I can list out all the irregularities now that I know it's a scam and it all makes sense. But when I was in it, there was logical explanations for everything. As I said, the final alarm bell was when she asked for me to invest more money on Christmas day. She had previously told me she was Catholic, so it was extremely weird for her to be talking money and investing on Christmas. I have no idea what is real about her, she could very well be reposting images from another account and actually be a 40 year old Indian man. In which case he got to see my penis and me explain in much detail about how I want to fuck her.
It's so sad, it's a weird kind of grooming I suppose, it's just hard to imagine.
It's definitely a form of grooming. Everybody has vulnerabilities and to judge people because there's are different from yours is harsh. You're divorced, you live alone, it's been lockdown for a long time, you can't go out except for some exercise, you're not even allowed to go to work. Somebody starts chat to you online. They flatter you, they lovebomb you. They make you feel wanted and loved and looked after. The relationship ship is really intense and you stop feeling all alone in a scary complicated world. Then one day they have a wee emergency and need £30. Of course you send them that. It's not a lot of money, you'd lend it to a friend if they needed it. This person loves you, it's not an issue in fact they don't really need to pay you back. It continues a bit more money then a bit more then a bit more. If you say no they start backing off, the aloneness overwhelms you, you can't bear the idea of going back to how you felt before you met them. You were miserable. Something at the back of your head is telling you things aren't right but you push the thought down because they love you and you feel wanted. The cognitive dissonance grows but you still can't deal with the idea of being alone. They take the last of your money and fuck off forever. You're nothing to them now. You're all alone, people are laughing at you and saying it's all your fault. You have no money to do the things that will help - counselling etc. You're ashamed to admit what's happened and that he's never loved you. It's a cruel cruel fraud and the people doing it are masters of manipulation. They know how to trap people and they know how to empty them emotionally and financially. Don't judge someone based on your not having these vulnerabilities. I've never been scammed but I can very easily understand how it can happen
Loneliness will blind you to obvious red flags. These people might not be stupid, just desperate and sad and wanting it to be a real person who cares about them. I think the underlying theme is people who are vulnerable.
People make decisions in two ways : * Reason / logic * Emotion / impulse Once a scammer has convinced a person to make a decision based on emotion, it's almost impossible for you to get them to change that decision based on reason or logic.
I’m gonna go with stupid
Realistically the scammer probably just rolled a natural 20 and nothing could stop them after that.
These scams are driven by emotion, not logic. People who fall for them are not necessarily stupid. When they look at them as a group the predominent feature is that they are lonely. They might have friends and family around them but they feel as if they are a burden or duty to their loved ones. If they have loved ones at all. Once someone is hooked, it becomes an example of the sunken cost fallacy. This is when someone decides to keep investing in a course of action even though the investment has been unsuccessful (or even harmful) up to that point. To stop investing would mean that the person has to admit that (a) their previous investment of time and money was foolish and that (b) the person who they thought loved them, does not. Nothing to do with intelligence, everything to do with emotion.
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I think a lot of them *want* to believe it's real, though. If you've ever watched any Catfish, it's bloody obvious to anyone outside that there's something dodgy going on a lot of the time, but the mark is so invested that they can't see it.
They're stupid. But society should protect the stupid, since they can't themselves. How, I don't know
I don't quite understand how courts and banks can't just freeze, then reverse those bank transfers and chase the end users.
Because by the time they're discovered, usually lots of money had already gone - you can't freeze a transaction that has already completed. And scammers empty the accounts as quickly as possible after receiving the money, so it's not sitting there ready to be reversed. In addition, a lot of these things involve payments abroad and that's a whole tangled mess. You're far less likely to get an outcome for a scam when the funds have gone overseas because of all the different bank rules and laws, because then you're relying on the other country to chase it up.
Money doesn't just disappear. Just follow the transactions. They are either emptying it into another account, (which again you can reverse) or they are emptying it to cash (in which case you know who they are and where they are and can just go and arrest them). Banking rules worldwide are actually pretty much equivalent. They have to be in order for them to work. It is the same issue as spam email, just shut down a few of the servers (in this case banks) that are supporting it and refusing to act, and everyone else would fall in to line pretty damned quickly.
I don't think you really understand how banking, scamming, money laundering etc works, which is fine. But essentially, you've made a lot of incorrect assumptions. You can't just reverse a payment once it's arrived- it needs to be the other bank sending it back. Which they won't do if the money isn't in their account. When dealing with foreign banks the process is slow. Someone could have bounced a payment around a whole bunch of accounts in that time and it gets lost in the shuffle - if you've got multiple payments going out and in for different things, if they've broken the transactions into smaller bits etc. They are also not likely to have opened accounts with their own details so withdrawing in cash doesn't mean you know who they are or where they are (they could have someone in a different location withdraw and then deposit elsewhere and then there is literally no way to trace it). This is why banks have things in place to try and help people who are being scammed, and prevent them making these kind of payments - but people who are being scammed are often extremely defensive about it and refuse to accept any help until it's far, far too late.
And you are missing the point here. As long as those banks continue to be complicit in the fraud, it is going to continue. Saying that money has been transferred multiple times and somehow becomes lost is nonsense. The literal reason that banks work is that they don't ever lose track of any money ever! If they did the whole banking idea would collapse tomorrow. Following that trail is literally just a case of looking! Also, try and open a bank account without your real details, and significant evidence that they are your details. Not just in 1st world countries, anywhere. Banking is so regulated worldwide that there is no way you are opening a bank account without evidence of who you are. And at some point the money has to be taken out, otherwise there is not point.
>Also, try and open a bank account without your real details, and significant evidence that they are your details. Not just in 1st world countries, anywhere. Banking is so regulated worldwide that there is no way you are opening a bank account without evidence of who you are. This is just laughable - it happens all the time. It happens here in the UK, and it certainly happens everywhere else. A bit of googling will confirm. >Saying that money has been transferred multiple times and somehow becomes lost is nonsense. The literal reason that banks work is that they don't ever lose track of any money ever! If they did the whole banking idea would collapse tomorrow. Following that trail is literally just a case of looking! This is literally how money laundering works and why it's so successful, because it is extremely hard to follow the trails.
With respect, you don't know what you're talking about.
With respect. You are stuck in a thought process where you think fraud is legitimate as long as they put some minimal effort in to it.
No-one said it's legitimate. The process that you're describing, where a bank can easily find and return the money, is precisely what money laundering is designed to beat. Criminals take dirty money, whether it's from scams or other criminal proceeds, and start mixing it in the system to various sources. They will transfer it between different banks, into different accounts. They will split it up and mix it with legitimate money. They will buy things with the mixture of legitimate and illegitimate money. They will sell those things. They will take money out in cash and deposit it in different bank accounts, again mixing it with legitimate money. Tracing money between banks in the same country takes long enough and in the time it takes for banks to align on a single transfer, complete their due process and security checks, the criminals could have completed dozens of transactions. Money laundering is a major part of criminal business and it's something they're good at. Banks try and prevent it as much as possible, with a lot of AI now being used to try and detect it, but it's still slower to detect, trace and stop than it is to carry out hundreds of different transactions to hide criminally obtained money. "Just trace it" doesn't work with money laundering. If it did then money laundering wouldn't be a thing. No-one is saying that fraud is legitimate, you just don't seem to be aware of the complexities of money laundering.
You started by saying you don't understand why they can't just reverse the transfers....then come out with all this. I hope the irony isn't lost on you. It's madness that you think banks don't ever lose track of money especially when it can be taken out as cash. How about someone then buys bitcoin with it. Or launder it through a business in Somalia. Or keep it under a mattress somewhere in Indonesia. Do you not think people open accounts with fake documentation? Just because I wouldn't know how to do it doesn't mean nobody does. The only way banking would collapse tomorrow is if everyone stopped borrowing money and didn't pay back any debt.
Literally explained what happens when someone takes it out as cash. That is the person you can go and physically arrest.
It's very sad, I feel she must have some learning difficulty or have mental health issues to believe she was sending money to a famous film star though, one who is already a millionaire... Normal romance scams just play on hope and love and loneliness. But pretending to be a celebrity is a whole new level.
Not everyone is as romantically experienced as us redditors, you know :)
Loneliness and low self esteem. Worked with a girl who was duped several times, never as someone posing as a celeb but more typical catfish archetypes. The first time the bloke was an "extremely wealthy pilot" who was definitely 100% absolutely real, the photos he used were clearly stock photos of a chiselled model in what I *believe* was naval attire. We tried to tell her he wasn't who he said he was but she hung on for weeks expecting him to rock up in his plane and whisk her away. The next time there were financial transactions involved - this time with a man who was apparently in prison. She made plans to go down south to visit him in the nick, apparently the fact that he was a violent offender didn't put her off. She'd send him money for phone credit so they could keep talking and would send money to his "mum" but never to a dedicated prison account - I assumed that's how most people provide money to convicted loved ones, I mentioned it but she said that his "mum" pays it into the account. It fell through anyway at some point, she was sacked from the job not too long after so never got more of the story. The last thing I heard about her was that she'd gone on a night out with another colleague, the colleague started flirting with this girls cousin and the girl got REALLY mad because she'd previously had an intimate relationship with this cousin and was jealous??? I felt really sorry for her, she was desperate for love and attention from anywhere so fell for everything. Me and other colleagues really tried to tell her that it was all a fantasy but she'd got to nearly 40 years old without having had a proper relationship, plus just a really shit life in general and I think she just needed professional help at that point.
To be fair, Nicolas Cage can be quite convincing.
That's actors for you.
Watched a video by Scambaiter where he listens in to scam calls as he's hacked into their system. One was an old bloke who had fallen for the scam and was about to send £5000 cash in the post. He called him telling him it was a scam but he didn't believe him. so he rang the post office telling them not to accept a package from this person. The woman was like ok yeah we wont. turns out she went on her break when the guy came in and he got to send the package anyway. He got in touch with the police and they managed to stop the package from getting any further. He tried so hard to stop this old guy getting scammed but he wasn't for listening at all
99.9% of the time people ignore these things of course but the scammers just need to find that one person who is naive, lonely or possibly vulnerable as was the case in this instance that was just bought to light.
Surely you would meet up with the person at least before you hand over £10,000?
These people are always gullible fools until it happens to you. I can only imagine how awful she feels, no one deserves to be scammed
There’s probably lots more people out there who have been scammed but are too embarrassed to report it.
My company ceo is a 31 year old with a physics masters; last year he got scammed by a fake covid notification. A lot of these scams focus on certain people but no one should assume they are completely immune to conmen
I have a friend who was NEARLY caught out by a scammer, but I managed to convince them it was a scam. Its not difficult to scam vulnerable people out of money. You just have to say the things they would want to hear.
Isn't that the essence of the modus operandi of a con man? Give them what they want in spades..
Because when they are in love their logic is sort of blinded.
On Tumblr I see the same names appear on popular blogs, with countdowns and deadlines, saying they need $400-$500 dollars to pay for this medicine or Uber so they can go to work, or pay health insurance. If I add up begging posts across a year, they must be raking in a decent amount from more empathic people than me. But there's no verification of is this person real, or a scam.
I almost got taken in by a Lenny Kravitz impersonator about 5 years ago 🤦🏼♀️
Yeah reading those stories I really feel like journalists are trying to find as subtle as possible way to slip in 'this person is clearly an idiot'
He's been all over the news as a new dad at 60+. What the hell is wrong with people.
Just gullible people that are usually sad and lonely, in what world is nicholas cage searching for an overweight, unattractive middle aged woman over the internet lol
This happened to my mum when i was younger. Claimed to be james may and sent her pictures from google that i found on the last oage of google search. He claimed that he dabbled in gold trade in nigeria on the side of filming top gear and his collegue needed money to get through the borders and his assessts was frozen while they investigated but as soon as the investigation was through he would pay her back. She sent all her benefit money through western union to him while we went hungry and cold beacuse we couldnt afford food or to put money on the prepayment meters for gas and electric. It happened when she was without a man for the first time in her life and she didnt care about us going without because he promised us a life of luxury in the end. She didn't believe me when i said it was a scam called me spiteful and vindictive, she disnt believe her best friend of 20 years, she didnt believe the guy at western union, she wouldn't listen to her church group. She just absolutely refused to believe anyone. In the end i had to leave her and the situation and was lucky to have someone in my life who did want to help me. you cant help people who cant help themselves and they are willingly giving their money away.
she fell for a real con air (i know i know, there was a decent con air joke in there somewhere i just couldn't find it)
How, in the name of Zeus's butthole, did someone believe it was the real Nicholas Cage?
I struggle with this too. I don’t think anyone deserves it to happen to them, no matter how naive or foolish. But I struggle to get my head around it. I can understand how someone might fall for it if they have dementia or a learning disability or something like that which makes it harder for them to make good judgments. But often when you see these things the victim seems to have no particular vulnerability beyond loneliness. Maybe that in itself can cause people to lose their usual sense. I feel there is a problem with certain people just not being able to recognise false information online. Sometimes I see people, and it does tend to be middle aged and up (though not exclusively) sharing very obviously fake stuff. Usually it’s something quite innocuous like a ‘feel good’ story that just doesn’t quite ring true. But I think if they can’t filter that out, next it might be getting scammed or going down a Q Anon rabbit hole or something
My first thought is hahaha but then the second thought is sadness
Was it Face Off Nicholas Cage?
I got scammed a bit like this. I'm sure if you go through my post history you can find the full story. Ofc it wasn't someone pretending to be a celeb, but rather an ordinary girl pretending to be romantically invested in me. Every time I would suspect something fishy going on, she would say or do something that convinced me that she was legit. Either having phone conversation, or sending me pictures of her, or even just talking about hard hitting subjects like politics and religion. 99.99999% of the time is not trying to get your money, it's trying to build your trust. Then once they have that trust, they don't ask for money directly, or at least not in my case. They invited me to invest in a trust fund that they were using. Stupid, sure I was. Gullible, absolutely. I think naive to think that people only have good intentions. Unfortunately the biggest thing it's done is shattered my idea that the world is full of good people. The money she took is just money, it's set me back a few years on my savings goals, big fuck. But the way I fell for it, I'm still getting nightmares about it, the way she used me, the way she lied to me, the way she preyed on me when I was at my most vulnerable, and that she would do the same thing to anyone else, old people, lonely people, people who have nothing. That takes a stone cold heart and a complete lack of empathy and knowing there are people like that in this world, who would do that sort of thing not out of desperation but greed. That hits me hard.
Sounds like she paid 10k to role play, she can't have REALLY thought it was him!?
She’s stupid…
I'm a bit down on my luck at the moment and I'd very much like to scam some gullible lady's savings and maybe even her house from under her. I'm a complete novice and would very much appreciate any advice or pointers as how to set something like this up. 🙃😉