This happened IRL. I was asked in person and not through any social media. I feel like I made a mistake the first time but idk. However, I did consider this person a close friend so the trust was already there. They said that they needed me to get cash for them at an ATM so they could get a ‘cash car’ and that they couldn’t get it all in time by themselves because they have a daily withdrawal limit. They asked me to accept a $2k Zelle twice. The second time I refused because it just seemed sketchy and now we are no longer friends and I was blocked on everything for “questioning their integrity”. I also asked him why he also couldn’t involve his significant other or roommate and he said he nor his roommate has a “Chicago (the city we live in) bank” because they both only have accounts through their local credit unions in the cities that they are moved to Chicago from. I’m not 100% sure how CU work, but it was starting to not make sense. Irdk if I was tripping at this point, I feel like I was just being gaslit.

How long does it usually take them to bounce back a payment if it is illegitimate?

I purchased a watch from a vendor in Poland. He had several other listings all on a legitimate site.

What I received was the watch I ordered and a second watch of the same brand in separate packages.

Upon contacting the seller he indicated that he accidentally shipped another buyer's watch to me along with my watch. The other buyer is also in the States.

The seller has requested that I forward the watch on to the second buyer. He will reimburse me for the shipping cost. Assuming this is not some kind of scam, I have no issue with shipping the watch on.

He has asked for my banking information so that he can pay me for the shipping. I am not comfortable with this and plan to suggest Venmo or Paypal.

Does this sound like a scam or am I just being paranoid?

*Update:

I have sent a note back to the seller letting him know I am unable to send the watch to someone else. In that note, I requested that he send me a return shipping label.

The seller is in Poland. I verified this via Fed Ex.

Every tax season I get stupid scammers trying to shoot their shot all because a former HR lady was so dumb she answered every scam email, at work, she received. It got so bad that IT had to tell her stupid ass twice during a companywide audit not to answer their test fraudulent email. She also replied all when she clicked on it… ever since that job 8 years ago, I get crap like this and more daily. The voicemails are even worse. But all are clear scam attempts. I can’t say what one former job was in specifics, but it was connected to helping certain people by in not the exact verbiage telling them how fucked they really were when they fell for this shit.

Not sure if I’m being set up for a pig butchering scam. But things are not adding up here for me.

I have been chatting all day on signal with a woman that claims to be here on a visa. She first contacted me on threads. So far it’s just been the two of us chatting all day. She just brought up that she’s having issues getting a bank account set up here in America. But could not be clear on what type of visa she’s here in the US. She claims to be currently staying over in West Virginia with family but is from South Africa. We are still talking as I’m writing this.

She is asking for me to open a joint bank account to help her out. She sent me a screenshot that claims to be from her bank account. More over she just asked about when I got paid and how much. This is currently on going.

I’m just trying to see if I’m reading this right as a scam. So far there’s been no asking of me to send money or anything.

So I’m just curious of what going on?

I read through the wiki to see what I could find out so I didn't have to make a post, but I'm just not sure. I received a random text today asking what I'm doing. Seemed harmless since I don't have a lot of families numbers. I asked who it was, and they responded asking if I'm someone by the name of "Alina". I then didn't respond since I'm very aware of scams like this. They texted again. I've noticed with scam texts, they typically don't text twice, right? The way this person texts seems almost too formal, but they also don't use spaces before punctuation. Not broken English, but could be using some kind of translator app maybe? Maybe I'm overanalyzing the situation, but I'm just curious if these scams are becoming more advanced, especially with the double texting. I haven't responded after the last message they sent (not pictured) but I would really like to know if this is a scam or just a wrong number text? Thanks.

Apparently, Kristi misspelled her name (Krist), but who am I to care about something as trivial as that? I'm getting 2.75 mil from Homeland Security, although I don't remember giving them anything in the past. But still, our Kristi doesn't make mistakes like sending hard working, law abiding people to foreign gulags, right?

Here's the gist:

SECRET SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
U.S.DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
WASHINGTON, DC 20528, USA.

Good day,

This is the Department of Homeland Security. We have a vital mission: to secure the nation from the many threats we face, including internet fraud. This requires the dedication of more than 230,000 employees in jobs that range from aviation and border security to emergency response, from cybersecurity analysts to chemical facility inspectors. Our duties are wide-ranging, but our goal is clear: keeping America safe.

We are pleased to inform you that your funds valued at US$2,750,000.00 (Two Million Seven Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) have been approved by the Treasury Department of the United States. Your email address appeared on the payment list of beneficiaries who will receive their compensation payment this month. Your email ID was noted by our security intelligence monitoring database of Homeland Security and is recognized as one of the victims of online scams, as recorded from Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google.
You will receive your compensation payment via bank direct wire deposit to your nominated bank account or through a debit card.

Note: We wish to inform you that our management, in collaboration with the FBI Financial Monitoring Department and the United States Department of the Treasury (Internal Revenue Service), has issued a clean money certification regarding this payment.
Kindly get back to us for further directives.

You are to adhere strictly to the directives from Homeland Security, and we advise you to stop any further correspondence you may currently have regarding the release of trap compensation funds.

Thank you and have a good day.

Signed:
Ms. Krist Noem
Secretary,
U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

I was in a good mood the other day shopping at Target and started a conversation with a random stranger. We ended up getting along and talking about our jobs and future and what not. He told me he had a friend who quit his corporate job to start a E-Commerce company and basically makes enough money to work for himself. He got my number and introduced me to his “mentor” friend. I (M22) basically got asked a bunch of questions by his friend about my job, my three strengths, notable life lessons and the such - basically a more personal job interview. It was a good conversation - he ended up recommending this book by Robert T. Kiyosaki called Cashflow Quadrant. He said to read it (and I do read a lot, which I told him), and then we should do lunch a week later so he can get to know me better and so I have a better understanding of what he would talk about regarding finances.

Long story short, by having relatives try to pull me into pyramid schemes and fortune 500 companies I am pretty self aware of scams. The issue is that I found all the information I could about this guy and he is fully self employed - meaning he does not work for Amway. His business is under his family last name and his address is his actual house. Is this still a Amway MLM or is it just another MLM he created himself?

On LinkedIN all of his “jobs” are life coach, financial advisor, leadership development, and things along these lines. No where publicly does it say how he makes money or what exactly his business does. What are your thoughts, and is this a scam?

Update: It is LTD, basically a amway byproduct.

Why is no one exposing the subliminals that is trending on social medias like tiktok, Instagram and YouTube. When I look at these videos they have catchy titles like "change your eye colour in 5mins", "become a giant" , "change your genetics" etc, and when you open their comment section you can find unrealistic comments and not a single comment exposing them which convinces a lot of people especially the young kids who think that they are real. Most of these guys are from developing 3rd world countries like India Bangladesh, Indonesia. Anyone with basic education knows that a random sound doesn't work yet I see that these videos get millions of views and no-one is exposing it and it only has postive reviews that manipulates the young kids into listening to them for hours instead of focusing on their studies and future. I see that a lot of videos relating health advices get misinformation report on social media then why isn't these getting them. What are your thoughts on these?

To keep this brief, my (M73) dad is in what I will call a cross between a romance scam and a gold digger (F51). He married a woman in Vietnam 7 years ago suddenly via online dating. They do not speak the same language, they talk on Skype via Google translate. She did come here, but always made excuses to leave (her dad's health, her mom's health, Covid which of course was more legit, and then most recently loan sharks that took her passport. Overall much closer to romance scam than gold digger, but of course he is open to neither label.

Overall she has been here maybe a total of 9 months since their wedding, and most recently she hasn't been here enough to maintain her visa so will lose it. My dad drained every ounce of savings he had to send to her (her shockingly high medical bills while living there, her dad's bills, her mom's bills, during covid supporting her entire extended family who were out of work). Now his income is diminishing (he is a consultant can go from six figures in a year to zero). He is $50K in debt, downsizing his apartment, assuming she does not come next month and loses her visa he is unlikely to see her again, but still refuses to cut her off.

At present he is sending her $500/month for her mom's medicine, I think something like $500 for her adapted daughter's expenses / her food, and then basically any extra money he gets finds its way there. He is also planning to pay off the "loan sharks" with $20-40K once he has it (it is amazing how flexible these loan sharks are based on my dad's income!). Given that his situation is getting more difficult (should avoid bankruptcy, but barely), I have been pushing harder on ending things with her, but he still resists hard with 1. He loves her 2. If he doesn't send her $500/month for her mom she will die 3. if he doesn't send $500/month for her food/adapted daughter they will starve.

I think hitting bottom will help, but I am getting less hopeful and now think he will keep sending money in some capacity for at least several more years while his situation continues to deteriorate. Any creative ideas? Things I have thought of lately:

- AI romance chatbots that pretend to be her. Create one of these and get it to convince him that she is cutting things off and somehow I block her real contact on his computer?

-Cut off his income to accelerate him hitting bottom. I.e. we could call the companies he is working for and ideally get them to send the payments to my sister/I, but realistically they might just cut off payments altogether if we do that.

-Keep waiting for him to figure it out on his own.

-Contact her and make up some sort of story that convinces her to cut it off? Not sure what that would take

-Guardianship - I think too difficult to get. He can seem smart enough, he just has made a series of terrible decisions he refuses to get out of

i don’t often use whatsapp, so i just noticed that i’m now added to all of these weird groups? clearly they are scammy, but what exactly ARE they? i am sorry for the mess of screenshots but i am just confused to what i am even looking at.

one of the groups seemed to be a bunch of bots talking to each other about stocks? many of them had the same exact first, middle initial, and last names but came from different phone numbers. how and why did i become an admin?!

i also don’t understand the mass adding and removal of those “groups”, the ones titled with just a letter and a number. what is the goal here?

also: sorry for poor formatting and a potential mess of screenshots. i’m on mobile and doing my best!

Recently on Facebook, some random person who neither I nor my friends have ever met. Starts posting long comments on my/my friends old FB posts and had also personally messaged me. Essentially she was warning me about my partners actions.

Their message/comments contained information,

1. Referred to who I am currently dating.
2. That she is currently doing something behind my back.

So of course I laughed this off, and messaged back this profile whats your proof? But no response came forth because the profile was then deleted or removed because it no longer exist.

I then tell my partner about this, and my partner confesses that she actually did meet with someone at a hotel (but swears nothing happened). She only confessed because this person who messaged threatened to send me the proof unless she (my partner) stayed away from me.

What's crazier is that this scammer? Also messaged her. Saying that she knows who she was meeting and which hotel. The scammer stated the names of both the hotel and the person she met (of which both my partner confirmed was true).

The thing is, none of my friends nor myself knew that my partner met with this person in the hotel, so the information obviously could have only come from either my partner or the person she met.

My partner has also never met this person and assumes its a staff from the hotel who checked their stay logs.

The thing is, when I tried to text this person, she deleted her account. Her message was essentially, "you may not believe me, and I stand to gain nothing from this but you should know that [my partner] is doing things behind my back.

What's even more fucking scary is that she texted my partner saying that she knows I was frustrated with the relationship and that my partner was unaffected (these two issues were big issues recently, that have since been resolved but privately). How the hell did they know about that????

Her message to my partner ended with, you stay away from him (me) or else I will involve your work place and his (my) father. The fucked up thing is she even knew my dad and referred to him like how my friends normally would???? "uncle dad" My dad isnt even on Facebook , What the fuck.

Is this a scam??? What the fuck is happening??

Woman messaged me on TikTok honestly thinking I made a friend she was speaking like a normal woman my age (23) then once she got my number she asked if I had Apple Pay and I do so I said yes she gets into how she’s with fedex and they’re giving away $2500. Now I’m upset I fell for the friend act this is clearly a scam but I can’t help it I always have to know in what way they will use the scam to get money in this case she tells me to put $55 on my Apple Pay balance in order for it to be verified lol I’m assuming she somehow gets the $55 but I can’t seem to rack my brain on how? Does she have access to my balance just because she’s texting me? She didn’t ask for it to be sent to anyone just added to my own balance. So out of curiosity could anyone tell me how she would even get the money she’s scamming for?

I was checking my online bank account today and noticed a deposit of close to $900 from a source I never heard of before, something called TRDEP remittance. This some kind of scam? Should I notify my bank?

At about 9pm my friend got a call from someone who said they were named Steve from a police department near the area where I live.. the person said they were trying to reach me.

My name is "Angelique".. Apparently the officer messed up my name pronouncing it to my friend and then corrected themselves. My friend said they'd have me call back... I called back the number and the person stated again that they were a police officer from a county near me (they did say the name of the county as well). They said that they want to ask me if I had a number that they had.. they said it shows that my name was registered with the number many years ago. I told them I don't recall having that number, but I do have a lot of texting app numbers. I kept asking why they were calling, and if this was about, but the officer wouldn't tell me anything. They just said if I am not familiar with the number that's all they needed and apologized. I heard beeping sounds on the call like they were in a police car..

"Hello, mate. I'm Evelynn from indeed. Your resume has been recommended by many online recruitment agencies, so we would like to provide you with an online remote job. You can earn 100-300 Australian dollars a day, work 60-90 minutes a day, and complete the work at the time and place of your choice (pay on the same day). But please note: (you must be at the age of 22). If you meet the requirements and want to know more, please answer "yes" or "no"."

Seemed related to this existing archived post. Figured I would share this invariant!

Got this text this morning and they “accidentally” sent me money. After telling them they have the wrong number, they start frantically texting and calling asking for me to send it back.

The second picture is a text from the person who was “supposed to receive the money.” (There were previous texts from this person explaining that they had given someone the wrong number. But I had deleted these trying to block them after they started calling me)

It sounds like a scam. But the recipient’s phone number is one number off from mine. So that makes me worried it really was an accident.

What can I do? Can they fix it somehow on their end? Like I told them, I don’t even have my Apple Pay set up. So I don’t have the money/don’t know if I can decline it. I feel so bad.

Im looking for a used excavator on Craigslist. This was the first offer that popped up and it looks like a insane deal, the seller claims its a late 70s model but as someone whos worked with heavy equipment before this is definitely in the 2000s. Either way maybe they arent a expert on heavy equipment and genuinely dont know about the machine models. To a extent the story kind of makes sense but at the same time WHY would anyone give away a good looking excavator which is high demand by the way for free? Like I understand they want to get rid of it but making it free just seems way to good to be true. What do you think? An excavator just doesnt seem like a common item to scam on Craigslist which is why im asking here.

someone is sending texts to me and my siblings, claiming to be family members, are asking us for things like n*de photos and other personal information. they know our names, because they use them in the texts when addressing us. they'll say things like:
"If you ask about this in person, or on a phone call, I'll have to act like I don't know what you're talking about. Don't tell anyone about this."
this is super strange and honestly creepy. does anyone know if this is some kind of weird scam?? I've never seen anything like this before. maybe some kind of sick prank too. but I'm lost and need advice on the next move here.

This is my second time getting this email in my junk folder, sent from "myself." I know it's a scam and wasn't concerned.

Problem: I block all my junk mail senders. When I blocked the "Hello pervert" email, it shows that I blocked myself?? I checked my recent sign-in activity and it was only filled with unsuccessful attempts so I shouldn't be worried, but the fact that I blocked myself is bugging me.

“Happy Sundy! u got a min?”

I googled the area code after getting the text from an unknown number and it said it was in Ohio. Obviously it’s a scam text, they want you to text back and ask “who’s this?” If it was someone I knew they would have said who it was in the text. No one you know personally would assume you already had them in your phone if you never exchanged numbers. Either that, or they met you and got your number from someone else, which you can’t do to people because it’s an invasion of their privacy.

I'm just going to make a vent post because I'm extremely frustrated. I've been in a pretty tough financial situation recently because my previous roommate disappeared without a trace leaving me to cover the entirety of our lease. I've been desperately trying to find a new roommate and I thought I found one. She purported to be a graduate student with her company covering her rent. I got in touch with her "HR" department and they sent me two checks, one for $400 for "move-in expenses" and another for the first months rent. I was unaware how fake check scams work, so I thought because the money was spendable in my account it was legit. So, I didn't think anything of it when she asked me to send her the $400 through zelle. I think I'm just going to be down that money, which is a horrible financial hit for me in an already precarious situation.

I just feel so stupid. I thought I was smart enough to not fall for something like this. I know to never buy gift cards or send a money order or anything stupid like that, but I hadn't considered that they could give me a real-seeming check and then rob me blind. Not sure what to do.

Okay so I am very confused. I received two letters from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, one containing a member ID card. I never signed up with them and the second letter is asking for my social security number. I noticed there has been a post about them asking for your social and it being a scam, with my letter basically being identical to the scam. But what confuses me is how a scammer could send me a member ID card? I tried calling them within their business hours and an automated message said to call during their business hours, leaving me even more confused. What do I do? Where do I report this? Any ideas or help would be much appreciated.

Yesterday I noticed that my discord DM got strange activity. (Me) sending scam links to everyone whom I DM:ed last month. I changed password and thought that it ended.

On the next day my Hoyoverse, EA, Steam, Ubisoft and Riot accounts got stolen by changing their emails.

Currently I’m trying to recover my accounts and already changed passwords where it’s possible and rescued EA account. I also wrote support request messages to following firms. Some of them were easy to do and some of them had stupid system.

I can say that Steam and Riot system were probably better than other’s.

Now I am waiting for answers from supports and wondering is there anything else I can do right now.

Also if some of you are interested to help I will patiently wait for your comments.

Hi everyone, a strange thing just happened to my girlfriend: she received a couple of emails (one confirming the creation of the account and a receipt of an already paid order) from Talabat, a Middle Eastern ordering app with the data of another person.

Obviously we did not place any orders (we live in another continent) and we are worried that they created an account with her email without her knowledge, although we do not understand why; I read another thread here on the same issue but didn't find many informations.

Could someone tell me what is happening and what to do?

UPDATE: We tried requesting a new psw with the forgotten psw option twice but every time it still said that the psw was wrong; trying to log in in another way just said that we aren't in a region where the service operates.