I love it when Brunny shows up. He da man.
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Looks like I missed this scammer and also naked guitar man (and I joined in 2005 I think!). Looks like I’ve had a lucky escape.
You are right @Tapestry it feels a bit mean and cynical to think the worst of people but in this day and age, you can’t just give someone online the benefit of the doubt. The empathy we feel for someone who is suffering from cancer is taken advantage of. Our humanity is used against us. We don’t really want to believe someone could be faking something as terrible as that for financial gain.
In my work I’ve seen a few scams up close and there are no depths some scammers won’t go and in some cases it even looks like the scammers get some form of enjoyment from the suffering they cause (not just from the money they steal). I’ve heard of phone scams with older people where the scammer is talking to an elderly person in an empathic voice for two hours, assisting them in transferring all their money to the scammers’s account, or giving their jewelry for “safekeeping” to a person coming to the door, only for the call to end with an announcement of “haha we just stole your life savings / your late spouse’s wedding ring bye” .
AI really is making it easier and easier for scammers. It can quickly gather all the info about you that can be found online, it can combine it with your family members’ information. It can generate pictures and voices. In my family, we had an incident where my mum (older and living alone) was texting all their kids because her phone didn’t work and she wanted us to make calls on her behalf. It didn’t seem to involve money, but it was such a strange story. I tried calling her cell phone and it didn’t work, I tried video calling and she didn’t pick up, I tried calling her landline and she didn’t pick up. The texts were very different than her normal texts. In the end, the sibling who lives closest went to her house. It turns out it was all real - she had an issue with her cell phone which meant she could only text, not video / voice call. She had gotten rid of her landline without informing us because she never used it. She was so stressed that we didn’t believe her that she started to make spelling mistakes.
Since that incident, we have made an agreement about what kind of questions we will ask when we are in doubt about the other’s identities. It’s not a “set” question with an answer that could be written down. We’ve agreed to talk about places and people in the pre-internet era. People who are long deceased. Things hardly anyone would know, but also things we wouldn’t forget. I would recommend thinking of (not writing down) questions like that for your own family members. These are fictional questions but it could be anything from the colour of the front door, wallpaper or tiles in a childhood home if they stood out, where grandma kept her spare key back in 1993, to names and habits of long-deceased pets. If you are truly dealing with your family member and not a scammer, they will not just answer the question, but answer with a story of their own. If you’re asking about Buddy the dog’s favourite treat, and the answer is correct, and the other person tells a a story about that one time Spot the cat peed in your school backpack, there’s a pretty good chance you are dealing with your actual sibling or parent. It has to be pre-internet era events - these days a lot of those things end up on social media.
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I’ve run into a number of scammers over the years. Some of the art scams were laughable because the whole “set up” showed a complete lack of awareness of just how B I G the U.S. is (I’ll be going by your gallery (which i’ve never had)).
More recently I had a scammer approach me on Fine Art America and they were using AI to write “engaging conversation” to show just how enamored of my work they were. Funny how they never bought anything of mine from Fine Art America. lol
I’ve experienced a couple of phone scam, but they were quickly obvious by the fact that MicroSoft doesn’t call you, Medicare doesn’t call you.
I generally see one or two email phishing scams per week - and I always send those on to reportphishing@apwg.org
Years ago, and I can’t recall where on the web, there were stories of people playing the scammers. Those were always enjoyable stories!
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Can I just say. As someone who had cancer last year. No WAY am I getting rid of my stash. 
In fact. I think people should send me more! 
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I really enjoyed those shows where the scammers are located and shut down. It is so sad to see so many elderly people lose everything because they are scared or trying to do the right thing. My bank is always telling us to call one of the managers on a private line if there is any type of questionable request for money or if gift cards or bitcoins are involved.
I have all sorts of blockers and alerts on my computers and phones, but they still get through once in a while. I wish I could legally use my hacking software to track some of them, but I can’t so I do like you do and just report them. I am amazed at the skill sets of the new generation of hackers and fraud detectors. In my day, it was not that difficult to get into anyone’s computer but you had to be authorized. Now, illegal or legal, the skills are phenomenal!
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Peach! Given that I am the more senior cancer member of the two of us, I should have a bigger stash 
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I’m pretty sure that @Smeddley enjoys trolling back at scam texts. 
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Several years ago, national treasure Dave Holmes trolled some “IRS” scammers and tweeted the story. (Some NSFW language.)
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yesssssssssss! Plus, everyone could use some daily cat facts! How can I sign up?
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I promise that isn’t me!
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Do you mind saying what your line of work is? You seem really knowable and have given some good advice here.
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Thanks! I work in the financial world, unfortunately catching scammers is not my day job (I’d be good at that! Or at least very motivated) but twice now we came across an organized scamming gang and I helped bring them to justice.
It really opened my eyes to how organized and professional scamming is. I used to think a lot of scammers were comparable to for example, drug addicts who rob people, not because they want to do it but because they’re desperate for money for drugs (not that that’s an excuse for robbery! But they do it because there’s no other way to fund their habit, not because they like stealing). The organized scammers I encountered, they would sometimes use desperate people in their schemes, but the leaders, they’re very professional, very organized. They have skills they could use for legit businesses. They would just rather scam people because you get rich faster and you don’t pay tax. They couldn’t care less about their victims.
A lot of scams are low effort (mass e-mailing or texting and see who takes the bait) but targeted scams where the scammer targets you specifically, basically like a stalker, are much easier now than before.
A few years ago I went to a conference about AI and the financial industry. I attended a seminar on how AI was able to work around all the security features banking apps use. This was a few years ago and AI is way better now, but the guy who held the talk literally opened a bank account in the name of Donald Trump right in front of us. This was a few years ago which is decades in AI-terms. They only need a few pictures / voice clips now to fake your image or voice. The only truly unique thing about you now is what’s stored in your head.
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That’s terrifying.
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Scam related, the movie Thelma was good!
“When 93-year-old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her.”
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This thread reminded me of the Scammer Payback channel on YouTube. He tries to waste scammers time and hack them while on the call.
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I watch him on YouTube as well.
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I was recently surprised by how dedicated scammers are! I run a dog caretaking business and they contacted me to take care of their dog! I didn’t think anyone would do this!
I spent TWO HOURS trying to pry the necessary information out of this dude who was supposedly in need of dog boarding. I mean it was off-and-on in-between practicing face painting on my partner, but still… waiting for someone to text properly when you’re trying to get information is annoying.
I kept asking for his name or his dog’s name or how old the dog was, and when he needed the boarding and he kept not answering or answering partly. So I was getting very suspicious. Then he started trying to pay me before I had even, you know, watched his dog? And I knew he was a scammer. And I got really mad and asked him if he was in Ghana because a lot of the people I get messages from are from Ghana and they told me “India.” 
Then I proceeded to call his mother something I thought was hilarious (albeit immature) if you want to know, I called his mother a Dick smeller (I dunno I thought it was funny) and blocked them.
But I never thought they would contact me through my business! I just haven’t ever gotten one before.
When I immediately know someone is a scammer I do mess with them and tell them really weird facts that absolutely NO ONE needs to know. Mostly weird gross stuff about animals. Usually reproductive habits. 
Yeah… I get curious and end up looking things up that people don’t … Generally look up… So I know very strange facts about animals. Lol! People do generally get a kick out of it when I tell people these things in conversation if it comes up, but I assume it’s really confusing when you’re trying to scam someone and they keep telling you weird, gross animal facts.
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Oh wow! That’s interesting and terrible at the same time. Thanks so much for telling me all this. Like you said AI has advanced since you went to the conference and it was doing work arounds even back then. I’m so glad you helped to take down some scammers.
I have an unprovable theory that the smart, organized scammers start learning their skills while still in the K-12 grade age range. I say this because I remember kids who faked friendships to use and take advantage of peers. Also, there were kids that adults thought very highly of and would mention how good they were. But other kids would know the actual truth about that person’s character. They just seem to know how to work people at an early age. They can scan a classroom and find the kid who just wants friends and exploit them. They can figure out what teachers and parents like and pretend to be that.
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