The most popular scammers' schemes (chit-chat in English)

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Ольга
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The most popular scammers' schemes (chit-chat in English)

Postby Ольга » Tue Jun 20, 2017 6:59 am

Hi there, guys!
Recently I have been swindled by a person, who helped me to build my site, that's why I am interested in the most popular scammers' schemes on the Internet and in real life (in order not to be swindled another time :) )
Have you ever been deceived by anybody?
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Re: The most popular scammers' schemes (chit-chat in English)

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jun 20, 2017 7:49 am

Not on the Internet but I once helped out a person in a train station and found out later that the guy was a professional con.
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Re: The most popular scammers' schemes (chit-chat in English)

Postby Theodisce » Thu Jun 22, 2017 8:09 pm

LesRonces, I'm really sorry. As it's a public forum, I will abstain from expressing my opinion about the con.

Scheme 1. Do not ever try to rent an apartment via email/snail mail (I mean sending money without meeting the owner in person). The scheme seems to be very popular in Germany (at least in a medium size town where I happen to live) and I was confronted with it 3 times (would probably amount to 10% of all adverts I responded to). You see a nice advert with a reasonable price (usually without the pictures of the apartment) and you decide to contact the person behind it. What you get is a response in English or clearly non native German containing pictures and encouraging you to rent the apartment. This is the right time to report the scammer. If you fail to do so at this point, you are probably going to have the last chance when you will be told to transfer money not to a regular bank account, but to a financial services company offering anonymised transfers (I do not want to call the names but I hope its clear). I personally managed to avoid being robbed but I guess there are many people, e.g. international students who are only too wiling to make sure they will have a place to stay on their arrival in Germany.

Scheme 2. A person on the social media would present themselves as, for example, poor single mother asking people to donate not money, but some things for her baby. Then they would try to sell those things (from the same account if they are stupid enough) on the very social media they had used to swingle it.

Scheme 3. An advert offering money to be transferred to your account by financial services other than traditional banks in exchange for translation from the language A to the language B. Once a translation has been submitted, they stop contacting you.

Scheme 4 (real life). A person approaches you and presents themselves as a victim of a theft with no money to travel to their home town. And yes, they have contacted the police, but in vain. Now, I cannot tell for the rest of the world, but I would say that al least in the EU such stories have no credibility whatsoever. A person can be accompanied by their child to increase the persuasive effect and produce more guilt n case you are not willing to give them money.
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Re: The most popular scammers' schemes (chit-chat in English)

Postby BalancingAct » Thu Jun 22, 2017 8:56 pm

LesRonces writes well. By that I mean he is a good story teller.

Edit: putting a missing "a" in.
Last edited by BalancingAct on Fri Jun 23, 2017 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The most popular scammers' schemes (chit-chat in English)

Postby garyb » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:46 am

It's pretty low-tech but... In Barcelona I got chatting with a guy who seemed friendly and interesting, and in the end we went for a beer together. I paid for the beer with a big note as I didn't have anything smaller, then when the waiter was about to bring the change the guy distracted me, took all the change, and walked out. So I effectively spent €50 for two beers. There was no convincing him to give it back and I didn't want to use violence in case he had a weapon. Since it was just cash, reporting it would have been useless. I felt like a total idiot, especially since Barcelona is infamous for petty crime, but it was the classic case of gaining my confidence then exploiting it.
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