Hey Pandas, If You Were Ever Scammed On The Internet Or In Real Life, How Did It Go Down? (Closed)

Not me, but my mother. She fell for a love scammer. He pretended to be an british engineer on a cruise ship and about her age. When she told me some stuff about him, I was suspicious immediately. For example his accent was funny, she mentioned and that it didn't actually sound british. And that he asked her to buy him a new laptop and sent it to him because his was broken and he couldn't get another one on the ship. Of course he would pay her back.

Being the true crime junkie that I am, my first thought was that he was probably a catfish. So I googled him and found out his profile picture belonged to an American and was taken at the super bowl. Even his cover story was stolen. I found a site about different types of love scams and his whole story was on there. The site stated, that this is a common story used by a ring of catfish from Ghana.

I gathered all the evidence and wrote my mom an e-mail, asking her to read it and calling me right away. She was a little shocked but said she was already suspicious of him herself too and luckily, she didn't send him any money.

But now comes the plot twist. Anyone else in the world would have been finished with this guy. But my mom wasn't. She wanted to know who he really was and why he did it. She stayed friends with him and found out that he was actually a ~26-year old from Ghana. That he was so poor, he couldn't afford food everyday. That he would love to work but noone would give him a job. He lived in the ghetto, in a single room which was frequently flooded by the nearby river. That the little money he had, he shared with his friends and family because they were all just as poor. He was desperate, so he went to an internet cafe and did what he did.

5 years later. They are still in contact. She visited him and his family a few times and they have become her second family. He taught her to speak twi and she taught him german. She tried to help him find a job and also tried to get him a visa so he could come to Germany, but unfortunately without success.

So that's a semi happy end to a love scam that could have ruined my mom's life. I was really worried about her, especially the first year. I didn't understand why she even bothered. But somehow something good came out of it. I don't quite get it, but it made her life better.

Still, everyone please be careful when it comes to who you trust over the internet. If you have the slightest doubt about someones story, listen to your gut. Not everyone can be as lucky as my mom. :/

My friend got scammed for his skins that were valued around 300USD. He just entered a shady website and wanted to cash it out for real money instead of steam wallet money.

Say about 2 weeks ago, I get call and they say they are with Fraud department with Sprint. They go in this whole story how someone hacked into my account and charged 3 new iphones. Very convincing fella, telling me they put a stop to the order. But then, he says you’re going to receive text message to reset your password. I’m like okay, no big deal. But the kicker is he said you need to tell me your username letter by letter so we can get this going...haha...I said, shouldn’t you know my user name already. He hung up...haha..careful for those calls everyone. There are scum everywhere

I got taken in by a facebook ad scam. Saw a facebook ad for a beautiful wooden jigsaw puzzle. Stupidly parted with my money (anything with pandas on I am a sucker for). Started to become suspicious when I saw several other companies advertising the same thing. And then the tracking link vanished from their website at which point I knew I had been had. After digging a bit I found the real website which surprise surprise the company was not going out of business, was selling their products for about double what I paid and had a section in their FAQ about these scammers.
Never again will I buy an item from a Facebook ad, now I will always go to the actual website and verify it is legit.

Online, I was scrolling away through Amazon, and this was when I was in my BIG LPS phase.

As I mindlessly scrolled through Amazon, I saw it.

It was a beeeaaaauuuuttiful #1262 collie dog. I was obsessed the moment I saw it. It was 7 dollars, and in the LPS world, that's really cheap for #1262.

I BEGGED my mom to let me get it, and then, she did. When I got the package 3 weeks later, I was overjoyed, because it took a really long time.

I opened it, and...

The head wasn't attached. It was covered in sharpie. There were explicit drawings on it. And a note that read, "Thanks for the 7 dollars, asshat!"

Unforgivable.

When I was 17 years old, I worked a few days with a friend for a advertising company. I didn' t have a bank account in those days but my friend did. The company was in another town and they decided to pay my money on my friends bankaccount,so she could give it to me. She never did. She took my money and never called me again. I didn' t want to go to the police because it was (only) 300 euro (360dollars) but I learned my lesson. Some people think money is more important than friendship.

All right this maybe quite a read for some or not, but here goes.
My story happened about four years ago, it all started so innocently. I got a message on my computer telling me that it was infected and that I needed to contact Microsoft technical support in order to get this resolved. So stupid me calls the number and I got a nice sounding gentleman named John, he sounded very concerned but most importantly he said that he could help me, yeah he did, helped himself.
So I purchased what I was told was a three year protection plan for my my comp. It was $299.00 and I was so very stupid to pay it but I did. I gave "John" control of my computer to remove the viruses or malware that he claim ed were infecting my computer, after an hour so I was good to go, or so I thought.
Hardly a day had gone by before "John" or others he worked with started calling me warning me that someone was trying to break into my computer and go into my bank and credit card accounts. I was incredulous, I was at work and nobody but my dog was home and frankly I just did not believe him.
So after about 2 months of almost daily calls I finally told them to stop calling me, because every time I got home I would check the computer and my accounts and they were always fine. Then "John" or someone else tells me that they are going to refund my money because they had suffered a data break in, great I'm thinking I am going to get my money back.
Some of you already know what happened, so I will try to to condense it. I gave control of my computer to these people again, went to my bank account and they were supposed to transfer my money back into my account. They did not they sent me a thousand dollars, I freaked out not realizing of courses that this was all part of their elaborate scam. I was instructed to go to the nearst Walmart type store and purchase Steam gift cards in the amount that I mistakenly believed that I was given over what I was supposed to get back. I still can hardly believe that I fell for this but I did as I was told, after getting the cards I gave them the serial numbers.
It was a couple of days before I finally realized that I had been scammed out of $750.00 dollars, four years ago that was half a months salary, so yeah that is a lot of money to lose.
I did some research checking out the website for the state of California where I learned that this was a well known internet scam that thousands of people wre falling victim to.
I don't think about this alot 4 years later but when I do I still feell like such an idiot, I'm a 50 years old man, how was it that I actually fell for all their bullshit. Well I hope these people all rot in hell for what they did to me and all the other victims.

I utilize the American Healthcare system

Bit of a depressing one... but once tried to buy the necessary to end my life from a very authentic looking website. The details don’t matter.
Suffice to say it was a scam and I got nothing. Probs for the best. Still here several years later.

When I was 11 or so, I knew quite a few swears due to hanging out around teens. So whenever I get a scam call on my phone, I always rattle off this spiel, feel free to borrow it.

Hello, you have reached Pink Dildo Adult Toy Emporium. Unfortunately, due to coronavirus, we are temporarily closed. If you want to purchase a toy, vibrator, or anything else, please go to www.(fake scam site i created).com. Thank you!

Not my story but my dad's

so this was..last week or this week.I was doing my school work and my dad was playing a game.He gets a call and answers it..you know.. as you do. The caller wanted to buy the house and all I heard from my dad(out of context because I didn't know who had called) was: chicken salad sandwich,I pooped in it..that is why I'm selling it.That is all I remember..... -w- that caller said my dad was bing rude (or something like that) and all my dad said was "you called me"

Not much of a story.it was funny though. :3

My sister's story, fell for one of those scam items that redirects to a fake login page that were epidemic on Neopets a long time ago. Told me what happened because she didn't get the item she bought, told her to quickly change her password. It was quickly enough that nothing got taken from her at least.

I went to London on a family vacation. And my family decided to rent an Airbnb. We were staying for like two weeks to it was pretty expensive. The renter had a cancellation policy where you couldn't be refunded if you canceled within 5 days of staying there. Three days before we were meant to stay the person renting told us she was having plumbing issues but we could still stay. We would not be able to use any of the water in the house so we tried to cancel but the person said we couldn't get our money back. They told us we could stay at a different place but it was too small for 6 people so we asked for our money back again. Then she told us we would not be able to get a refund. I was on the trip with friends and I didn't book the place so they reported it and we got to stay at a nice hotel for free. It ended up being great because the hotel had super tasty breakfast for free and a nice pool.

They were viewing my screen or some stuff like that, told me to deposit something into something else. Withdrew from the account then rickrolled them

not my story, but my mom wanted to rent an apartment for her sister for her birthday. She found a really good looking house with a swimming pool etc on ebay (I think). Turns out that the scammer had stolen the front picture of another house that was fully booked until 2024.

I myself have never gotten scammed but my grandpa has. He was going to buy e the new X-Box but when he gave it to me him and I got scammed for a X-Box 360.

Graduated from college with student loans. Got letters and emails about a business that helps me finance loans and save money. Gave them my money and never heard back from them again. Reported it to a government agency and they said I could be part of some class action lawsuit against said company but I didn't want to fool with it. Graduated college and still had to pay a $1,000 stupid tax. Also, it turns out the thing the company said they could do was easily done by me on the loan website anyways. Me stupid.

So, I was dumb enough to give someone my banana car in Adopt me, for a house car, i gave them the item, followed them for the house car, then they left the game... mind you i spent 1,200$ for the giant present... so i lost that much money. there wasnt the trade update, so i've lost it forever

I used to work for a bank's credit card department, reaching out to potential customers, and giving payment reminders kind of job. One day, while I was on break, I got a call from a guy who introduced himself as an employee from the same bank I was working for, and offered me some kind of premium credit card. I was not supposed to get such a call as my phone number was in the do not call list of the bank. We had a script to follow while talking to customer and he was following the script and all. Still, I felt like something wasn’t right, so I checked the name he told me in the employee directory and it was not there. But then he started explaining how my card is pre-approved and the only thing I needed to do was to verify my bank account number and tell him the OTP I receive. At this point it became clear that he was a scammer. So, I told him I was interested in the card, but I’m away from home and asked his personal number to call him back, surprisingly he gave a phone number. Later I gave that info to the fraud prevention unit, they directed it to the cops and he was caught a few days later. Turns out he was part of a large group that scammed people and they managed to get the account holder information from an insider, he was also arrested.

I got scammed on roblox on adopt me D: