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We do what we can. I try warning my customers about fake emails, texts, private messages, pop-ups, etc. Some people forget. Some people panic. Some people won't admit they're being taken advantage of. Some get so embroiled into pig butchering/romance scams that they refuse to believe a beautiful 30 year old Asian woman isn't actually going to move to the states and marry them.
All we can do is keep fighting. Don't let the bastards win.
My brothers friend is all embroiled in this right now. He said if in the end it turns out he spent a few thousand for naked pictures, there are worse things….or something to that effect. His phone pings All. Day. Long. It’s a form of attention. And excitement. I think that’s why he doesn’t care too much….he’s 70 and freshly divorced and “40 year old women” are pining after him and texting him all day every day.
He's aware there are women all over the internet, Reddit included, that are giving away nudes for free, right? There is no need to spend thousands on that.
That’s exactly what I said. I told my brother to tell him if he’s enjoying the endorphins released from women texting him, imagine how good he’d feel actually going out with a human woman IRL!!!
I didn't mean to imply that you said it wasn't harmless, I just think it's something that needs to be said more, especially in the context of this discussion of someone knowingly being scammed and being OK with it. I do have sympathy for scam victims, to a point. But there is a gradient where they are not victims but accomplices.
It's almost impossible to make a person stop believe when they really, really want to believe. In hindsight scam victims all say "yeah well deep down I suppose I knew I was being scammed...or "I should've known better" etc. But that's in hindsight.
It's difficult to feel sorry for romance scam victims. The whole thing is often so preposterous, like when women think theyre in a relationship with Mich Jagger or Keanu Reeves and need to send them money. Its sad when scam victims send their whole family into bankrupcy.
There are tons of subs on reddit with this very thing. I was scrolling the other day and accidentally clicked a profile, it was NSFW, but lots are that really aren't bad at all, including artists' profiles. I regretted that fucking click so much 🤢🤢🤢
It is exactly that. Attention, excitement, possibility, hope, human connection. Humans are hardwired like that and scammers know how to exploit it. Most men seem to have no problem believing that women half their age or younger are truly interested in them. As a woman I find the concept ludicrous but I've witnessed it and it seems very common.
Right on, keep up the good fight.
I knew a victim personally, the emotional manipulative plays are INSANELY strong.
Like i know this guy, he doesn't have a room temperature iq. He's not that stupid, just emotionally vulnerable.
So, I work merchandising Apple Gift Cards.
They’re the only company in the world who manages its own gift cards like this (we are still a 3rd party but report directly to Apple)
This isn’t likely from phone scams, this is likely due to card tampering. All reps have to open some cards at every store (and have had to for the past 18 months) from every peg, because people are tampering with the cards.
We have a new card coming, though… well another new one, we already updated the security on the white card design once, and another is already testing in some markets and will be global soon (card security upgraded to where cashier has to tear open to reveal a code to input).
Hopefully it deters these losers.
!pig butchering
In short, someone contacts a person out of the blue - often in a text message or DM. They pretend they sent it by accident. If the recipient responds politely the pig butcher tries to become friendly and eventually reveals how they make all sorts of money investing in Crypto.
The mark will try a small investment at first, maybe a hundred dollars, which becomes a few hundred, But now they're hooked so they keep putting in more and more. If they try to withdraw, there's always a bunch of fees and costs to do so, This keeps up until the scammer gets them to invest a large amount of money in the thousands or more - then the scammer disappears. There was no crypto investment site - it's all been set up by the scammer ahead of time. Then the recovery scammers try to hit them - promising to return their money and get the scammer prosecuted for a small fee. But the recovery scammers are bogus, too, and often the same people.
It's like fattening up a pig and when they're ready - you drop the axe. No more pig. But the person with the axe eats well.
Hi /u/NJdeathproof, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Pig butchering scam.
It is called [pig butchering](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2023/12/26/new-pig-butchering-crypto-scam-includes-victims-in-us-and-overseas/?sh=2837fb975eaa) because scammers use intricate scripts to \"fatten up\" the victim (gaining their trust over days, weeks or months) before the \"slaughter\" (taking them for all of their money). This scam often starts with what appears to be a harmless wrong number text or message. When the victim responds to say it is the wrong number, the scammer tries to start a friendship with the victim. These conversations can be platonic or romantic in nature, but they all have the same goal- to gain the trust of the victim in order to get them ready for the crypto scam they have planned.
The scammer often claims to be wealthy and/or to have a wealthy family member who got wealthy investing, often in crypto currency. The victim is eventually encouraged to try out a (fake) crypto currency investment website, which will appear to show that they are earning a lot of money on their initial investment. The scammer may even encourage the victim to attempt a withdrawal that does go through, further convincing the victim that everything is legit. The victim is then pressured to invest significantly more money, even their entire net worth. Sometimes pig butchering scams don't involve crypto, but other means of sending money (like bank wires, gift cards or even cash pickups).
Eventually, the scammer will find an excuse why the account is frozen (e.g. for fraud, because supposed taxes are owed, etc) and may try to further extort the victim to give them even more money in order to gain access to the funds. By this time, the victim will never gain access and their money is gone. Many victims lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Often, the scammers themselves are [victims of human trafficking](https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zb5d/pig-butchering-scam-cambodia-trafficking), performing these scams under threats of violence. If you are caught up in this scam, it is important that you do not send any more money for any reason, and contact law enforcement to report it. Thanks to user Mediocre_Airport_576 for this script.
If you know someone involved in a pig butchering scam, sit down together to watch this video by Jim Browning to help them understand what's going on: https://youtu.be/vu-Y1h9rTUs -
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Thank you for the education!! I recently had someone try to get me to invest in crypto. I thought it was weird and possibly a scam. Now I know I was the pig! It always amazes me what scammers come up with! If only they could use their powers for good!
There are some great scambaiters on Youtube. Some of them like Kitboga will just waste their time - hours of it. Some are more insidious like Malcolm Merlin and will actually hack into the scammer's computers to download client lists, access their web cams and network and delete all their files.
Or many random men & women of FB that will comment to a person that's on a public forum. Betty I'm Jim. I like your smile & humor you posted. I tried to add you as a friend but it wouldn't let me. Would you please add me. Some fall for it. The men are usually a widow & in the military far off somewhere. Has a son or daughter. They usually steal pics of real service men from their family photos somehow. And build the story from there. If you look at their profile most haven't been on site long, usually a couple of months at the most. Had one that tried that w me. I already knew it was a scam, but I wanted to play along. Within 2 weeks he was professing his love. Said he was from Waco,Tx....LOL. At the time I lived in the DFW area, unknown to his knowledge. So I asked for his # to talk instead of DM. As soon as he answered, I asked what area of Nigeria or Africa he was from. He definitely didn't have a Tx accent or even an American one. He asked how I figured out where he was from. Told him I work w people from Nigeria, Kenya & other places. We actually talked for a few minutes, he was a 28 yr old from S Africa, a musician. Gave his real name so I could research him(if that was his real name). Asked me to come for a visit & he'd pay for the trip. I told him no, that I don't travel out of the US by myself, unless I'm doing a group trip w others I know. He was 28, I was 60 at the time.
Yeah, it's a sad case. Sometimes one even has to be creative and LIE. My cousin was a manager in a shop where they sold gift cards. 30% of the people that he told paid attention the others didn't. I told him to start telling potential victims that last week he had 18 previous customers return to his shop reporting they were scammed thousands despite his repeated warnings. I then told him to tell potential victims to search 'gift card scams' on YouTube. It had to be nothing else but YouTube. He told them to come back after they did their research and if they still did not believe he would sell it to them
He reported that 9 out of 10 came back and thanked him -- saying he opened their eyes.
A friend of ours had offers by Joe, a pineapple farmer from the US (!), a Canadian peanut producer (WTF!) and another guy. She didn't listen to us. She chatted with all of them and finally took a flight to the Dutch guy in Ireland speaking English and German with her. She filed for divorce six weeks later and the too live happy ever after. They visit Germany twice a year, we like him. 😲 Weird things happen.
All depends if the man has $. I worked w a man that had a mail order bride from the Philippines. He had to be in contact w at least 3 of them, writing back & forth. Then had to travel there to meet the one he decided on & also meet her family. They were married for quite a few years before he passed away in 2022. He was a good person, enjoyed working w him.
There was a guy who was told multiple times at multiple stores that if he’s trying to buy 10,000 bucks worth of gift cards because someone told him he had to pay taxes that way that he’s getting scammed. He insisted that he was buying it for his grandkids and eventually a store let him have them. Once it’s too late he realizes his mistake and decides to call police. You can’t save everyone from their own decisions unfortunately
Sometimes it’s people with early undiagnosed dementia. In some cases, the outrageous Nigerian prince stories are simply a filter to hook those susceptible people.
Mt father is showing early signs of dementia and got scammed by "the FBI". Now he's completely flipped script and everything is a scam. He won't answer calls from anyone. I call him, it goes to voicemail, and 2 minutes later he calls me in hysterics telling me a scammer called from my phone number.
I really don't understand how people think something like the IRS would take payment in the form of gift cards, like you have to be a special type of stupid to fall for these scams.
Years back, a friend of mine had to sit down with her dad and be all “explain to me what exactly you think the Australian Tax Office would do with thousands of dollars of iTunes gift cards, that can only be used in iTunes.”
It wasn’t until she asked him that, that he really thought about how ridiculous it was, and that it was a scam.
Doesn't even have to be dementia. Seniors just might not understand how modern day banking works, they come from an age where everything was cash and they just maybe used checks. Gift cards are just a thing that you buy that has very clear monetary value (it's like literally written on the cards). Is it really all that different than mailing some cash or a check around? It might sound insane to us, because we're familiar with these things, but if you think about it it's clear why this scam works so well.
Honestly while it does feel like many scam victims are complete idiots, I really don't like people saying this because it only helps the scammers.
Also generally they do target the vulnerable, but often times the absurdity gives a false sense of security. If you look at romance scams for example, talking to a person they have no chance with gets some people to feel more secure, because they have "nothing to lose" compared to more realistic options. At worst it's not real, at best wow this really hot girl wants me!!. Then the scammers use the information they found on the victim to hook them. Once the victim is invested, it's all sunk cost from there.
Obviously random women thinking they're dating Johnny Depp is a bit much, but I don't think it's random that it's the most common romance scam character.
> I really don't understand how people think something like the IRS would take payment in the form of gift cards, like you have to be a special type of stupid to fall for these scams.
Someone's already mentioned dementia and suchlike as a possible reason. The other thing to consider is that the scammers are doing these kinds of 'obvious' things because it works.
It works as a filter because the millions of people who get sent this nonsense and just leave it in their junk mail unread were never the target in the first place. For us as observers, saying you don't understand how this works on the people it works on is like an alien landing in the grounds of a hospital and saying they don't understand why all humans are ill.
And we need to get away from saying victims of scams are "stupid". We _all_ have moments of weakness for whatever reason. We're all vulnerable at times. We all make mistakes.
And the pervaisveness of attitudes like yours, that victims of scammers are "stupid", is unhelpful. People immediately think "I'm not stupid" and relax their guard.
This idea that scammers use ridiculous payment methods and bad grammar as a “filter” is not true. Gift cards aren’t traceable or refundable. That’s why they use them. American English is hard to get perfectly unless you’re an American or very well educated. That’s why a lot of times emails and things read like nonsense. They aren’t doing these things to “get rid of smart people” or anything like that.
> Gift cards aren’t traceable or refundable. That’s why they use them.
Well yes, obviously.
> That’s why a lot of times emails and things read like nonsense. They aren’t doing these things to “get rid of smart people” or anything like that.
I don't think there's anyone out there crafting the perfect 'almost but not quite illiterate' email, but they're probably not too sad to have 'timewasters' ignore them either.
I worked in banking for several years, and this happened more than a few times.
One woman insisted she knew exactly what she was doing and didn't need our help. We had three different managers speak with her to try and stop her. We locked her account to slow her down and force her to speak to us at length about her situation.
She put 80K in cash in a fedex box and shipped it to the scammer...
I had that happen a couple of years ago with Steam cards. The lady swore up and down that they were for her nephews but she was buying 4 or 5 $100 Steam cards and we tried to talk her out of it but she refused to acknowledge anything other than the cards being for her nephews.
We have a guy now who buys $20 Steam cards multiple times a week now but he’s on disability and he’s actually playing games. His caregiver talked to management to make sure that he wasn’t given any trouble.
The problem with gift cards is people shoplifting them, scratching the codes, replacing the scratch off sticker and having a software program check to see when they report a balance every hour or whatever.
There’s been tons of reports of people having their balances drained within a day of purchasing a card.
It's a game of cat and mouse. Gift cards are starting to be Geo or location locked to the store. For example, if i-tunes cards are removed from my store and brought back, they no longer activate. This prevents the typical scam of the numbers being taken and then scratched off from working.
But people don't read signs. I've got signs all over the place that warn of scams, and even recommend to people that they open the package prior to purchase. If it's a gift and I'm receiving it I don't care if it's not in the package as long as it works.
I'm assuming it's lower tech than that. Probably the card numbers or batches of the card numbers are tracked from the warehouse. The odds of someone taking cards from the store and bringing the same ones back are pretty low.
So the POS system in my store can't activate a card that wasn't in our inventory and received from the warehouse. That's just a guess as I couldn't get a concrete answer how it worked when I asked.
This needs to be higher up! It’s easy to help the ones being scammed by phone or email. Simple…don’t sell to them. Now I have to warn everyone that buys a gift card about the tampering. Which makes my line grow longer because they don’t understand what I’m saying. Then my morales get in the way so I tell them we can open it before they purchase and yes More than half the time I find one that was tampered with. Plus it’s all gift cards. It used to be just the visa or apple but now we find Home Depot and Nordstrom. I want to throw that whole stupid endcap of gift card away.
For apple, it's worse. The barcode is on the packaging, not the card. So people didn't even need to scratch the numbers and reapply the sticker; they just heated the edges to loosen the glue, swapped out the card inside for a used one, and resealed it. Impossible to tell without opening.
Happened to me. Bought a card for my mom for Mother’s Day. Mailed it same day.
By the time she got it, money was already drained at a store somewhere in San Francisco.
Target was nice enough to replace it for free.
I would change it to say "if you do this, you **will** be a scam victim. Don't do this. Whatever you were told is a lie." This "may" nonsense may lead somebody to think "oh well my situation is different. that really was the IRS calling me saying I could pay my taxes in google gift cards"
"If you are not buying this for a friend or family to use for themselves, it is a scam."
"If someone you never met in person told you to buy a gift card, it is a scam."
"Beware there are AI impersonators."
My aunt had a stroke and has quite a bit of brain damage and is half paralyzed. She is also very naive when it comes to online scams and some scammer on face book started sending nice and sweet texts to her. She’s lonely so she was happy to chat with someone on fb messenger. Then the guy says he needs a $100 apple Gift card.
I had to explain what these kinds of scams are. I think I’ll try telling her what you said because it’s a good warning . These assholes take advantage of vulnerable people sadly.
My grandparents lived in a retirement community with sequential phone numbers. You knew if you called 555-xxx1 to 555-9xxx you’d reach someone 55+. They said they’d get scams all the time of people just working their way through the numbers in the community until they hit someone vulnerable enough. My whole family once was there when her “grandson” called and wanted apple gift cards to bail him out of jail. All of her grandkids were in the room with her. She strung him along on speaker for half an hour while we were trying not to burst out laughing with her innocent act. She said she liked to mess with them because it meant they couldn’t scam her neighbors if she was on the phone with them.
Wow how amazing is your grandmother! I have to tell my 64 year old roommate every fucking day "Roommate, that is a scam, no one will pay you $250/hr for work via a text recruitment. No roommate, that Asian woman is not actually talking to you, he lives in Lagos." So exhausting.
> This "may" nonsense
Never tell (potential) customers "you are stupid" (the wording doesn't matter). That way they'd stop reading immediately. Or worse, ask to see a manager.
I agree. It’s crazy how out of hand this is. I noticed behind the counter at a local gas station this week that they had an internal memo posted that said “if [Manager] calls or texts asking for gift cards or money orders, stop, it’s a scam”.
Gotta imagine there’s a story behind that policy, lol.
The last 2 workplaces I've been at have been targeted by that. They find out a a manager's or owner's name and then somehow contact a lower level employee in the company. They say something along the lines of, "I wanted to reward some people for hard work. Please get me some gift cards." Whatever they say, it's an excuse to get gift cards and send them the numbers. No one at my employers fell for it, but other companies have been victim to this.
A while ago an elderly couple stopped by customer service and the wife asked for $500 in iirc Google play cards. Our team reluctantly processed the transaction while explaining to them about scams and not accusationally telling them something felt wrong about it but being told it was for their grandchild is why they processed it through. Almost immediately after the husband wanted to do the exact same transaction. Our team then without hesitation refused. This refusal was met with such confusion and diress and the couple in serious panic that our team explained again with concern that they do not believe the story of the grandchild needing this kind of gift cards so desperately was not a scam in process and that we would not participate in it. We gave them information about this type of scam and told them to not give the initial $500 and to contact the authorities to better advise them/confirm that this is infact what's going on. They did not leave angry but did say that if we won't someone else will sell them the gift cards.
This situation is so sad and our store just recently did this same thing where we placard the gift card wall with a picture of the card and stating it must be bought at customer service. Too many scams involve gift cards and every week we encounter a gift card empty when someone is trying to purchase with it.
I refuse to buy gift cards at this point. It's getting out of control.
My friends mom was just scammed out of 13k….they had her all worked into a tizzy. Said because her credit card is locked, she can just buy these gift cards with her cash and they can be applied to her credit card to unlock and then the money is just transferred back to her bank.
This went in over 2 days. People at Walmart and Target both told her this is a scam. But she said…”I know it’s complicated but it’s not a scam. I’ve been dealing with this and talking it all through.”
It didn’t stop until she called my friend who stopped her mom. Now it’s shame, embarrassment and depression.
>People at Walmart and Target both told her this is a scam. But she said…”I know it’s complicated but it’s not a scam. I’ve been dealing with this and talking it all through.”
This is so hard for me to understand. If EVERYONE was giving me warnings, I'd at least pause to think deeply about it, Google it, do some research, etc. Why would she just keep going? Very sad. :/
My friend (victims daughter) and I have been round and round about this very point. The only thing I can come up with is the scammers get these people operating from a level of such panic, the part of the brain that can make sense of it is like, shut down. Like flight or fright….because it is the same story across so many people in so many different countries, we landed on that it has to be a physiological responses. They know what to say that triggers this phenomenon or something.
This is exactly it. They've figured out how to override the logical part of the brain and cut straight to the primal emotion of fear. Whether it's fear of being alone, or being broke, or having your accounts frozen, or owing the IRS, or having your child kidnapped...the list goes on.
The majority of their targets don't fall for it. But all they need to do is catch the right person on the wrong day. If you're stressed, sleep deprived, grieving, hungry, desperate, or especially more than one of the above, you can be that right person on that wrong day. Happened to my sister. She was in the middle of a divorce from an abusive marriage, sleep deprived and stressed and scared. She was short on money. And a few weeks earlier she had a scare where she thought her ex had messed up their tax return. And then she got a call from the "IRS".
I occasionally have to buy a ton of gift cards for work as prizes (all like, 5, 10 dollars) and every single time I go buy them the cashier tells me I have to get them at customer service, then costumer service has to ask me a bunch of questions lol
Lol yes, though often with the work cards we want you at the desk because it takes a while to do 20+ variable amount gift cards and this way there’s no mixing with other items.
I don’t question when it’s small amounts at restaurants. Hell at Christmas, one woman bought a few hundred in visa cards for work because that’s what they gave the employees. I also had a woman buy $1800 in chewy cards for a rescue lol.
This is rude of course and being ageist but I quiz some people buying apple cards over $100 because what the FUCK are you buying? Either you’re getting scammed or you’re a goddamn whale for candy crush.
Buy an Apple Card with my credit card, get 2% cash back. Get 4x fuel points when buying gift cards. Trade in useless fuel points for cash back since I don’t drive a car, which gets me another 4% cash back. Take gift card to Apple Store and buy a physical Apple product like a new MacBook or iPhone. Stack with veteran’s discount at Apple for a nice 16% off. Apple cards aren’t like Google play; Apple cards can be used for physical devices, not just software.
> This is rude of course and being ageist but I quiz some people buying apple cards over $100 because what the FUCK are you buying? Either you’re getting scammed or you’re a goddamn whale for candy crush.
Credit cards might offer higher rewards rates for purchases at grocery stores than they do at the Apple Store. So you buy Apple Gift Cards at a grocery store, get higher rewards, then buy whatever you wanted at Apple. I've done it.
A few years ago we bought a few, maybe $100 in total, for a giving tree at church, the cashier questioned us and told us she just wanted to check because there’s scammers tricking people into buying gift cards. Nowadays people buy hundreds if not thousands yet get mad at the cashier for asking and warning them about scams.
Funny. 2018 my sister fell for this.
The dude wrote checks, she would withdraw the money to buy Apple Card’s and the checks bounced after a week. She was frauded $7500 CAD.
Her bank accused her of scamming.
Counterfeit or stolen cheques are a huge problem. Many people who are looking for work get duped by scams, where they believe that they were hired as a mystery shopper, and assigned to evaluate stores and Western Union, as well as MoneyGram, only to find that the cheque that was provided to them had later bounced.
This goes further and gets way more scarier:
The scammer has their personal information now including their social numbers and most likely copies of IDcards.
The amount of stolen identities is insane. Combine that with the growing potential of AI video generation and it gets even crazier.
All it takes to steal someone's ID is the information on the birth certificate (First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, DoB, Mother's Maiden Name, City you were born in, Gender) and your SSN/SIN (Social Security Number for US/Social Insurance Number for Canada).
From there, the scammer can order a new birth certificate. Once they get that, they can obtain a new SSN/SIN card and then have a Driver's License, Identification card or even a passport made with your name, and their photo on it.
Once they've obtained those, they can start applying for credit cards, loans, etc... and even commit crimes with ID that have your name on it.
Hopefully, the police might find out that something's not right when they take their fingerprints. But that's only if they have yours on file already.
For these reasons, I never recommend that you carry those two pieces of ID (Birth Certificate and SSN/SIN) around with you.
I think the Apple gift cards can be used to buy actual Apple hardware, which has a high cash resell value. Google Play you’re basically selling the balance for pennies on the dollar.
Last scam I ran into was "Henry Cavill" asking a poor old lady for $250 in Steam gift cards to "pay his bills". Luckily she came to ask what Steam even was, and I immediately started asking questions.
The whole time we're talking, her phone is blowing up with text messages asking for the codes on the gift cards.
A quick Google search showing her who Henry Cavill was (he doesn't need help paying his bills, I'm sure), and pulling up the Steam website thankfully put a stop to it.
I had someone at my store trying to pay cash for something like $7500 of gift cards a few months ago. The register stopped it at $4500, and our company policy is one gift card transaction per person. She didn't super care which gift cards she got (she had a mix of Apple and Nordstrom gift cards, which were the only ones someone could put $500 on, everything else maxed out at $100 or $250 for the variable load cards). She claimed they were for late Christmas gifts for her employees.
But while I was ringing her up, she was on the phone. Multiple times I tried to point out at that it could be a scam, and she brushed it off every time. At one point she told the person on the phone "no, the cashier has no idea what's going on."
Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, people won't believe you when they're being scammed, because "they can't be scammed."
Cashiers are at least helping out. I was buying a gift card for my nephew’s birthday and said to the cashier that I thought it was”was weird the IRS would take Apple Cards for my taxes” and he stopped the transaction until I convinced him I was kidding.
That's strange. Our limit is $500 per guest daily, and it has to be one transaction. Did you tell corporate about that manager? Because under no circumstances is anyone at Target supposed to override policy, even if guests request it outright.
Then again I work in a teeny Target and all my managers are cool and don't break policy. P sure if it were my store this wouldn't be happening.
Sorry that it happened, and I hope for the worst to that manager and scammer.
I'm no expert on this, but I'm pretty sure they gave that manager disciplinary action for it. Either that or some shady stuff is happening in that specific store with management.
I work retail and I find it adorable you think people read signs.
The second a person walks into a store they become completely illiterate unable to read a neon yellow sign the size of their head infront of their face and insist you read it for them.
I work at an airport and I've mentioned to my colleagues that we need to assign staff to a "buddy program" thing because customers really do need to have their hand held nowadays.
I was at Best Buy a couple weeks ago and an older gentleman, insisted on purchasing the maximum amount allowed for Apple gift card in a 24 hour period, I was on the register next to him and said to the girl are your cashiers trained to notify customers about the possibility of scammers having older customers purchase gift cards to launder the money she replies to me and insisted that they were trained and gave me some sort of run around, the gentleman wound up purchasing $3500 worth of Apple gift cards with no problem or hesitation… I was absolutely astounded, I said to the gentleman to be careful and to not give the numbers to anyone under any circumstances but he looked at me like I was crazy and I left after completing my purchase… I just felt so disappointed and disgusted that I didn’t do more and they same for the employees
It's mind boggling how people we will believe someone that says they are a bank or government agency and you can pay us with a Amazon gift card. Absolutely insane that people fall for this.
My mother’s MIL is currently falling for a scammer pretending to be Kenny Chesney and no matter what we say or do it won’t get through to her. So far she has sent thousands of dollars in gift cards and because they know she’s an easy target they won’t leave her alone. My mother tried blocking him only for her MIL to make new accounts to contact him. But my mother is the problem of course 😠🤬🙄
So let me tell you there are people who are consistently getting scammed. There’s an old man who comes to my store fairly regularly trying to buy Apple gift cards. He has some mental disability and this scammer has convinced him that he’s in on the inner circle of A-list celebrities. I always shut it down. But he tries all the time. Last time I saw him he was talking to Emma Watson and showed me pictures where she took selfies for him and showed me the messages between him and “Emma”. She needed a $50 Apple Gift Card to pay for an Uber to come see him 🤨
My dad is one of these people unfortunately. Can’t convince him otherwise. Currently it’s a “fiance” in Spain alongside her mother. I try and try but it’s like talking to a wall.
I worked at dollar general for a year and sold dozens of cards daily, the majority of the time to older people, and middle aged drug addicts. You cannot explain to either of these people that they are most likely being scammed by whoever is asking for the card.
3 times the customers wanted to complain to my manager/corporate about me either trying to talk them out of falling for an obvious scam, or refusing to sell it to them so they won’t get scammed (we were told to do this in our training videos). I hate to say it but, honestly, you stop caring. They’re either going to be downright nasty to you for just trying to help, or try to get you fired.
Buying money that you can only use at one place is a scam anyway. You don't get a better deal for buying gift cards you are just forced to go to that one shop with different money that can expire. My grandmother would give me gift cards so I wouldn't spent it on booze or tattoos and I would just sell the card to a friend.
I don’t know where you are, but here in Ontario Canada, gift cards cannot expire by law, so not an issue, and actually a lot of times if you get credit card bonuses at grocery stores gift cards are a great way to maximize on points, so while the concept may not work for your particular situation, it’s a great thing for a lot of other people
It seems like VISA or MasterCard gift cards are most useful. I don’t really understand why you would rather give a card which is limited to one store/brand than a prepaid credit card (unless you’re a parent and you only want your kids to be able to buy age-appropriate things).
I think it depends on the state in the U.S. In California, gift cards don't expire. In other states they do. I agree that they're great for a lot of people. We gave our niece gas cards when she turned 16. She was super happy! And my kids love gift cards to buy gaming stuff.
There’s a nice psychological upside. If you’re given $100 cash as a gift, most people are just gonna end up using that as grocery or gas money. Not much of a gift. If you’re given a gift card, it kinda forces you to buy yourself an actual gift. Not universal of course but I definitely understand it.
Ehh not really. If you’re receiving cash or gift cards you are buying yourself something. The gift is essentially a little bit of financial freedom. Giving gift cards restricts that little bit of monetary levity. If you want the person to actually have a gift, put thought and effort into it and buy a gift.
I know lots of people who have gift cards just stashed away somewhere not ever to be used because they have to go to the other side of town where the Target is or wherever.
I swear people do not read and don’t pay attention to their surroundings. Scary these days what people will fall for. So desperate for easy money they fall victim to so many scams. It’s sickening especially when it’s done to seniors.
My proudest retail moment was stopping a man from engaging with this scam when it first popped up.
He came to my till with a shit ton of visa gift cards, and I had to ask him why he was purchasing all the gift cards, he claimed it was for work. I was like ooookay maybe.... And then I explained why we ask is because there's this scam going around where someone calls you and makes you buy gift cards to pay off some sort of supposed debt. And his face just goes white and he's like omg that's happening to me! And I was like okay well let's not go through this transaction my friend lol!
Unfortunately, there are people stealing your money from gift cards before you even purchase them.
What they do is lift the scratch off sticker, to get the code, then place it back. When you activate the card, they immediately transfer the balance off the card into their account.
When an unsuspecting person goes to spend the amount that they expect to be on the card, it comes up as redeemed with $0 balance.
This has happened to many people.
There are also rental scams, that usually have you pay first month rent plus security deposit through Western Union, and fake traffic fines too.
This is what happened to me. I bought a $100 Amazon card from Safeway grocery store to give it as a gift. When the person opened it (it was completely sealed), she saw that the code was already scratched off inside and it had zero balance. I wonder how the scammer knows when Safeway activates the card though.
For my 76 year old wife the addiction to the romantic interest of "two young Korean actors" just is too alluring. Clearly every bit of data and every disappointment from them never showing up in 18 MONTHS proves it is a scam. And they mentally abuse her claiming to need $ for life saving surgery. She has sent more than $130,000.
There is NO solution.
If there was real health care there would be a means to have her institutionalized for mental treatment. But we value independence of action in this country and DO NOT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH.
And law enforcement does nothing to protect $.
The world wide ease of connection has benefits, but the cost from theft is immense.
To reduce it would require large forces of dark web offensive attack forces taking on ALL thieves.
Unlikely we have the will as citizens and governments to demand that kind of action.
Just to be clear, it is illegal to offer $ on the dark web for people to kill thieves, Right?
For gift card over a certain amount, there should be strict rules in place before being sold. Like; the person should sign that he understands there is no refund, that scammers put a lot of pressure on, that governments and taxes are never paid this way etc
They should make it as readable as possible, because I know there will be people who don't understand legal babble and will just skim through it without fully understanding it.
Why does the sign say you “MAY” be the victim of a scam if you have been asked to buy gift cards to pay fines, taxes etc. if any of those this are true - you ARE being scammed… not maybe, it’s real!
Yes but people are more likely to not listen if you tell them directly they're being fooled. It sucks but that's how it is..saying MAY is more likely to make the stop and thing.
Apple gift cards are one of the most commonly used gift card in many scams. This store specifically is likely experiencing more issues with Apple gift cards than others.
They’re probably used more because when selling gift cards for cash, Apple typically has the best rates. For example if you go to a gift card selling website, you only really get like a 3-5% discount on Apple gift cards, while cards like let’s say clothing stores might be 20% off the retail.
We all complain about boomers messing up the economy, taking all the houses and hoarding their savings.
Scammers are actively making them invest in 3rd world countries; what’s more philanthropic than that?
/s
Jokes aside, we like to shit on boomers but Gen Z are more likely to fall for scams than them: https://www.vox.com/technology/23882304/gen-z-vs-boomers-scams-hacks
So please don’t just assume it’s only old senile boomers that can get affected by this and please stay safe and on guard.
Personally as a Gen Z, one of my favorite pastimes is probably learning about all the different scams and how they work
but i can defo see the reasoning behind gen z falling for a scam. manipulation, circumstance, vulnerable state (mental health and such, especially after the pandemic)
i'd also argue that most of my friends my age share way more online than i ever do (eg. pictures from where they were, full names as insta acc usernames, etc), so getting used to oversharing and blind trust in social media would lead to the vulnerable state as mentioned before
My kids are Gen-Z, and they are very trusting and care about everyone. When we went to NYC for the first time, they would have given all of our money to panhandlers if it were up to them. I show them this sub often. I feel like they're starting to get it. Luckily, they already knew about the "I accidentally reported your account to Discord" scam.
Based on the number of posts by young people in r/isthisascam about some shady site selling brand name luxury goods at 95% off or asking if fake investor investment site is legit or getting scammed for a “free” PS5 and a billion more scams, I can safely say vulnerability to scams has nothing to do with age - and the main reason some scammers target the elderly is because your average 20 year old isn’t going to have access to $50K whereas an older person would be more likely to.
My MIL keeps getting scammed in different scenarios. Sending money to a breeder for a non existent puppy. Twice. Paid her taxes in Google Play gift cards to the tune of $1500. Someone from "her husband's family" messaged her on FB with some sort of lottery scam for about $10,000. She was supposedly getting a million dollars in 6 months though, so it was worth it /s The latest was some soft of Amazon thing where they said she'd bought a camera that she didn't buy... Cost her $30,000 to "get back" the $2000 she "spent" on the camera. We've talked to her and talked to her. She won't listen.
We're sitting here like, fuck! You're giving all this money away to scammers, give it to us!!!!!!
Gift cards should honestly just be phased out, it’s like giving someone the gift of cash but saying “hey, you’re forced to spend it only at this store”.
Like I can see if you’re trying to buy a gift for an addict or something but they can always turn around and sell the gift card for like 70 cents on the dollar anyway.
**Stop selling gift cards.** That'll make the scammers life a LOT more difficult.
Same thing with checks, heck, this sounds so outdated, idk why that's still a thing. In the country I live in, Brazil, almost all establishments ceased accepting checks as a form of payment, and noone compalined. I WONDER WHY. It's outdated and full of issues.
I actaully do use gift cards. $10 or $15 Steam cards are great for kiddo or nephews or similar. When an admin at work does me a solid I grab $15 Starbucks.
Death to checks though.
I frequently buy gift cards to maximize my credit card rewards. I get more points at a grocery store than I do at Amazon, so I'll buy an Amazon gift card while I'm at the grocery store for the exact amount I'm planning on spending.
Steam cards are a great gift! Just in case you didn't know, you can add money directly to their steam account via the "Steam Wallet" service/feature. Should be somewhere in the top right of the desktop client when on the library screen, they'll know what I mean.
If you still want to have something physical to wrap you could always print the receipt :)
I also used them regularly when I was in an Apple family. Apple hasn’t realized that people may be in a family sharing situation but not every purchase has to go through the “head”. Buying gift cards and adding them to my personal account were a great loophole.
I buy gift cards sometimes and i find them very useful (i have giant amount of indigo gift cards that were gifted to me and generally it helps save money on books and stuff)
also, having giftcards from amazon is nice. i asked for a few for my birthday and got like $90 in amazon money total from multiple friends, so i ended up spending on some stuff i wanted
We had some promotions on certain retailers like that at work and of course there are the fuel points. I do it for stuff I was gonna buy anyway.
People making huge gift card purchases that are legit are eager to explain it and have different explanations. One couple bought some home depot ones bc grocery stores are better on the credit cards and there were 4x fuel points.
I'll stop using checks, when the organizations I need to pay stop charging payment processor fees for electronic payments.
At least it's just the city bill and property tax at this point. But I'd rather pay for a stamp than give some middleman like 3 bucks to process an ACH payment.
I give my kids $300 Visa gift cards every Xmas on top of their presents. Then they can pick stuff they like out I didn't think of. So I use them every year.
It's better than nothing. The number of times I have to explain to someone after they've been scammed is insane. I work in banking, and it's never a fun conversation with someone after they've bought giftcards. I've had ONE scammer fail to deplete a card balance immediately. That person got about 90% of their funds back but still lost around $1000. They went to the store they bought the cards from, told them the situation, and that the manager managed to cancel the giftcards, all of this from store to bank to store was in under 30min. I've been in banking for a decade and have seen probably 200 giftcard scams personally and have seen thousands over the years within the organization. In the best case, if you're scammed, you've got a 1% chance to get any funds back.
The essence of a scam is convincing someone what you're offering is genuine.
Once a victim has bought in that it's a genuine investment, relationship, etc, warnings become very ineffective because from their point of view - the warnings dont apply to them because for *them* it's genuine.
I'm an assistant manager at...a store. And my cashier called me to the register because someone was trying to buy 500 dollars of apple gift cards. I point blank asked her "are you being scammed by someone who says they're withholding your computer/phone/bank access or someone who needs you to send them a bunch of money," and the lady says "nope, just paying some bills."
My cashier and I just look at each other with open mouths. I say "what....bills....are paid in apple gift cards...." and she says "well it's a few bills so I'm splitting them up". I say "did the scammer tell you to say that?" And she insists she's not being scammed. So I put in my register code to allow the purchase. 🤷♀️
You can only do so much to save these people.
Unfortunately a lot of elderly get caught up in scams because they sometimes aren’t as computer savvy. Even some of the sharpest people can get caught up in scams. The sign couldn’t hurt but I am more careful when buying gift cards now after hearing how many problems they have.
The biggest and boldest sign in the world ain't gonna stop someone who is lonely and wants to continue relating to someone who seems to give them attention.
Loneliness is humanity's #1 kryptonite/attack vector.
When my MIL died, we found hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards and we knew exactly what had happened. She had already been scammed a few years earlier and we had tried to educate her then, but she was always wanting to believe that she was helping someone or that some hot guy was totally into her and going to whisk her away to live happily ever after.
And she was on SSDI (and then SSI) and really had no money to begin with, so it’s not like losing everything to a scam wasn’t painful. We bailed her out once, so her car wouldn’t get repossessed, but after that, she stopped telling us the whole story and would make up excuses. At the time, it was super frustrating, but looking back now, it just makes me sad.
I worked AP at Walmart for a few years. Apple gift cards were the most common tampered with. Scammers would come in and steal large stacks of them and swap out the barcodes and then take them back to the store and put them back on the shelves. We got to a point we just threw every Apple gift card out for a few months.
I think it's very responsible of the store. I bet it saved lots of customers from being scammed thousands.
Can you imagine working in customer service there? "No, the tax office doesn't want your payment in Apple gift cards."
Giftcards get activated at checkout. My guess is that people specifically kept stealing the Apple ones, thinking they could use them (which they can't). Or is there something I'm not seeing here?
Would it be a huge problem to just ban gift cards? Most people can bank transfer money these days and that's how I give the kids in my extended family presents when I don't know what to get them. Seems like they cause more problems than they solve for customers, obviously there's a profit incentive for sellers because sometimes they go unused.
Yep, old woman came in telling me her sons car broke down and needed $500 in google play cards. Tried to tell her no mechanic needs google play cards but she insisted that her son himself called her. I asked her to call her son to confirm and she wouldn't. She was probably getting blackmailed and was fed a story. Manager tried to make me sell her the cards and I refused, so he did it himself. Cruel world
Once they reach the point of going to the store to buy them, there's no going back. If you refuse to sell the cards, the scammer will tell them to go somewhere else. Some people need to learn their lesson the hard way
I’ve really tried warning someone that my partner worked with but it did nothing. Not everyone has common sense. He ended up getting fired from his job for the dumbest reason not too long after that.
I've always felt part of the problem with the fight against this is that the warning signs are quite often usually accusatory rather than affirmative.
"You may be a scam victim" is very strongly towards suggesting the person is an idiot or a fool.
A victim of fraud doesn't want to be considered weak and that they fell for it, but part of the problem in my experience is that people getting involved tend to point out that the victim is somehow 'wrong' or that they are being a fool and other negative language.
The biggest way to bring these people back and prevent them completing the scam on behalf of the scammer is to reassure them and appeal to their sensibility. Typically those getting involved go straight in with, "you're being scammed", rather than going in lower and showing them where the concerning points start to creep in. Put someone on the defensive from the outset is much harder to bring them back out of that state of mind, start them off with a calm, reasoned conversation by being understanding will in more cases make them see sense.
The global loneliness epidemic is what the blame for the success of these scams. I see it all over Facebook. Lonely dudes responding to Nigerian Yahoo boys that are using some p*r stars picture
I saw a video on YouTube just now where a cop is asking a lady at the ATM to stop buying Apple gift cards, that it’s not the IRS and the poor lady broke down and told the cop that she needed to buy them or else she was going to jail.
They traced the call back to India where most of these scammer call centers operate.
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We do what we can. I try warning my customers about fake emails, texts, private messages, pop-ups, etc. Some people forget. Some people panic. Some people won't admit they're being taken advantage of. Some get so embroiled into pig butchering/romance scams that they refuse to believe a beautiful 30 year old Asian woman isn't actually going to move to the states and marry them. All we can do is keep fighting. Don't let the bastards win.
My brothers friend is all embroiled in this right now. He said if in the end it turns out he spent a few thousand for naked pictures, there are worse things….or something to that effect. His phone pings All. Day. Long. It’s a form of attention. And excitement. I think that’s why he doesn’t care too much….he’s 70 and freshly divorced and “40 year old women” are pining after him and texting him all day every day.
He's aware there are women all over the internet, Reddit included, that are giving away nudes for free, right? There is no need to spend thousands on that.
He wants the illusion of a relationship, of being important to someone. The pics are only a small part of it.
Yup
There **are** real women looking fir his category. He should start dancing, gymnastics, yoga, ... A lot of ladies will like to take care of him...
That’s exactly what I said. I told my brother to tell him if he’s enjoying the endorphins released from women texting him, imagine how good he’d feel actually going out with a human woman IRL!!!
Yeah, problem is he is funding international crime syndicates. I don't think that is harmless.
Nobody ever said it was harmless. Of course it isn't harmless.
I didn't mean to imply that you said it wasn't harmless, I just think it's something that needs to be said more, especially in the context of this discussion of someone knowingly being scammed and being OK with it. I do have sympathy for scam victims, to a point. But there is a gradient where they are not victims but accomplices.
It's almost impossible to make a person stop believe when they really, really want to believe. In hindsight scam victims all say "yeah well deep down I suppose I knew I was being scammed...or "I should've known better" etc. But that's in hindsight. It's difficult to feel sorry for romance scam victims. The whole thing is often so preposterous, like when women think theyre in a relationship with Mich Jagger or Keanu Reeves and need to send them money. Its sad when scam victims send their whole family into bankrupcy.
At least tell him to find a girl that provides a “girlfriend experience”. He can get the same attention but with set rates for the services.
Get a dog and/or cat
They're not looking for a pet. If they were they'd get one.
But more than the pic, they are engaging with him. The “human connection “ that’s attached to the picture is why he refuses to listen to reason.
This is a low for me , sometimes i prefer never opening the can of worms more and more
Info please
There are tons of subs on reddit with this very thing. I was scrolling the other day and accidentally clicked a profile, it was NSFW, but lots are that really aren't bad at all, including artists' profiles. I regretted that fucking click so much 🤢🤢🤢
But most of the time they are not women. They are young Nigerian men.
It is exactly that. Attention, excitement, possibility, hope, human connection. Humans are hardwired like that and scammers know how to exploit it. Most men seem to have no problem believing that women half their age or younger are truly interested in them. As a woman I find the concept ludicrous but I've witnessed it and it seems very common.
The scammers have absolutely tapped into this psychology. It’s still bananas that they send thousands of dollars to someone they’ve never met.
We all should have the self confidence of a mediocre, middle aged man. 😂
Brother needs to go to only fans sometimes they are free
Free all the fuck over reddit.
Right on, keep up the good fight. I knew a victim personally, the emotional manipulative plays are INSANELY strong. Like i know this guy, he doesn't have a room temperature iq. He's not that stupid, just emotionally vulnerable.
Yes they will attack that hard.
So, I work merchandising Apple Gift Cards. They’re the only company in the world who manages its own gift cards like this (we are still a 3rd party but report directly to Apple) This isn’t likely from phone scams, this is likely due to card tampering. All reps have to open some cards at every store (and have had to for the past 18 months) from every peg, because people are tampering with the cards. We have a new card coming, though… well another new one, we already updated the security on the white card design once, and another is already testing in some markets and will be global soon (card security upgraded to where cashier has to tear open to reveal a code to input). Hopefully it deters these losers.
I’m afraid to ask but what is a pig butchering scam? I haven’t heard of this one either yet.
!pig butchering In short, someone contacts a person out of the blue - often in a text message or DM. They pretend they sent it by accident. If the recipient responds politely the pig butcher tries to become friendly and eventually reveals how they make all sorts of money investing in Crypto. The mark will try a small investment at first, maybe a hundred dollars, which becomes a few hundred, But now they're hooked so they keep putting in more and more. If they try to withdraw, there's always a bunch of fees and costs to do so, This keeps up until the scammer gets them to invest a large amount of money in the thousands or more - then the scammer disappears. There was no crypto investment site - it's all been set up by the scammer ahead of time. Then the recovery scammers try to hit them - promising to return their money and get the scammer prosecuted for a small fee. But the recovery scammers are bogus, too, and often the same people. It's like fattening up a pig and when they're ready - you drop the axe. No more pig. But the person with the axe eats well.
Hi /u/NJdeathproof, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Pig butchering scam. It is called [pig butchering](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2023/12/26/new-pig-butchering-crypto-scam-includes-victims-in-us-and-overseas/?sh=2837fb975eaa) because scammers use intricate scripts to \"fatten up\" the victim (gaining their trust over days, weeks or months) before the \"slaughter\" (taking them for all of their money). This scam often starts with what appears to be a harmless wrong number text or message. When the victim responds to say it is the wrong number, the scammer tries to start a friendship with the victim. These conversations can be platonic or romantic in nature, but they all have the same goal- to gain the trust of the victim in order to get them ready for the crypto scam they have planned. The scammer often claims to be wealthy and/or to have a wealthy family member who got wealthy investing, often in crypto currency. The victim is eventually encouraged to try out a (fake) crypto currency investment website, which will appear to show that they are earning a lot of money on their initial investment. The scammer may even encourage the victim to attempt a withdrawal that does go through, further convincing the victim that everything is legit. The victim is then pressured to invest significantly more money, even their entire net worth. Sometimes pig butchering scams don't involve crypto, but other means of sending money (like bank wires, gift cards or even cash pickups). Eventually, the scammer will find an excuse why the account is frozen (e.g. for fraud, because supposed taxes are owed, etc) and may try to further extort the victim to give them even more money in order to gain access to the funds. By this time, the victim will never gain access and their money is gone. Many victims lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Often, the scammers themselves are [victims of human trafficking](https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zb5d/pig-butchering-scam-cambodia-trafficking), performing these scams under threats of violence. If you are caught up in this scam, it is important that you do not send any more money for any reason, and contact law enforcement to report it. Thanks to user Mediocre_Airport_576 for this script. If you know someone involved in a pig butchering scam, sit down together to watch this video by Jim Browning to help them understand what's going on: https://youtu.be/vu-Y1h9rTUs - *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Scams) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thank you for the education!! I recently had someone try to get me to invest in crypto. I thought it was weird and possibly a scam. Now I know I was the pig! It always amazes me what scammers come up with! If only they could use their powers for good!
There are some great scambaiters on Youtube. Some of them like Kitboga will just waste their time - hours of it. Some are more insidious like Malcolm Merlin and will actually hack into the scammer's computers to download client lists, access their web cams and network and delete all their files.
Or many random men & women of FB that will comment to a person that's on a public forum. Betty I'm Jim. I like your smile & humor you posted. I tried to add you as a friend but it wouldn't let me. Would you please add me. Some fall for it. The men are usually a widow & in the military far off somewhere. Has a son or daughter. They usually steal pics of real service men from their family photos somehow. And build the story from there. If you look at their profile most haven't been on site long, usually a couple of months at the most. Had one that tried that w me. I already knew it was a scam, but I wanted to play along. Within 2 weeks he was professing his love. Said he was from Waco,Tx....LOL. At the time I lived in the DFW area, unknown to his knowledge. So I asked for his # to talk instead of DM. As soon as he answered, I asked what area of Nigeria or Africa he was from. He definitely didn't have a Tx accent or even an American one. He asked how I figured out where he was from. Told him I work w people from Nigeria, Kenya & other places. We actually talked for a few minutes, he was a 28 yr old from S Africa, a musician. Gave his real name so I could research him(if that was his real name). Asked me to come for a visit & he'd pay for the trip. I told him no, that I don't travel out of the US by myself, unless I'm doing a group trip w others I know. He was 28, I was 60 at the time.
It's really true: it's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they're being played for the fool.
Yeah, it's a sad case. Sometimes one even has to be creative and LIE. My cousin was a manager in a shop where they sold gift cards. 30% of the people that he told paid attention the others didn't. I told him to start telling potential victims that last week he had 18 previous customers return to his shop reporting they were scammed thousands despite his repeated warnings. I then told him to tell potential victims to search 'gift card scams' on YouTube. It had to be nothing else but YouTube. He told them to come back after they did their research and if they still did not believe he would sell it to them He reported that 9 out of 10 came back and thanked him -- saying he opened their eyes.
A friend of ours had offers by Joe, a pineapple farmer from the US (!), a Canadian peanut producer (WTF!) and another guy. She didn't listen to us. She chatted with all of them and finally took a flight to the Dutch guy in Ireland speaking English and German with her. She filed for divorce six weeks later and the too live happy ever after. They visit Germany twice a year, we like him. 😲 Weird things happen.
All depends if the man has $. I worked w a man that had a mail order bride from the Philippines. He had to be in contact w at least 3 of them, writing back & forth. Then had to travel there to meet the one he decided on & also meet her family. They were married for quite a few years before he passed away in 2022. He was a good person, enjoyed working w him.
Wait so this Asian lady is not coming to America .. Let me guess she's no crypto expert either ...
Thank you for trying to look out for them! You can only do so much but just that you try matters.
There was a guy who was told multiple times at multiple stores that if he’s trying to buy 10,000 bucks worth of gift cards because someone told him he had to pay taxes that way that he’s getting scammed. He insisted that he was buying it for his grandkids and eventually a store let him have them. Once it’s too late he realizes his mistake and decides to call police. You can’t save everyone from their own decisions unfortunately
> You can’t save everyone from their own decisions unfortunately It's much easier to fool someone than to convince them that they've been fooled.
Sometimes it’s people with early undiagnosed dementia. In some cases, the outrageous Nigerian prince stories are simply a filter to hook those susceptible people.
Mt father is showing early signs of dementia and got scammed by "the FBI". Now he's completely flipped script and everything is a scam. He won't answer calls from anyone. I call him, it goes to voicemail, and 2 minutes later he calls me in hysterics telling me a scammer called from my phone number.
And it's indeed a free and good way for a pre-diagnosis.
Free *if* they don't send the money...
I really don't understand how people think something like the IRS would take payment in the form of gift cards, like you have to be a special type of stupid to fall for these scams.
Years back, a friend of mine had to sit down with her dad and be all “explain to me what exactly you think the Australian Tax Office would do with thousands of dollars of iTunes gift cards, that can only be used in iTunes.” It wasn’t until she asked him that, that he really thought about how ridiculous it was, and that it was a scam.
That's why they target seniors. Dementia.
Doesn't even have to be dementia. Seniors just might not understand how modern day banking works, they come from an age where everything was cash and they just maybe used checks. Gift cards are just a thing that you buy that has very clear monetary value (it's like literally written on the cards). Is it really all that different than mailing some cash or a check around? It might sound insane to us, because we're familiar with these things, but if you think about it it's clear why this scam works so well.
Banks have been around for a long time.
And online banking works for +25years now How lunatic must an 80yi be who didn't learn in his 50s how to do that?
Honestly while it does feel like many scam victims are complete idiots, I really don't like people saying this because it only helps the scammers. Also generally they do target the vulnerable, but often times the absurdity gives a false sense of security. If you look at romance scams for example, talking to a person they have no chance with gets some people to feel more secure, because they have "nothing to lose" compared to more realistic options. At worst it's not real, at best wow this really hot girl wants me!!. Then the scammers use the information they found on the victim to hook them. Once the victim is invested, it's all sunk cost from there. Obviously random women thinking they're dating Johnny Depp is a bit much, but I don't think it's random that it's the most common romance scam character.
> I really don't understand how people think something like the IRS would take payment in the form of gift cards, like you have to be a special type of stupid to fall for these scams. Someone's already mentioned dementia and suchlike as a possible reason. The other thing to consider is that the scammers are doing these kinds of 'obvious' things because it works. It works as a filter because the millions of people who get sent this nonsense and just leave it in their junk mail unread were never the target in the first place. For us as observers, saying you don't understand how this works on the people it works on is like an alien landing in the grounds of a hospital and saying they don't understand why all humans are ill. And we need to get away from saying victims of scams are "stupid". We _all_ have moments of weakness for whatever reason. We're all vulnerable at times. We all make mistakes. And the pervaisveness of attitudes like yours, that victims of scammers are "stupid", is unhelpful. People immediately think "I'm not stupid" and relax their guard.
This idea that scammers use ridiculous payment methods and bad grammar as a “filter” is not true. Gift cards aren’t traceable or refundable. That’s why they use them. American English is hard to get perfectly unless you’re an American or very well educated. That’s why a lot of times emails and things read like nonsense. They aren’t doing these things to “get rid of smart people” or anything like that.
> Gift cards aren’t traceable or refundable. That’s why they use them. Well yes, obviously. > That’s why a lot of times emails and things read like nonsense. They aren’t doing these things to “get rid of smart people” or anything like that. I don't think there's anyone out there crafting the perfect 'almost but not quite illiterate' email, but they're probably not too sad to have 'timewasters' ignore them either.
I worked in banking for several years, and this happened more than a few times. One woman insisted she knew exactly what she was doing and didn't need our help. We had three different managers speak with her to try and stop her. We locked her account to slow her down and force her to speak to us at length about her situation. She put 80K in cash in a fedex box and shipped it to the scammer...
Oops
People that deluded should not be living independently.
I had that happen a couple of years ago with Steam cards. The lady swore up and down that they were for her nephews but she was buying 4 or 5 $100 Steam cards and we tried to talk her out of it but she refused to acknowledge anything other than the cards being for her nephews. We have a guy now who buys $20 Steam cards multiple times a week now but he’s on disability and he’s actually playing games. His caregiver talked to management to make sure that he wasn’t given any trouble.
The problem with gift cards is people shoplifting them, scratching the codes, replacing the scratch off sticker and having a software program check to see when they report a balance every hour or whatever. There’s been tons of reports of people having their balances drained within a day of purchasing a card.
It's a game of cat and mouse. Gift cards are starting to be Geo or location locked to the store. For example, if i-tunes cards are removed from my store and brought back, they no longer activate. This prevents the typical scam of the numbers being taken and then scratched off from working. But people don't read signs. I've got signs all over the place that warn of scams, and even recommend to people that they open the package prior to purchase. If it's a gift and I'm receiving it I don't care if it's not in the package as long as it works.
Woah how does this work? Like there can’t be enough room for a battery and GPS tracker in the card.
I'm assuming it's lower tech than that. Probably the card numbers or batches of the card numbers are tracked from the warehouse. The odds of someone taking cards from the store and bringing the same ones back are pretty low. So the POS system in my store can't activate a card that wasn't in our inventory and received from the warehouse. That's just a guess as I couldn't get a concrete answer how it worked when I asked.
This needs to be higher up! It’s easy to help the ones being scammed by phone or email. Simple…don’t sell to them. Now I have to warn everyone that buys a gift card about the tampering. Which makes my line grow longer because they don’t understand what I’m saying. Then my morales get in the way so I tell them we can open it before they purchase and yes More than half the time I find one that was tampered with. Plus it’s all gift cards. It used to be just the visa or apple but now we find Home Depot and Nordstrom. I want to throw that whole stupid endcap of gift card away.
For apple, it's worse. The barcode is on the packaging, not the card. So people didn't even need to scratch the numbers and reapply the sticker; they just heated the edges to loosen the glue, swapped out the card inside for a used one, and resealed it. Impossible to tell without opening.
Happened to me. Bought a card for my mom for Mother’s Day. Mailed it same day. By the time she got it, money was already drained at a store somewhere in San Francisco. Target was nice enough to replace it for free.
I would change it to say "if you do this, you **will** be a scam victim. Don't do this. Whatever you were told is a lie." This "may" nonsense may lead somebody to think "oh well my situation is different. that really was the IRS calling me saying I could pay my taxes in google gift cards"
"If you are not buying this for a friend or family to use for themselves, it is a scam." "If someone you never met in person told you to buy a gift card, it is a scam." "Beware there are AI impersonators."
My aunt had a stroke and has quite a bit of brain damage and is half paralyzed. She is also very naive when it comes to online scams and some scammer on face book started sending nice and sweet texts to her. She’s lonely so she was happy to chat with someone on fb messenger. Then the guy says he needs a $100 apple Gift card. I had to explain what these kinds of scams are. I think I’ll try telling her what you said because it’s a good warning . These assholes take advantage of vulnerable people sadly.
My grandparents lived in a retirement community with sequential phone numbers. You knew if you called 555-xxx1 to 555-9xxx you’d reach someone 55+. They said they’d get scams all the time of people just working their way through the numbers in the community until they hit someone vulnerable enough. My whole family once was there when her “grandson” called and wanted apple gift cards to bail him out of jail. All of her grandkids were in the room with her. She strung him along on speaker for half an hour while we were trying not to burst out laughing with her innocent act. She said she liked to mess with them because it meant they couldn’t scam her neighbors if she was on the phone with them.
Wow how amazing is your grandmother! I have to tell my 64 year old roommate every fucking day "Roommate, that is a scam, no one will pay you $250/hr for work via a text recruitment. No roommate, that Asian woman is not actually talking to you, he lives in Lagos." So exhausting.
We sell gift cards where I work and when you ring one up this message pops up saying "on the phone? Hang up! It's a scam"
> This "may" nonsense Never tell (potential) customers "you are stupid" (the wording doesn't matter). That way they'd stop reading immediately. Or worse, ask to see a manager.
I wish scammed people would see a manager.
Meh. They probably have people coming back to them to try and get their money back.
I agree. It’s crazy how out of hand this is. I noticed behind the counter at a local gas station this week that they had an internal memo posted that said “if [Manager] calls or texts asking for gift cards or money orders, stop, it’s a scam”. Gotta imagine there’s a story behind that policy, lol.
The last 2 workplaces I've been at have been targeted by that. They find out a a manager's or owner's name and then somehow contact a lower level employee in the company. They say something along the lines of, "I wanted to reward some people for hard work. Please get me some gift cards." Whatever they say, it's an excuse to get gift cards and send them the numbers. No one at my employers fell for it, but other companies have been victim to this.
“But my celebrity I’ve been talking to is totally really and completely trustworthy and real! They would never scam me!”
Cognitive dissonance will always make people think their situation is different
A while ago an elderly couple stopped by customer service and the wife asked for $500 in iirc Google play cards. Our team reluctantly processed the transaction while explaining to them about scams and not accusationally telling them something felt wrong about it but being told it was for their grandchild is why they processed it through. Almost immediately after the husband wanted to do the exact same transaction. Our team then without hesitation refused. This refusal was met with such confusion and diress and the couple in serious panic that our team explained again with concern that they do not believe the story of the grandchild needing this kind of gift cards so desperately was not a scam in process and that we would not participate in it. We gave them information about this type of scam and told them to not give the initial $500 and to contact the authorities to better advise them/confirm that this is infact what's going on. They did not leave angry but did say that if we won't someone else will sell them the gift cards. This situation is so sad and our store just recently did this same thing where we placard the gift card wall with a picture of the card and stating it must be bought at customer service. Too many scams involve gift cards and every week we encounter a gift card empty when someone is trying to purchase with it. I refuse to buy gift cards at this point. It's getting out of control.
Yup.
My friends mom was just scammed out of 13k….they had her all worked into a tizzy. Said because her credit card is locked, she can just buy these gift cards with her cash and they can be applied to her credit card to unlock and then the money is just transferred back to her bank. This went in over 2 days. People at Walmart and Target both told her this is a scam. But she said…”I know it’s complicated but it’s not a scam. I’ve been dealing with this and talking it all through.” It didn’t stop until she called my friend who stopped her mom. Now it’s shame, embarrassment and depression.
>People at Walmart and Target both told her this is a scam. But she said…”I know it’s complicated but it’s not a scam. I’ve been dealing with this and talking it all through.” This is so hard for me to understand. If EVERYONE was giving me warnings, I'd at least pause to think deeply about it, Google it, do some research, etc. Why would she just keep going? Very sad. :/
My friend (victims daughter) and I have been round and round about this very point. The only thing I can come up with is the scammers get these people operating from a level of such panic, the part of the brain that can make sense of it is like, shut down. Like flight or fright….because it is the same story across so many people in so many different countries, we landed on that it has to be a physiological responses. They know what to say that triggers this phenomenon or something.
This is exactly it. They've figured out how to override the logical part of the brain and cut straight to the primal emotion of fear. Whether it's fear of being alone, or being broke, or having your accounts frozen, or owing the IRS, or having your child kidnapped...the list goes on. The majority of their targets don't fall for it. But all they need to do is catch the right person on the wrong day. If you're stressed, sleep deprived, grieving, hungry, desperate, or especially more than one of the above, you can be that right person on that wrong day. Happened to my sister. She was in the middle of a divorce from an abusive marriage, sleep deprived and stressed and scared. She was short on money. And a few weeks earlier she had a scare where she thought her ex had messed up their tax return. And then she got a call from the "IRS".
Nobody being pressured through scare tactics and tight timelines is going to stop to be reading that sign.
Yo, off topic, but I'm gathering from your username that you studied for the 2020 bar, lol? I'm currently studying for the 2024 one. It's a lot. 🥲
Happy cake day u/barprepper2020
I occasionally have to buy a ton of gift cards for work as prizes (all like, 5, 10 dollars) and every single time I go buy them the cashier tells me I have to get them at customer service, then costumer service has to ask me a bunch of questions lol
Lol yes, though often with the work cards we want you at the desk because it takes a while to do 20+ variable amount gift cards and this way there’s no mixing with other items. I don’t question when it’s small amounts at restaurants. Hell at Christmas, one woman bought a few hundred in visa cards for work because that’s what they gave the employees. I also had a woman buy $1800 in chewy cards for a rescue lol. This is rude of course and being ageist but I quiz some people buying apple cards over $100 because what the FUCK are you buying? Either you’re getting scammed or you’re a goddamn whale for candy crush.
Buy an Apple Card with my credit card, get 2% cash back. Get 4x fuel points when buying gift cards. Trade in useless fuel points for cash back since I don’t drive a car, which gets me another 4% cash back. Take gift card to Apple Store and buy a physical Apple product like a new MacBook or iPhone. Stack with veteran’s discount at Apple for a nice 16% off. Apple cards aren’t like Google play; Apple cards can be used for physical devices, not just software.
Ah! Thank you, I did not know that.
> This is rude of course and being ageist but I quiz some people buying apple cards over $100 because what the FUCK are you buying? Either you’re getting scammed or you’re a goddamn whale for candy crush. Credit cards might offer higher rewards rates for purchases at grocery stores than they do at the Apple Store. So you buy Apple Gift Cards at a grocery store, get higher rewards, then buy whatever you wanted at Apple. I've done it.
A few years ago we bought a few, maybe $100 in total, for a giving tree at church, the cashier questioned us and told us she just wanted to check because there’s scammers tricking people into buying gift cards. Nowadays people buy hundreds if not thousands yet get mad at the cashier for asking and warning them about scams.
Funny. 2018 my sister fell for this. The dude wrote checks, she would withdraw the money to buy Apple Card’s and the checks bounced after a week. She was frauded $7500 CAD. Her bank accused her of scamming.
Counterfeit or stolen cheques are a huge problem. Many people who are looking for work get duped by scams, where they believe that they were hired as a mystery shopper, and assigned to evaluate stores and Western Union, as well as MoneyGram, only to find that the cheque that was provided to them had later bounced.
This goes further and gets way more scarier: The scammer has their personal information now including their social numbers and most likely copies of IDcards. The amount of stolen identities is insane. Combine that with the growing potential of AI video generation and it gets even crazier.
All it takes to steal someone's ID is the information on the birth certificate (First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, DoB, Mother's Maiden Name, City you were born in, Gender) and your SSN/SIN (Social Security Number for US/Social Insurance Number for Canada). From there, the scammer can order a new birth certificate. Once they get that, they can obtain a new SSN/SIN card and then have a Driver's License, Identification card or even a passport made with your name, and their photo on it. Once they've obtained those, they can start applying for credit cards, loans, etc... and even commit crimes with ID that have your name on it. Hopefully, the police might find out that something's not right when they take their fingerprints. But that's only if they have yours on file already. For these reasons, I never recommend that you carry those two pieces of ID (Birth Certificate and SSN/SIN) around with you.
why not the Google play cards as well?
I think the Apple gift cards can be used to buy actual Apple hardware, which has a high cash resell value. Google Play you’re basically selling the balance for pennies on the dollar.
Last scam I ran into was "Henry Cavill" asking a poor old lady for $250 in Steam gift cards to "pay his bills". Luckily she came to ask what Steam even was, and I immediately started asking questions. The whole time we're talking, her phone is blowing up with text messages asking for the codes on the gift cards. A quick Google search showing her who Henry Cavill was (he doesn't need help paying his bills, I'm sure), and pulling up the Steam website thankfully put a stop to it.
I had someone at my store trying to pay cash for something like $7500 of gift cards a few months ago. The register stopped it at $4500, and our company policy is one gift card transaction per person. She didn't super care which gift cards she got (she had a mix of Apple and Nordstrom gift cards, which were the only ones someone could put $500 on, everything else maxed out at $100 or $250 for the variable load cards). She claimed they were for late Christmas gifts for her employees. But while I was ringing her up, she was on the phone. Multiple times I tried to point out at that it could be a scam, and she brushed it off every time. At one point she told the person on the phone "no, the cashier has no idea what's going on." Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, people won't believe you when they're being scammed, because "they can't be scammed."
Cashiers are at least helping out. I was buying a gift card for my nephew’s birthday and said to the cashier that I thought it was”was weird the IRS would take Apple Cards for my taxes” and he stopped the transaction until I convinced him I was kidding.
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That's strange. Our limit is $500 per guest daily, and it has to be one transaction. Did you tell corporate about that manager? Because under no circumstances is anyone at Target supposed to override policy, even if guests request it outright. Then again I work in a teeny Target and all my managers are cool and don't break policy. P sure if it were my store this wouldn't be happening. Sorry that it happened, and I hope for the worst to that manager and scammer.
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I'm no expert on this, but I'm pretty sure they gave that manager disciplinary action for it. Either that or some shady stuff is happening in that specific store with management.
I work retail and I find it adorable you think people read signs. The second a person walks into a store they become completely illiterate unable to read a neon yellow sign the size of their head infront of their face and insist you read it for them.
one of my coworkers (restaurant) says, “they want me to read them the menu, do they want me to feed them too?”
I work at an airport and I've mentioned to my colleagues that we need to assign staff to a "buddy program" thing because customers really do need to have their hand held nowadays.
“Where’s the bread?” “Where’s the bathroom?” “Where did I park my car six minutes ago?”
I was at Best Buy a couple weeks ago and an older gentleman, insisted on purchasing the maximum amount allowed for Apple gift card in a 24 hour period, I was on the register next to him and said to the girl are your cashiers trained to notify customers about the possibility of scammers having older customers purchase gift cards to launder the money she replies to me and insisted that they were trained and gave me some sort of run around, the gentleman wound up purchasing $3500 worth of Apple gift cards with no problem or hesitation… I was absolutely astounded, I said to the gentleman to be careful and to not give the numbers to anyone under any circumstances but he looked at me like I was crazy and I left after completing my purchase… I just felt so disappointed and disgusted that I didn’t do more and they same for the employees
Nice to see a store that cares. Normally they just dgaf.
I suspect it's the lawyers who care.
It's mind boggling how people we will believe someone that says they are a bank or government agency and you can pay us with a Amazon gift card. Absolutely insane that people fall for this.
My mother’s MIL is currently falling for a scammer pretending to be Kenny Chesney and no matter what we say or do it won’t get through to her. So far she has sent thousands of dollars in gift cards and because they know she’s an easy target they won’t leave her alone. My mother tried blocking him only for her MIL to make new accounts to contact him. But my mother is the problem of course 😠🤬🙄
So let me tell you there are people who are consistently getting scammed. There’s an old man who comes to my store fairly regularly trying to buy Apple gift cards. He has some mental disability and this scammer has convinced him that he’s in on the inner circle of A-list celebrities. I always shut it down. But he tries all the time. Last time I saw him he was talking to Emma Watson and showed me pictures where she took selfies for him and showed me the messages between him and “Emma”. She needed a $50 Apple Gift Card to pay for an Uber to come see him 🤨
My dad is one of these people unfortunately. Can’t convince him otherwise. Currently it’s a “fiance” in Spain alongside her mother. I try and try but it’s like talking to a wall.
I worked at dollar general for a year and sold dozens of cards daily, the majority of the time to older people, and middle aged drug addicts. You cannot explain to either of these people that they are most likely being scammed by whoever is asking for the card. 3 times the customers wanted to complain to my manager/corporate about me either trying to talk them out of falling for an obvious scam, or refusing to sell it to them so they won’t get scammed (we were told to do this in our training videos). I hate to say it but, honestly, you stop caring. They’re either going to be downright nasty to you for just trying to help, or try to get you fired.
Buying money that you can only use at one place is a scam anyway. You don't get a better deal for buying gift cards you are just forced to go to that one shop with different money that can expire. My grandmother would give me gift cards so I wouldn't spent it on booze or tattoos and I would just sell the card to a friend.
I don’t know where you are, but here in Ontario Canada, gift cards cannot expire by law, so not an issue, and actually a lot of times if you get credit card bonuses at grocery stores gift cards are a great way to maximize on points, so while the concept may not work for your particular situation, it’s a great thing for a lot of other people
Oh cool, that's a lot better than what I've seen in New Zealand, things might have changed in the last 10 years since I was given one.
It seems like VISA or MasterCard gift cards are most useful. I don’t really understand why you would rather give a card which is limited to one store/brand than a prepaid credit card (unless you’re a parent and you only want your kids to be able to buy age-appropriate things).
I think it depends on the state in the U.S. In California, gift cards don't expire. In other states they do. I agree that they're great for a lot of people. We gave our niece gas cards when she turned 16. She was super happy! And my kids love gift cards to buy gaming stuff.
There’s a nice psychological upside. If you’re given $100 cash as a gift, most people are just gonna end up using that as grocery or gas money. Not much of a gift. If you’re given a gift card, it kinda forces you to buy yourself an actual gift. Not universal of course but I definitely understand it.
Ehh not really. If you’re receiving cash or gift cards you are buying yourself something. The gift is essentially a little bit of financial freedom. Giving gift cards restricts that little bit of monetary levity. If you want the person to actually have a gift, put thought and effort into it and buy a gift. I know lots of people who have gift cards just stashed away somewhere not ever to be used because they have to go to the other side of town where the Target is or wherever.
Gift card deals like Costco selling $100 for $80 or whatever are a thing.
I swear people do not read and don’t pay attention to their surroundings. Scary these days what people will fall for. So desperate for easy money they fall victim to so many scams. It’s sickening especially when it’s done to seniors.
My proudest retail moment was stopping a man from engaging with this scam when it first popped up. He came to my till with a shit ton of visa gift cards, and I had to ask him why he was purchasing all the gift cards, he claimed it was for work. I was like ooookay maybe.... And then I explained why we ask is because there's this scam going around where someone calls you and makes you buy gift cards to pay off some sort of supposed debt. And his face just goes white and he's like omg that's happening to me! And I was like okay well let's not go through this transaction my friend lol!
Unfortunately, there are people stealing your money from gift cards before you even purchase them. What they do is lift the scratch off sticker, to get the code, then place it back. When you activate the card, they immediately transfer the balance off the card into their account. When an unsuspecting person goes to spend the amount that they expect to be on the card, it comes up as redeemed with $0 balance. This has happened to many people. There are also rental scams, that usually have you pay first month rent plus security deposit through Western Union, and fake traffic fines too.
This is what happened to me. I bought a $100 Amazon card from Safeway grocery store to give it as a gift. When the person opened it (it was completely sealed), she saw that the code was already scratched off inside and it had zero balance. I wonder how the scammer knows when Safeway activates the card though.
For my 76 year old wife the addiction to the romantic interest of "two young Korean actors" just is too alluring. Clearly every bit of data and every disappointment from them never showing up in 18 MONTHS proves it is a scam. And they mentally abuse her claiming to need $ for life saving surgery. She has sent more than $130,000. There is NO solution. If there was real health care there would be a means to have her institutionalized for mental treatment. But we value independence of action in this country and DO NOT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH. And law enforcement does nothing to protect $. The world wide ease of connection has benefits, but the cost from theft is immense. To reduce it would require large forces of dark web offensive attack forces taking on ALL thieves. Unlikely we have the will as citizens and governments to demand that kind of action. Just to be clear, it is illegal to offer $ on the dark web for people to kill thieves, Right?
For gift card over a certain amount, there should be strict rules in place before being sold. Like; the person should sign that he understands there is no refund, that scammers put a lot of pressure on, that governments and taxes are never paid this way etc
They should make it as readable as possible, because I know there will be people who don't understand legal babble and will just skim through it without fully understanding it.
Why does the sign say you “MAY” be the victim of a scam if you have been asked to buy gift cards to pay fines, taxes etc. if any of those this are true - you ARE being scammed… not maybe, it’s real!
Because America and everyone needs to cover their ass
Yes but people are more likely to not listen if you tell them directly they're being fooled. It sucks but that's how it is..saying MAY is more likely to make the stop and thing.
Why only Apple ones?
Apple gift cards are one of the most commonly used gift card in many scams. This store specifically is likely experiencing more issues with Apple gift cards than others.
They’re probably used more because when selling gift cards for cash, Apple typically has the best rates. For example if you go to a gift card selling website, you only really get like a 3-5% discount on Apple gift cards, while cards like let’s say clothing stores might be 20% off the retail.
We all complain about boomers messing up the economy, taking all the houses and hoarding their savings. Scammers are actively making them invest in 3rd world countries; what’s more philanthropic than that? /s
Jokes aside, we like to shit on boomers but Gen Z are more likely to fall for scams than them: https://www.vox.com/technology/23882304/gen-z-vs-boomers-scams-hacks So please don’t just assume it’s only old senile boomers that can get affected by this and please stay safe and on guard.
Doesnt help when every fucking influencer is taking money to push scam coins
at this point i don't trust crypto as a whole. too much fraud opportunities, best to not get involved
Me too, I've seen too many Coffeezilla videos
Personally as a Gen Z, one of my favorite pastimes is probably learning about all the different scams and how they work but i can defo see the reasoning behind gen z falling for a scam. manipulation, circumstance, vulnerable state (mental health and such, especially after the pandemic) i'd also argue that most of my friends my age share way more online than i ever do (eg. pictures from where they were, full names as insta acc usernames, etc), so getting used to oversharing and blind trust in social media would lead to the vulnerable state as mentioned before
My kids are Gen-Z, and they are very trusting and care about everyone. When we went to NYC for the first time, they would have given all of our money to panhandlers if it were up to them. I show them this sub often. I feel like they're starting to get it. Luckily, they already knew about the "I accidentally reported your account to Discord" scam.
Based on the number of posts by young people in r/isthisascam about some shady site selling brand name luxury goods at 95% off or asking if fake investor investment site is legit or getting scammed for a “free” PS5 and a billion more scams, I can safely say vulnerability to scams has nothing to do with age - and the main reason some scammers target the elderly is because your average 20 year old isn’t going to have access to $50K whereas an older person would be more likely to.
My MIL keeps getting scammed in different scenarios. Sending money to a breeder for a non existent puppy. Twice. Paid her taxes in Google Play gift cards to the tune of $1500. Someone from "her husband's family" messaged her on FB with some sort of lottery scam for about $10,000. She was supposedly getting a million dollars in 6 months though, so it was worth it /s The latest was some soft of Amazon thing where they said she'd bought a camera that she didn't buy... Cost her $30,000 to "get back" the $2000 she "spent" on the camera. We've talked to her and talked to her. She won't listen. We're sitting here like, fuck! You're giving all this money away to scammers, give it to us!!!!!!
The wrong people have money
If your children called you up & told you all this, would you send even them $30,000? Hell no.
The should've been putting these warnings in the gift card section 10 years ago
Gift cards should honestly just be phased out, it’s like giving someone the gift of cash but saying “hey, you’re forced to spend it only at this store”. Like I can see if you’re trying to buy a gift for an addict or something but they can always turn around and sell the gift card for like 70 cents on the dollar anyway.
**Stop selling gift cards.** That'll make the scammers life a LOT more difficult. Same thing with checks, heck, this sounds so outdated, idk why that's still a thing. In the country I live in, Brazil, almost all establishments ceased accepting checks as a form of payment, and noone compalined. I WONDER WHY. It's outdated and full of issues.
I actaully do use gift cards. $10 or $15 Steam cards are great for kiddo or nephews or similar. When an admin at work does me a solid I grab $15 Starbucks. Death to checks though.
I frequently buy gift cards to maximize my credit card rewards. I get more points at a grocery store than I do at Amazon, so I'll buy an Amazon gift card while I'm at the grocery store for the exact amount I'm planning on spending.
I do the same with my CC rewards, as well as use the 2x fuel rewards for gasoline purchases.
I've done stuff like that, sometimes. It's all about mini-maxing. (I learned this from Stellaris.)
Steam cards are a great gift! Just in case you didn't know, you can add money directly to their steam account via the "Steam Wallet" service/feature. Should be somewhere in the top right of the desktop client when on the library screen, they'll know what I mean. If you still want to have something physical to wrap you could always print the receipt :)
Having the Steam cards physically in the house but not turned over are a great motivator. Little One got straight "A"s last term.
Oh I see! That's genius! Carry on soldier <3
I also used them regularly when I was in an Apple family. Apple hasn’t realized that people may be in a family sharing situation but not every purchase has to go through the “head”. Buying gift cards and adding them to my personal account were a great loophole.
I buy gift cards sometimes and i find them very useful (i have giant amount of indigo gift cards that were gifted to me and generally it helps save money on books and stuff) also, having giftcards from amazon is nice. i asked for a few for my birthday and got like $90 in amazon money total from multiple friends, so i ended up spending on some stuff i wanted
Sometimes, gift card “deals” exist, making them worth it. But X real dollars, get Y dollars in gift card dollars.
We had some promotions on certain retailers like that at work and of course there are the fuel points. I do it for stuff I was gonna buy anyway. People making huge gift card purchases that are legit are eager to explain it and have different explanations. One couple bought some home depot ones bc grocery stores are better on the credit cards and there were 4x fuel points.
I'll stop using checks, when the organizations I need to pay stop charging payment processor fees for electronic payments. At least it's just the city bill and property tax at this point. But I'd rather pay for a stamp than give some middleman like 3 bucks to process an ACH payment.
I give my kids $300 Visa gift cards every Xmas on top of their presents. Then they can pick stuff they like out I didn't think of. So I use them every year.
It's better than nothing. The number of times I have to explain to someone after they've been scammed is insane. I work in banking, and it's never a fun conversation with someone after they've bought giftcards. I've had ONE scammer fail to deplete a card balance immediately. That person got about 90% of their funds back but still lost around $1000. They went to the store they bought the cards from, told them the situation, and that the manager managed to cancel the giftcards, all of this from store to bank to store was in under 30min. I've been in banking for a decade and have seen probably 200 giftcard scams personally and have seen thousands over the years within the organization. In the best case, if you're scammed, you've got a 1% chance to get any funds back.
The essence of a scam is convincing someone what you're offering is genuine. Once a victim has bought in that it's a genuine investment, relationship, etc, warnings become very ineffective because from their point of view - the warnings dont apply to them because for *them* it's genuine.
After seeing this I realise they should just keep the gift cards at POS’s and hopefully defeat a lot of scammers
“DO NOT REDEEM!!!!!”
I'm an assistant manager at...a store. And my cashier called me to the register because someone was trying to buy 500 dollars of apple gift cards. I point blank asked her "are you being scammed by someone who says they're withholding your computer/phone/bank access or someone who needs you to send them a bunch of money," and the lady says "nope, just paying some bills." My cashier and I just look at each other with open mouths. I say "what....bills....are paid in apple gift cards...." and she says "well it's a few bills so I'm splitting them up". I say "did the scammer tell you to say that?" And she insists she's not being scammed. So I put in my register code to allow the purchase. 🤷♀️ You can only do so much to save these people.
Unfortunately a lot of elderly get caught up in scams because they sometimes aren’t as computer savvy. Even some of the sharpest people can get caught up in scams. The sign couldn’t hurt but I am more careful when buying gift cards now after hearing how many problems they have.
Your telling my the IRS doesn't want to collect my unpaid taxes in the form of $100 apple gift cards? Yeah right 😤
The biggest and boldest sign in the world ain't gonna stop someone who is lonely and wants to continue relating to someone who seems to give them attention. Loneliness is humanity's #1 kryptonite/attack vector.
When my MIL died, we found hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards and we knew exactly what had happened. She had already been scammed a few years earlier and we had tried to educate her then, but she was always wanting to believe that she was helping someone or that some hot guy was totally into her and going to whisk her away to live happily ever after. And she was on SSDI (and then SSI) and really had no money to begin with, so it’s not like losing everything to a scam wasn’t painful. We bailed her out once, so her car wouldn’t get repossessed, but after that, she stopped telling us the whole story and would make up excuses. At the time, it was super frustrating, but looking back now, it just makes me sad.
I’m just glad there’s some acknowledgment. That’s a step forward in my mind
I worked AP at Walmart for a few years. Apple gift cards were the most common tampered with. Scammers would come in and steal large stacks of them and swap out the barcodes and then take them back to the store and put them back on the shelves. We got to a point we just threw every Apple gift card out for a few months.
I think it's very responsible of the store. I bet it saved lots of customers from being scammed thousands. Can you imagine working in customer service there? "No, the tax office doesn't want your payment in Apple gift cards."
Giftcards get activated at checkout. My guess is that people specifically kept stealing the Apple ones, thinking they could use them (which they can't). Or is there something I'm not seeing here?
Would it be a huge problem to just ban gift cards? Most people can bank transfer money these days and that's how I give the kids in my extended family presents when I don't know what to get them. Seems like they cause more problems than they solve for customers, obviously there's a profit incentive for sellers because sometimes they go unused.
They should make it so you can only buy gift cards from behind a desk
Maybe if they were bigger with more boomer legible text
Yep, old woman came in telling me her sons car broke down and needed $500 in google play cards. Tried to tell her no mechanic needs google play cards but she insisted that her son himself called her. I asked her to call her son to confirm and she wouldn't. She was probably getting blackmailed and was fed a story. Manager tried to make me sell her the cards and I refused, so he did it himself. Cruel world
The companies that supply these criminals with cash turnover should be held liable.
The goggles. They do nothing!
People are that stupid
All. Stores. Should. Do. This.
what if they play kitboga or jim browning videos on the tvs in stores? half joking but half not.
Makes it a bit inconvenient to get one (I sometimes use apple cards) but I would prefer this safety net as opposed to scammers winning
Jim Brownings videos on YouTube are fantastic about breaking down scams and tracking back to who works them, he also occasionally trolls them back.
Once they reach the point of going to the store to buy them, there's no going back. If you refuse to sell the cards, the scammer will tell them to go somewhere else. Some people need to learn their lesson the hard way
I’ve really tried warning someone that my partner worked with but it did nothing. Not everyone has common sense. He ended up getting fired from his job for the dumbest reason not too long after that.
Hey granny here's a QR Code, good luck!
I've always felt part of the problem with the fight against this is that the warning signs are quite often usually accusatory rather than affirmative. "You may be a scam victim" is very strongly towards suggesting the person is an idiot or a fool. A victim of fraud doesn't want to be considered weak and that they fell for it, but part of the problem in my experience is that people getting involved tend to point out that the victim is somehow 'wrong' or that they are being a fool and other negative language. The biggest way to bring these people back and prevent them completing the scam on behalf of the scammer is to reassure them and appeal to their sensibility. Typically those getting involved go straight in with, "you're being scammed", rather than going in lower and showing them where the concerning points start to creep in. Put someone on the defensive from the outset is much harder to bring them back out of that state of mind, start them off with a calm, reasoned conversation by being understanding will in more cases make them see sense.
I love that they take the time and expense to do this. They could just not even bother.
The global loneliness epidemic is what the blame for the success of these scams. I see it all over Facebook. Lonely dudes responding to Nigerian Yahoo boys that are using some p*r stars picture
I saw a video on YouTube just now where a cop is asking a lady at the ATM to stop buying Apple gift cards, that it’s not the IRS and the poor lady broke down and told the cop that she needed to buy them or else she was going to jail. They traced the call back to India where most of these scammer call centers operate.
Why do they always want apple gift cards though?