
The little black book of scams (2016) - Ibethewalrus
https://www.accc.gov.au/publications/the-little-black-book-of-scams
======
anonymouzz
I recently fell victim to a nasty scam I've never heard about before. Wonder
if anyone had similar experiences.

Happened in Serbia on a highway. We had an RV on German plates and slept on a
gas station there, next to the truckers. Morning comes and the clutch pedal is
dead - no resistance when I press it (this is a manual transmission car).
Obviously not driveable, and we're not car gurus to debug it. We call the
insurance but it's not responding (perhaps because it's Sunday). I find a tow
car nearby and ask the guy for help, to which he suggests to tow the car 10km
to his garage to investigate. I agree.

There they use the debug interface of the car to figure out that we need some
part replaced (language is a bit of a barrier now) and quote us 700 EUR + VAT.
I agree because we need to drive, and because I cannot contact insurance.

After the job is done I ask them for the old part (the replaced one), and they
just say it's "software", after which I realize that I was just massively
overcharged/defrauded.

Later when we discuss the situation with my girlfriend she tells me she's seen
that tow car waiting seemingly for us for several hours, which suggests that
the clutch damage was perhaps inflicted by the very people that fixed our car.
I became scared of the whole situation and decided to not report it to the
Serbian police and just leave the country asap (I mean if people cut cables in
cars on the highway to get 700 EUR I have very low trust in the local law
enforcement).

~~~
wahern
> she tells me she's seen that tow car waiting seemingly for us for several
> hours

FWIW, at least in the U.S. it's common for tow truck operators to wait
alongside various roads. Breakdowns are predictable and service is faster if
the operator is already nearby. It's not like the driver has anything better
to do during his shift.

That doesn't mean you weren't overcharged or even scammed. Really can't say
without more information.

~~~
anonymouzz
Yeah the cable cutting is just a conjecture, have no evidence for that.
Overpriced repair - pretty sure about that one.

~~~
ams6110
Most clutches are hydraulic, not cable-operated. There will be a bleed valve
under the car which can be opened with a wrench, causing the symptoms you
experienced. Would take an experienced scammer maybe a minute to do.

------
krylon
I remember the first time I got one of these "Nigerian scam" mails. In
retrospect it is funny that what made me suspicious was not the offer to make
millions in return for an upfront price of a few thousand bucks; it was the
fact that the mail did not address me by name but started with the claim that
I seemed to be trustworthy person. If I was trying to move a huge amount of
money out of the country, would _I_ ask some random stranger on the Internet
for help? Exactly.

At dinner, I told my parents about it. My mother's husband, who is a (now
retired) police officer who worked in white collar crime for more than a
decade, started to laugh. "Do they _still_ use that old trick?" And so I
learned that this particular type of scam dates back at least to the 1980s,
when scammers used fax to contact their potential victims.

~~~
microtherion
It dates back longer than the territorial boundaries of Nigeria:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner)

~~~
krylon
My mother's husband had lots of interesting stories to tell that involved
scammers and con artists; it seems people very quickly let go of all
skepticism when faced with the prospect of making lots of easy money.

I also remember that kind of email that used to go around back in the late
1990s that said Microsoft was sending out this mail to measure the size of the
Internet or something silly like that, and that if I forwarded it to people
from my address book, I would get some stupidly large amount of money for it,
like 10$ per person.

As far as these things go, this was fairly benign, of course, but I almost
fell for it. And what made me delete the mail without forwarding it to anyone
was not that "to good to be true"-aspect, but the fact that I started
wondering how Microsoft would know I had forwarded this mail. And then I
wondered, _if_ everybody did forward this mail to everyone they knew, for $10
a pop, how much would that cost Microsoft? I mean, they were filthy rich back
then, but still, such a thing could easily get out of hand.

And even when I got the first phishing mail from "my bank" asking me for my
PIN and a TAN, what made me delete it was not the fact I had deleted dozens of
these from other banks where the scam was obvious because I had no affiliation
with them, but the fact that I had not ever given my bank my email address.

It is so easy to think that _I_ would _never_ fall for an obvious scam like
that. But it pays to remember that the human psyche has some major bugs, and
scammers know disturbingly well how to exploit those.

------
erikb
You sit with an old friend in bar, already quite drunk. You haven't seen this
guys for years but now that you had such a nice evening you really feel like
old brothers. Now he tells you about this great house he has and that he
considers to move to another town. He might let you take it before he puts it
on the market and to a friendship price that he could certainly not achieve on
the market.

Will you, at this point, remember that "Scammers dress up ‘opportunities’ with
professional looking brochures and websites to mask their fraudulent
operations. They often begin with a phone call or email out of the blue from a
scammer offering a ‘not-to-be-missed’, ‘high return’ or ‘guaranteed’
opportunity. The scammer usually operates from overseas, and will not have an
Australian Financial Services licence"?

Probably not. But you might remember the story that guy on hacker news told
you. You might remember, just as in that story, that you should look out
carefully when a "great opportunity" arises. You might check your emotional
state and find the comradry you feel to that old friend might not be based on
facts since you haven't seen him for a long time. It's rather related to you
two having a great night together.

And you might recognize that this combination of great offer, excitement, and
a person who doesn't spend time with you often are combining to red flags for
a scam.

But that is all because it was a specific example, a story. Not just a list of
facts and attributes that generally relate to a set of scams that can be
categorized as rather similar.

Therefore I'd argue that such a general list of scams, without specific
examples, is not worth much. People's brain simply doesn't work like that.
Rather check on Youtube for actual scams. Like "tourist scams in <countryX>".

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I think I must not be a people, because my brain does generally work that way.

Perhaps it can be that some peoples' brains work one way and others another
way, and perhaps there are multiple ways of working.

~~~
erikb
Can you explain how that works out? Like, do you have virtual checklists and
for everything you experience over the day your head goes "check check check
-> we must be in event X"? It's really hard to imagine.

What I already know is emotional pattern matching. E.g. one smells a spice
that one's mother used as a child and one is immediately transferred back to
that time. In that way if one recognizes that high excitement is often related
to advertisements or scams one might recognize when one feels that way that
something might be fishy.

Or what I also know is path recognition. E.g. "at first we did this, then we
did this, then we did this, and therefore we arrived at X". In that way we can
remember processes like riding a bike or our way home. That's also how memory
palaces work.

~~~
nineteen999
Experience helps a lot. For example, I will never give money to a Buddhist
monk walking the streets asking for donations, er, ever again.

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-09/victorians-warned-
aga...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-09/victorians-warned-against-
donating-to-shameless-fake-charities/6008622)

"Genuine monks do have a practice of having gifts or giving alms as part of
their religion but it is meant to be a generous donation of those who wish to
give without any solicitation whatsoever."

In a similar way, I'd never work for another startup again. While I'm sure
many startups have great intentions, others are out and out scams, and the
vast majority will never break even enough to pay you the pot of gold at the
end of the rainbow that they promised you. Once burned, twice shy etc.

~~~
mikekchar
I was once waiting to board an airplane and a Buddhist monk sat beside me. I
had a glance at him and notice a rolex watch. "That's odd", I thought. But
sometimes Buddhist monks have stuff like that. And then I noticed that he
hadn't shaved his head. Or his beard. "That's odd", I thought. But different
orders do different things. And then he got called up to the desk and the
attendant asked him, "I'm sorry sir, but I noticed that you didn't have a the
vegetarian meal ordered. Would you like me to order one for you?". He said,
"No thank you." "That's odd", I thought, but even monks have free choice in
their meals. And then some guards with sniffer dogs walked up to him and took
him away. "Oh. Not so odd after all".

~~~
erikb
Well, well. You still have a lot to learn, my Padawan. The better answer is
not "that's odd" but "we'll see". ;-)

[http://buddhistinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/12/well-see-
zen...](http://buddhistinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/12/well-see-zen-
story.html)

------
geraldbauer
FYI: I've put together an Awesome Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) Truths page.
Subtitled The Art of the Steal - The Scammers' Big Lies at
[https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-ico-
truths](https://github.com/openblockchains/awesome-ico-truths) . Buyer beware!
Cheers. Prost.

~~~
erikb
Great that you put actual examples together. I like that. But I'm not sure if
you can really improve the world through that. A lot of these problems are
quite obvious and if people iwll still put their money into ICOs I'm not sure
anything could help that.

That, I feel, is the hardest part of learning more about scams and how to
protect yourself. You inevitably see a lot of people who simply can't avoid
it, almost going for getting scammed like a moth goes to the lamp, never
learning from bad experience that you simply can't get rich quick if you
aren't already rich.

~~~
moccachino
>never learning from bad experience that you simply can't get rich quick if
you aren't already rich.

or a scammer

------
triplesec
These TV shows are very educational about this, especially the Real Hustle,
which was a documentary demonstrating how to avoid scams in real life
situations. I'm sure you can find them on some streaming service as repeats.

The Real Hustle
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0791615/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0791615/)

Hustle
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379632/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379632/)

~~~
hackermailman
Coworker of mine fell for this same scam in Turkey that was featured on Scam
City
[https://turkeytravelplanner.com/details/Safety/SingleMaleSca...](https://turkeytravelplanner.com/details/Safety/SingleMaleScams.html)

------
HourglassFR
As my brother often says:

In life, you can be greedy, you can be stupid. But you cannot afford beeing
greedy and stupid at the same time.

------
mrhappyunhappy
“Only pay via the website’s secure payment method—look for a web address
starting with ‘https’ and a closed padlock symbol“

Someone should notify the Australian govt. that a padlock and https do not
equate to security.

~~~
LeonM
"Never pay via a website with an address that does not start with HTTPS" would
maybe be better?

The padlock is the first step, and possibly the most impactful security check
that a non-technical person can do. Recognising Fake webpages, XSS, CSP,
malware, etc is very hard and impossible to expect from any visitor of a
website.

------
1wd
I didn't know there's a special "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia
licence" (and apparently there are separate versions for other countries as
well).

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
It was the old Creative Commons v3 license. At that time, people thought, in
addition to the "international version", it would be good idea to write many
localized licenses for each country, so that people from each country can use
the license in their native language and the legal experts can take special
cares to make sure the license is completely valid under the copyright laws of
a country, and the courts can understand it easily.

But people eventually decided that localized CC licenses were "considered
harmful" \- The biggest problem is that you can never be sure whether all the
localized licenses are equivalent. It makes things very complicated when you
want to create a derivative work of a project, even under the same conditions,
if the work released under another localized version by the author. Also, it
creates lots of ambiguity in a international community project. Finally, it
was difficult to maintain, they need legal experts from all the countries if
the license needs changes.

So localized CC licenses have been abolished when Creative Commons v4.0 was
released, v4.0 only has the One True Version, the international version, it
was made to be a perfectly valid license for all countries that signed Berne
Convention, I believe.

------
mrhappyunhappy
As a teenager I fell for the most dumb in person scam. I was coming out of
Barnes and Nobles with my gf and a guy approached me asking for money. I said
no initially but then he made up this whole story about being out of gas on
the way to see his kids and so on. You’d have to be an idiot to fall for that
and idiot I was. So I ended up giving him $20, left feeling weird right away.
I got in the car, looked at my gf and said “I bet that was a scam”. We went
some place to eat then started driving home when not more than a few hundred
yards away I see the dude buying booze at a nearby gas station. The only time
I felt shittier in my life was when an elderly person sold me a car with a
leaking gas tank, knowing that it had a leak.

I can confidently say I’m scam-proof today, learned the hard way to trust
nobody, especially unwelcome advances. Ah, the things I did as a stupid kid!

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Getting off the bus in NYC one day, guy comes up to me, seemingly nice guy
asks if I have $5 so he can get home.

Give him some money, feel scammed, couldn’t say exactly why.

Talk to my Dad about it later and he asks what was it? Was he holding a book
or something? Yep, right in his hand obviously when I recalled it was a cheap
rough condition paperback book. My dumb brain saw that and said _“surely this
guy is ok, he reads!”_. Dad informed me this was an old scam.

~~~
scrumper
5am in Penn Station, waiting to board the early Acela. I've been in NYC 20
years at this point and have become tolerably good at deflecting our local
street scammers, for the most part. I'm printing my ticket out and a
construction worker comes up to me, wiry dude with a hi-vis jacket carrying a
hard hat. $5 to get home to NJ, his truck got broken into and wallet stolen,
blah boo hoo. He got the $5, and it didn't take him much talking to get it.
The hard hat sold me. Soon as he turned I realized I'd been scammed.

~~~
AYBABTME
I gave money to these people, and I don't think it's a scam. They're just
begging by another mean. Often I just assume they don't have the chop to just
ask for cash, or want to ease me into giving. I just ignore their made up
story and give them change if I have some. It's charity, not "being scammed".

------
dt_rsp
I was hoping it included the fiddle scam from American Gods.

~~~
milesokeefe
This one?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks#Fidd...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_confidence_tricks#Fiddle_game)

~~~
dt_rsp
That's the one.

------
unixhero
Good guide.

------
ada1981
I didn’t notice these scams:

Higher Education Mental Health Religious Organizations Political Elections

~~~
leducw
Can you tell me why each one is a scam? I'm curious because none of those to
me seem like a scam.

~~~
ada1981
Higher Education is increasingly a bad investment, including unforgivable
loans.

Religious Organizations that take your money while oppressing your sexuality
and agency.

Mental Heatlh system that gives you drugs that often makes your problems worse
or at best placebo.

Political Systems that promise change and consistently simply advance the
interests of the rich.

Scams meaning these are things people spend money on with a particular result
in mind, they end up without that result and the people promoting it are
pretty aware they can’t deliver the result.

