Great job figuring out it was a scam but honestly, it’s crazy that these things still work on anyone all the way in 2022. You would think that by now every human being that walks the earth would know that whenever someone you don’t know sends you “money” and then requests you send it back (or to another party) in a different form, it’s always a scam. There should be some ceremony whenever someone turns 16 or something, where you just get taught this and that’s the end of this scam. Insane that people still fall for this!
Same for the gift card scams. No legit business or government on earth in any industry asks for gift cards as payment! This is like an absolute ironclad fact of the universe. But so many people still fall for it!
This post seem to blame victims for the problem, and that is not fair. People can be in dark places mentally, struggle with disease, family issues, etc. Not everybody is mentally sharp 100% of the time to identify a scam attack and fight it back.
The problem is not victims, the problem is scammers. There should be better mechanisms to quickly clamp down on them. In this case, it would be really good if there was a mechanism or institution where the victim could report the scam and once verified it would gather information from Google, Dropbox sign, the bank receiving the funds, and other tools scammers use to build a case against the scammer in the relevant jurisdiction, and avoid them using the same tools for further scams.
My strategy to repel scams is to stay humble. Mo matter how much I think I'm prepared to identify scams, I am still vulnerable and I will continue to be vulnerable. Arrogance is your worst friend if your objective is to stay safe. No matter how many ceremonies you do when you're 16, in the right context and with the right words, you will still fall for a talented social engineer.
> This post seem to blame victims for the problem, and that is not fair.
Indeed, the scammers are the bad guys. At the same time, what about people that still fall for Nigerian princes or go through their spam folder for "sex in your area" or "penis enlargement pills"?
> ...verified it would gather information from Google, Dropbox sign, the bank receiving the funds...
While I agree that our banking system should evolve past the high-trust model that it has organically grown out of, this sounds absolutely dystopian to me. I would much rather live in a world where the resolution is "sorry, you got scammed, that sucks, learn from it" rather than "our corporate overlords will collaborate to ensure your safety." Even if real-time 2FA of fund transfers existed everywhere, people (including everyone in the right state, sure) would still click those things. Technology doesn't solve social problems.
> At the same time, what about people that still fall for Nigerian princes or go through their spam folder for "sex in your area" or "penis enlargement pills"?
Wait until you get older and have cognitive issues, or have a relative that gets caught up in these scams. It's easy to say "tough up" until it happens to you.
I was scammed about EUR 1500 some 7 years ago. It didn’t seem a scam: the price for an item was low but not too low, the identity of the seller I could verify. But the item ultimately didn’t arrive, and I didn’t know that for italian law it’s considered an “unfulfilled contract” rather than fraud, and requires a civil rather than a criminal case, which would turn out far too costly.
But the point is: I didn’t recognize some warnings because I just had my first kid and I was stressed, overworked and sleep deprived. Shit happens.
That's not nearly the same thing as what the other poster is talking about.
I once had something similar happen when I purchased Prince of Qin off Ebay (10-15 years ago I think?). Package never arrived.
That is in a wholly different class than these scams where they're asking you to cash a check and wire the money back, nigerian prince, etc.
What the other poster ISN'T considering is that there are still large segments of the population that are old enough that they're just not internet savvy. It's just the nature of life.
But their point stands as is, it's not reasonable for younger generations to be falling for these scams.
As a general rule convicting someone of fraud requires you somehow prove their state of mind. A person must set out to deliberately defraud someone for it to be considered fraud.
Of course proving a persons state of mind is extremely difficult. As a consequence it’s unlikely that police or prosecutors are going to take an interest in fraud that only involves small sums of money (less than a few million $).
However proving that a contract is unfulfilled is pretty trivial, and generally cut-and-dry. But failure to fulfil a contract obviously isn’t a criminal offence, so your only option is to file a civil suite. Thankfully most countries have small claims courts that cheap and very accessible, but with limits on how much you can claim. Just because the amount of money you’ve lost is above the small claims court amount, doesn’t prevent you from suing of an amount within the purview of a small claims court.
Beyond that, use a credit card. If credit card networks have provided any value in this world, it’s in the form of generally consumer friendly chargeback processes. It’s in there interest to make sure that people feel safe using their credit cards to buy stuff, more purchases means more transaction fees for them.
As an aside, this is one of the users I think everybody should design for:
> I just had my first kid and I was stressed
I often think back to when my nephew was tiny and imagine my brother trying to work a particular interface with one hand while holding a crying baby in the other.
> or italian law it’s considered an “unfulfilled contract” rather than fraud
That's crazy, but the same binary outcomes also exist in US law. Some states make very clear (to civil litigants' chagrin) that closing a sale with no intent to perform is a fraud; others haven't made that so clear; and, always, it's how you explain your situation to the gatekeeper that determines whether you might qualify for one side or the other.
That's what small claims court is for. Hopefully it doesn't happen to you again but if it does you can take them to small claims court. You don't need to pay a lawyer. It costs far less than €1500.
That's what it's called in the UK anyway. I assume Italy has something equivalent.
> Not everybody is mentally sharp 100% of the time to identify a scam attack and fight it back.
Exactly. A point made over and over in "The Field Guide to 'Human Error'" [1] is that when looking at failure, you can't use your current knowledge and state of mind when evaluating the circumstance. You have to look at it with the actual knowledge and state of mind at the time. If you don't, you will fail to find the actual problems and correct them.
Take this, for example:
> You would think that by now every human being that walks the earth would know
I would not think that! That's an unevidenced assumption. It's less a statement about the world than it is a declaration of ignorance. It makes it hard to engage curiously with the reality of the circumstances. Even if it were true, it assumes that having heard something once is the same thing as being able to apply it in all circumstances and all cognitive conditions. If people just stop there, we will never improve things.
Indeed, I think it's worth asking why victim-blaming is such a common reaction to stories of scams. One part is the just world fallacy [2]. Another is the fundamental attribution error [3]. And one that I have definitely been guilty of is that it lets me feel smart. "I, a genius, recognize the specific scam pattern. They, those helpless fools, never see it coming. Ergo, I have once again proved my mental superiority." It's hogwash, of course. But satisfying, comforting hogwash. It took me a long time to realize that it was incorrect and that pursuing feelings of smartness often made me effectively stupider.
I interpreted the parent post as describing a mere "contributing cause", but you seem to be saying the post is assigning moral guilt to the victims. Why? And how can we discuss preventative measures that potential victims of any crime (or accident) can take, if the two are so often conflated?
E.g. is teaching people self-defense equivalent to blaming them for successful physical assaults upon them?
You're relying on the idea that all foreign governments care about their citizens scamming Americans. And it literally takes only one government that doesn't care (or isn't able to enforce for whatever reason) for your strategy to be impossible.
Let's assume the scams are coming from North Korea or Cuba or Russia. You really think that there's more pressure the US apply that will make these countries go "you're right we shouldn't let our citizens scam your citizens"
The root issue it archaic payment systems and banks where a check can take 7 days to clear. In this age a bank check should clean in seconds and funds should not be available in your account until it clears. It should be on the bank to not lie to you about funds in your account.
People always say Russian scammers are safe if they do Cc fraud etc.
This is absolutelly not true, maybe some government collaborators get away with it because it is sanctioned, but the regular joseph will absolutelly go to prison, or be recruited for a war zone.
They do not, but the financial system is the same everywhere in the world, you do not want to be labelled as a high risk jurisdiction by the banks, acquirers and PSPs.
Let us use an example, Moldovian fraudsters using stolen credit cards and kyc docs online, this leads to chargebacks etc.
None of these cards are issued in Moldova, they are issued by american, british, new zealand, spain etc.
These banks often have offices in the countries where the fraudsters reside and they will absolutelly go for the fraudsters, if the word is that their cards and products can be compromised without consequences, they will lose a lot of revenue, customers, trust and reputation.
The government will not tolerate them becoming a high risk jurisdiction because of some carder kiddies, they will totally look them up.
I have friends who know many russian(many are coming to southern europe and russian friendly countries like serbia) friends who tried some stuff like that out of pure desperation, none of them made big money, but all of them eent to prison.
I work in finance and had personal correspondence with some fraudster groups, if you explain to them how you are going after them preciselly, step by step, they will immediatelly offer a truce. I am talking about really highly sophisticated groups here.
I consider myself pretty quick to detect scams, having worked in cybersecurity, though probably no quicker than the average HN commenter. And yet 15 years ago I fell for the “sell products that are no longer available” scam.
There was a keyboard I really wanted but it was no longer being made. However, I found an online shop that had them in stock! I ordered, paid, got my confirmation, and waited about two weeks before complaining that it hadn’t shipped.
Ended up with some dude from the usual geography for this stuff, yelling at me and threatening me over the phone. At which point I realized it was all fake, told him where to stick it and hung up. It was only $100 or so and I was lucky they didn’t do anything creative with my credit card.
The point being, there are lots of circumstances that can make you let your guard down. Thinking you’re too smart to be at risk is probably not the safest position to take.
I let my guard down once, because of a third party survey from actually Apple. Then actually Apple allowed the third party to funnel me onto their third party site. And that's where I suddenly found myself subscribed to a $15 fun recurring weekly quiz. I trusted them, because it's Apple, right? Except it wasn't Apple anymore. And, well, it wasn't fun to me so I un-subbed pretty quickly, but the first $15 were already payed. When I looked into it, they'd hidden themselves through layers of proxies so it wasn't possible to find an office address. And there was ofc no help to get from Apple, because they assured that they were only responsible the third party survey, and not what happened when you where funnelled onwards. I still think this is pretty crappy customer service from Apple, and that cooperating with such a scammy company reflects very poorly on them. Oh, and I still want my $15 back! (Don't worry, it's nothing compare to what I lost on FTX...)
if you're in the US you can reverse the charge, whether debit or credit card, although with a debit card you'll have to be re-issued a new one.
If enough people do chargebacks the payment processor will drop them because the ACH operator representing them will 100% fine the shit out of them if they don't. It's all contractual.
My point is, if you want to put a dent in stuff like this, do a chargeback. Like a union, the power isn't in your action, it's in the action of many.
---
But also, this is why I'm very picky and have quite often refused to purchase something I wanted. I'll trust Walmart.com in a way I won't trust momandpop.com. Unless they're using a payment process that isn't handled by them (CC via paypal, for example) I just flat won't use them.
What's worse is most people don't even consider the risk to calling in an order from a local restaurant for delivery (chinese, for example). They may or may not save your CC information and you have no idea how well those systems are secured. They're probably using a 3rd party, but you don't know who that 3rd party is so you can't even begin to assess that risk.
I'm not a fan of doordash by any means, but they do offer a service here in terms of risk assessment.
> What's worse is most people don't even consider the risk to calling in an order from a local restaurant for delivery (chinese, for example).
if you review your monthly statement, the "risk" is the possible inconvenience of having your card replaced. I don't let it stop me from ordering my favorite takeout, but you do you.
I honestly don't understand your threat model here. from the post I originally replied to, it's clear that you already understand that you can easily reverse unauthorized charges to a credit card. if you're already reviewing your monthly statements (which you really should be, as part of sane budgeting), this is basically a non-issue. you tell your cc issuer you suspect someone has stolen your credit card info, they cancel the card, and you can probably even get them to ship you a new one overnight. it's unlikely things even get to this stage though. card not present with no cvv is already the most highly scrutinized type of cc transaction by the processor.
I guess someone could probably treat themselves to their own monthly takeout order without me noticing for a while, but at least to me, this minuscule risk does not seem worth the mitigations you are taking.
I challenge you to quote me saying I don't order takeout.
Furthermore, many people use debit cards backed by an actual bank account and the vast majority of people can't afford to have those drained in any meaningful fashion without experiencing some severe consequences.
And thirdly, when the equifax breach happened I didn't bother doing anything. Why? Because I do NOT have the attitude that it's ok to be defrauded of money since someone else will pay for it. There was nothing for them to go after.
How did you pay? Did you let it go because "only $100"? Because if you paid by a non-sketchy method (paypal or credit card) the chargeback should be straightforward.
Good point, but at the time I didn’t think of that. I’ve never done a chargeback, which is probably a testament to my banks’ fraud detection.
For $100-ish, and a good couple weeks since I made the payment, getting my money back wasn’t the main thing on my mind. Which, again, is an example of circumstances clouding your judgement. I was mostly just pissed I wouldn’t be getting the keyboard.
I did try a complaint to the BBB since the shop was (probably not really) listed there… from which I learned how useless the BBB is, so I guess in the end I got something for my money after all.
> This post seem to blame victims for the problem, and that is not fair.
Guilt is not zero-sum. A killer gets 20 years, but a group of 10 people conspiring to a murder get 20 years each, not 2 years each.
It's perfectly possible the scammers are culpable to the maximum extent, while at the same time there is a smaller but consistent culpability on the part of the victim.
Totally not blaming the victim, just surprised that knowledge about these scams and how they work isn't as widespread as I'd have expected. We are grateful OP posted here and spread that knowledge a little further. It's a shame that these things don't just get taught to schoolchildren--too many people learn these things for the first time as a result of being victimized.
Suggesting people arm themselves with knowledge and use that knowledge for prevention is not really the same thing as assigning blame.
> The problem is not victims, the problem is scammers
but the solution isn't on the scammers side only, there are a series of circumstances on both sides involved that cause these things to happen.
if people weren't desperate for money, running out of alternatives, they wouldn't need to perpetrate these crimes, nor would they fall for them as often.
> if people weren't desperate for money, running out of alternatives, they wouldn't need to perpetrate these crimes, nor would they fall for them as often.
It's naive to think only the destitute perpetrate or fall victim to scams. By that logic, people like Bernie Maddoff or (allegedly) Sam Bankman-Fried wouldn't exist.
I’ve worked many years in fields adjacent to scams and fraud. I’ve seen many different kinds, especially romance and financial scams. This knowledge doesn’t make me more confident about avoiding scams, it’s made me realise that anyone can be scammed regardless of knowledge or intelligence.
Scams are about identifying what the victim really, really wants and offering it to them with some constraint. Some people are desperate for a job, for money to make ends meet. That desperation short circuits their common sense. I’ve seen successful romance scams that were so obviously scams. Even if you were in love, why didn’t you think twice about sending $10k the second time?? Neither of these would have worked on me because I’ve never been desperate for either of them.
That doesn’t mean I would dismissively talk like you did, saying no one should fall for them. I can be scammed, it’s just a question of finding what I’m desperate for and offering that to me, maybe with time pressure. In that situation I would ignore obvious red flags like a business asking for gift cards.
I need to be successful every time, the scammers need to be successful only once.
Victims of the gift card scam don't really think that the government wants you to pay your fines/taxes in Google Play money. The implication is that a government employee will make the problem go away if you pay them under the table. The victim is being made to feel that they're a participant in the scam, which makes them less likely to report it once they figure out they're getting cheated.
I've watched some scambaiting videos and I never see it approached like that. They do sometimes inoke avoiding taxes to get targets to buy gift cards or mark a transfer of money as personal.
That people buy gift cards at all boggles my mind. You're buying a currency with less versatility (and hence value) for 1:1. Where I live, we have perfectly fine government-issued bills to gift if that's your thing. Somehow, that's considered a bad present? Because it's lazy? Because it doesn't show your opinion on clothes brands? I don't get it, from the consumer's perspective. To the shop/mall it's a clear winner, since you know some receivers won't use their cards. It's a proper arbitrage to them.
This is one more very good reason not to indulge the insanity that is
a "cashless society". If you let go of those government issued bills
be sure that in no time at all you'll have nothing but fragmented,
private "smart" currencies each hobbled with its own insidious
restrictions.
Maybe. It's easy enough to send money to someone using the phone these days, so I'm not sure cashless would lead to gift cards here in Switzerland (or my native Sweden.) But I agree it's not a very fun package to open when it's just a promise to use Twint/Swish to transfer money.
Oh, maybe the real use for gift cards is that the receiver can't haggle. "I know you wanted to give me $200, but how about we make that an even $500 instead?" :)
I mean, I don't really see that happening. Sweden is for all intents and purposes cashless these days, and I don't think we have more giftcards now than we did in the 90s when cash was commonplace.
To clarify about the cashlessness of Sweden: cash still exists, and you can still get government printed bills, but many places have stopped accepting them, and these days whenever someone has non-foreign cash it becomes the topic of discussion: "why the hell do you have those?"
Honestly I don't know that they're useful for anything except donating to homeless(and even they usually have swish these days) or buying illegal drugs
I had a debit card when I was 14, but I think you can get one even sooner if your parents sign off in it. I think one of the reasons I didn't get a debit card sooner was because when I was a kid, cash was still relatively common (yes, I'm old - I remember using cash in Sweden!)
In France, when I was a kid, there were some cards you could get that are usually for kids. They actually belong to the parents, and are attached to their accounts. I think it's also fairly limited in what amount you can pay, and doesn't draw from the main account but needs to be "topped-up".
I've never had one, though, so I don't know the specifics.
Apparently, BNP Paribas (one of the major local banks) now has a "teen offer", for people 12-17 yo. This seems to still be attached to the parents' account with the same bank, but the kids get to "manage" the account.
Whether the form is electronic or physical is irrelevant to my
argument. If you read it again carefully you'll see that it's about
state-backed versus private currencies. Don't let the technology
dazzle you.
In a way they are, the difference is that they have the issuer network and banks' reputation behind it and so the number of shops that accept it is not a singleton set.
Isn't wedding gift being cash the standard thing? Do you bring gift items to weddings?
I always thought the standard of bringing cash to help them pay back for the cost of the event was standard everywhere. This is a Jewish thing?
It kind of explains why weddings in Israel are so expensive, I heard it's almost cheaper to buy flight tickets to buy wedding dress in another country.
It's not the standard here. In person and in media, there's a table full of wrapped gifts for the bride and groom. While I'm sure nobody would turn down cash, they wouldn't feel as appreciative of it as something that was bought with them in mind. Especially things that they'll still have 20 or 50 years later, and it brings back a memory of their wedding.
It's very culturally specific. Definitely not WASPy normal in the US.
Traditionally, people often registered somewhere like a department store or a kitchen goods store. Some of the function of gifts was historically to get a young couple moving out of their parents' houses a start. Of course, these days a lot of people are pretty well set-up before they get married.
> In order for a gift to serve its social function, it must be specifically matched to its recipient.
That's tricky though. Often enough, people really don't know or think enough to match properly, which causes the gift to end up being offloaded somewhere else later, and/or breeds silent resentment.
It's not just when people don't know what the recipient is interested in, but importantly, when they think they know, but don't understand that you shouldn't buy something related to someone's interest/hobby if you yourself aren't comparably proficient in it.
> Cash is not specifically matched to its recipient.
In some sense, it's maximally matched to every recipient, by virtue of being universal. Question is, is the gift supposed to be about recipient, or about the gift-giver? Super specific gifts are often about the latter.
My mom recently revealed to us that as we became adults, they specifically bought from places with a cash return policy, and bought us the most ugly, useless thing they could find there.
Yeah OK but then there are 100s of other general principles you need to know in life. Calling someone stupid every time someone doesn't follow one of the things that's obvious to you is not constructive. We need things like this to go public to avoid them from happening, and shaming victims doesn't help here. The author is already extremely apologetic in this post, and still there are people saying he's stupid for almost falling for it. I am usually quite rational, but I've done some pretty stupid and embarassing things at times where I was not thinking everything through. I imagine most people have.
Imagine you go to vacation to Paris, take an evening walk and get mugged. Your attitude is like the local saying "what an idiot for walking around in that neighborhood at night".
I think the part that makes it more difficult to detect that this is a scam for someone that never encountered it is that it relies on the difference between real money in your account and "money" that can vanish at any point, you just don't know it. This is a case that most people don't encounter outside of this kind of scam. Another unintuitive part is that even if the rules of the bank say the money is yours, it actually isn't if it came from a third-party that was hacked/scammed/whatever.
The gift card thing is something that should trigger an alarm even if you never heard of it.
I believe she was targeted by the ruling political party, who have a history of harassing and doxxing their critics, (or the current indian government itself) to demoralise her and besmirch her reputation as a journalist. And that happened. She is now attacked by her critics for her "naivety", and ridiculed by them, and she went into depression and took a break. (It all points to that as she was never asked for any money, as is is usual with these kind of scam. )
I seriously doubt that they would waste their time on this. They have much more powerful tools at their disposal.
1. Aatish Taseer: His OCI card (something like dual citizenship, but not quite) was cancelled. He claims he's been told not to even attempt to visit India ever again.
2. Rana Ayyub: she created a donation website and got clobbered with tax evasion.
3. Numerous NGOs: including Green Peace and Amnesty have had their licenses revoked.
There are many more such cases, but off the top of my head, these jumped out.
I mean, its not all that common. I don't get checks that often, almost everything is handled electronically. But checks are still a way to distribute money physically that isn't cash, so it serves some purpose.
Most Americans (especially those under 30) do not own a checkbook and don't know how to write a check. That is part of why this scam works. 20 years ago Checks were common enough that every adult understood that Check's aren't real money and people would be more cautious until it clears.
But the fact that now everything is instantaneous, Checks are maybe the last exception to that. So someone with no knowledge of checks might assume that it is "real" money. I think few people understand the differences even between a cashiers check, a personal check, and a money order.
Luckily Banks are more aware of these scams and tellers have been trained to ask A LOT of questions about wire transfers before executing them. It sounds like in the posted article, that OP actually got a warning about this from the banker how this is non-reversible. But again, even OP admitted that he had never completed a wire transfer before. I've only ever made 2 wire transfers in my life (and I'm 36) and both were to buy a house. Few Americans have complete a wire transfer and probably don't understand the implications of it either.
So I think this scam actually preys and relies on the fact that little knowledge exists of wiretransfers and checks.
Like another person said, the decline of checks in the US is probably much of the reason why these scams are taking off. In the 80s or 90s everyone knew of the possibility of "writing a bad check". My local stores would even have lists of people posted at the checkout who they wouldn't accept checks from due to writing bad checks. Even if didn't use checks back then, you'd be aware of this possibility. But now, younger people are not as familiar with how they work.
Checks are a brilliant idea with a terrible implementation.
Idea: physical financial instrument with a specified payee (OR a bearer instrument, using the same format!), with a completely unconstrained denomination, which the payer can draw up on demand and in the field.
Implementation: reveal enough information about your account that anyone can "authorize" arbitrary transfers; take weeks and weeks to learn whether the funds are actually available and there's absolutely no way to convince your bank to reveal whether the transaction is verified, at any point; etc.
this one was delayed because it was sketchy.
I deposited a check using my bank's app last night after my bank closed and it cleared in about 20 minutes.
Every day somebody is born who hasn't heard one of these stories! And honestly one thing about life is that you generally are slowly building up trust with people, and then can be asked to do things that are totally legit all the time.
Of course skepticism is required, but I know a lot of people who got dealt a lot of shit by their (real) employers simply by not understanding what is normal or not, as it was their first job.
This is slightly different to most. Would it have got this far it is was a cold contact? Probably not.
What this group did was lure someone into thinking they're part of a company as you're more likely to do what your employer tells you and you're far more likely to trust your employer too.
It probably pays off for the scammers to spend time this way as they probably get a much better conversion ratio.
I suspect that given enough effort and the right circumstances you too could be scammed. And that's pretty much the problem: scammers have near infinite time to set you up, it's their day job after all and you have a limited time to verify their bona fides.
Delta airlines gives gift cards as payment for volunteering on oversold flights. Really doesn’t help dissuade people from “$50 Panera Bread” gift cards from being involved in transactions not involving Panera Bread.
Same for the gift card scams. No legit business or government on earth in any industry asks for gift cards as payment! This is like an absolute ironclad fact of the universe. But so many people still fall for it!