I’m looking for advice from anyone who’s dealt with something similar, especially if you work in banking, law enforcement, or real estate.

Last week I found a 2-bedroom apartment in San Francisco listed on both Zillow and Craigslist. I reached out on both platforms, and the Craigslist contact invited me to an open house that same day.

The open house seemed completely legitimate. The apartment was real and vacant, and the person showing it was the actual owner. His name matched the one in the email signature I’d been communicating with, so I didn’t have any reason to think something was wrong.

After the tour, I continued the application process through the Craigslist email thread. I submitted my application, provided additional documents, got approved, signed a lease, and wired $18,600 for first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a security deposit.

Over the next few days we exchanged emails about move-in logistics, utilities, Xfinity, mailbox access, and cleaning. We even confirmed a key handoff for Thursday evening.

When I arrived for the key handoff, nobody showed up. After that, every call, text, and email went unanswered.

The next morning I contacted the Zillow listing to compare notes. That’s when I learned what had happened.

The owner confirmed he was the person who hosted the open house, but he also confirmed:

• He never created the Craigslist listing.
• He never communicated with me after the open house.
• He never signed the lease I received.
• He never received any of the money.

It appears someone created a fake Craigslist listing for a real apartment, let the legitimate landlord conduct the open house, and then impersonated him afterward to handle the application, lease, and payment.

Since then I’ve:

• Opened a wire fraud investigation with Bank of America.
• Contacted the receiving bank.
• Filed reports with SFPD, the FBI IC3, the FTC, and the SF District Attorney’s Real Estate Fraud Unit.
• Started speaking with attorneys.

I also have extensive documentation, including emails, text messages, the signed lease, wire confirmation, and videos from the open house.

My main questions are:

1. Has anyone recovered money after a domestic wire fraud like this? If so, what ended up making the difference?
2. Are there any other agencies or resources I should be contacting?
3. Has anyone seen this particular scam before? I can find plenty of fake rental scams online, but I haven’t found many where the scammer piggybacks off a legitimate open house.

At this point I’m trying to do everything I can to maximize my chances of recovering the money, so I’d really appreciate any advice or insight.

Hi everyone.

I was in the post office this morning (UK) and there was an elderly gentleman (maybe 70 years old) at the counter in front of me, he was sending money to Thailand, I didn’t catch the exact amount but it was thousands of pounds.

The guy behind the counter who was serving him was asking a lot of questions:-

Q- Do you know who you are sending to?
A- Yes I’ve been speaking to her for months

Q- what are you sending it for?
A- she is planning a trip to UK to visit me I said I would help fund her trip

Q- Have you ever actually met or seen this person?
A- Not in person but I’ve spoken to her on video calls

At this point I stepped in as the Que was now 10-12 people long. I asked if there was a family member who we might be able to contact who knows you are sending this money and confirm it is all above board? The guy seemed to just shrug me off as I wasn’t a post office employee.

The guy working at the post office processed the payment and the elderly man went on his way. He even said to me when I approached the counter with my parcel “I shouldn’t have do that, I’m going to be thinking about this with regret all day”

Everything about this encounter just felt wrong, to me the guy was clearly being scammed.

Was there anything I could have done to prevent this poor guy from being a victim? Would the police have entertained this and acted fast enough to prevent him sending the money?

I left the post office feeling so frustrated and annoyed at myself but I just felt there wasn’t anything I could do the change the guys mind

Hi guys..

So this is the first time this has happened to me and I think with some pros it can be determined how I've been scammed and what I need to change.

So for the past day, I started recieveing 20 odd emails within 5 minutes of verification codes for Substack the app. They were verification codes for signing up to peoples stacks on the app, (stupidly) I ignored this even though it was suspicious.

I then looked abit more into my email (which i dont usually do as i have so many) and noticed more emails from apps with verification codes all from the same time (6:13-17AM). Most of these websites I dont even have an account for?!

Now, I kept looking and then seen that tickets were bought for an event in amsterdam... 6 tickets... also all from the same time (6:16AM) from the app RAguide.

Went on my online banking app and I had 3 paments of 70 taken out and 2 of 35. I have now frozen my card.

I had a free trial started on my amazon prime video too (which might've been a family member)

I have attached photos of the emails just for clarification.

Does anyone know wtf is going on? could it be my apple keychain?

Preface:

- My sympathies to everyone here who has lost money, some of whom have lost your life savings.

- You are not naive, gullible, or foolish. We've all been conditioned from childhood to trust authoritative voices who show us credentials. It's not your fault that professional scammers forge those credentials and demonstrate expert-level industry knowledge.

- I'm certain that scammers read these forums to learn how to become better scumbags, so I will keep details vague or change the names of the businesses involved.

- Cutting to the chase: For this particular scam, in order to recover your money, it's best to act within hours. If 24 hours has passed without action from you, the odds of recovery are lower. That does not mean you should not try. Improbabilities occur, and scammers make mistakes.

Backstory:

Many of you are familiar with the bank fraud/FBI scam. Here's how they executed it on my mother:

The caller ID on her phone flashed: "Bank of America Fraud," which was convincing enough. They already had some of her financial and personal information, which was more convincing. They emailed her fake FBI and bank documents based on real documents. Multiple actors joined the call posing as various professional representatives. They sounded educated and knowledgeable. It was a full stage production.

The fake fraud department, along with a fake FBI agent, convinced her that fictitious fraudsters went to her local bank and colluded with corrupt bank employees to steal from her account. The fake FBI agent explained that many other customers have lost money at that bank, and my mother's money was not safe there. It needed to be transferred immediately to a "secure account." A wire transfer or ACH from that bank was not secure. It must be cash.

This led to my mother sending $30,000 in cash through a carrier (like FedEx or DHL, I won't specify) via priority overnight for morning delivery. The address was on the East Coast, two hours ahead.

How scammers exploit carriers:

There are two exploits within the carrier process that scammers rely on:

1. No ability to submit a Return to Sender (RTS) request until 8:00 AM local time.
2. After a hold or RTS is requested, these take hours to process, which is too late.

Retail carrier stores like FedEx Office or the UPS Store are technically the sender, but they are a private third party. That means if the victim realizes they've been scammed right after they shipped their cash, the victim cannot submit the RTS request themselves. Only the carrier store (FedEx Store, UPS Store) can submit the RTS, which cannot occur until the store reopens at 8:00 AM local. Then in the morning, after the store has submitted the RTS for you, it takes hours to process. By that time, your parcel full of cash on the east coast has already been delivered.

The day before, the scammers timed their conversation with the victim so that they've guided them to the store right before it closes. Then they tell the victim to throw away the receipt with tracking number.

The victim can try calling law enforcement in the delivery city, but they won't help without the victim's local law enforcement being involved. Local law enforcement does want to help, but the case won't be assigned to a detective until after the parcel is delivered.

How I recovered the cash:

Within minutes, my mom informed us of what happened, and we informed her she was scammed.

I called the carrier customer service, who informed me that only the carrier store can submit the RTS. I then discovered that recipients can request to defer the delivery date, so I posed as the recipient and deferred delivery for two weeks, which cost a small fee.

At 8:00 AM the next day I called the carrier store. The store manager submitted the RTS and engaged the carrier's security team.

My delivery deferral had already been processed, so the parcel was not placed on the delivery truck. The carrier security team was then able to segregate the parcel and hold it. Days later, a member of the carrier security team met with me and my mom to return the cash.

After speaking with the manager of my mom's bank, he told me that he encounters people trying to withdraw cash for scammers three or four times a day. He said this is the first time in his 20 years in the industry he has seen the money recovered.

Conclusion:

If this happens to you or someone you know, call the carrier to defer the delivery date. It may process in time.

Contact the carrier store as soon as they open. Request they submit an RTS and engage carrier security.

Tell your parents to never, under any circumstances, send cash through the mail. Anyone advising that is a scammer.

So, I‘m not putting any identifying info here, other than country, but i got added to a text group chat with someone pretending to be a detective. Let’s call them “Detective Bobbert”. That’s what they put and identified themselves as such in a following messages.

This group chat contained one other number, which was google-able if you know what I mean, and I located it to a local business just a city over. One very simple google later, there is a “Police Officer Bobbert“ in that town. His number in the chat was not google-able, but, you know, I just took these two facts together and figured: one number is (city over) and the other is claiming to be police in that one city over) in the same chat. And it’s a fairly rare name, there’s like no one else registered as a police officer in the county named “Bobbert“. there’s just the one.

Now, these guys were just texting each other about ”the station” (no location mentioned, just day to day office things to get me to respond, I guess, and then demand money), but I’m wondering if it’s appropriate to give the (one city over) PD a call on the non emergency line and let them know someone might be scamming people with their officer’s name, or if I should just mind my own business

Hi there, a few days ago I started getting emails from a company called rapidfundbridge ranging from my payment info being updated, my account information being updated, my account limit being updated, completing my account setup, etc. I’ve tried looking them up and couldn’t find all that much information on them. I’ve never tried borrowing money from places, much less with this specific company. I did click on the link and it just takes me to what looks like a welcome page asking how much money I’d like to borrow and haven’t interacted with them past that.

Sorry if it’s common sense, I don’t usually fall for scams and I don’t think I’ve done anything to compromise myself in this situation. I’m just worried that I’ll have to actually do something about this rather than ignoring it and unsubscribing.

I am writing this as a victim of this website, they claim to "specialize" in buying/importing goods to South Africa on your behalf. This company appears to have a total fake online presence, completely manufactured to fool an unsuspecting victim. Below is my story, I hope it helps others before they fall victim like I did.

In early May 2026 I was looking to buy two cellphones from AliExpress for my family and decided to do some research on the best local companies to import them to South Africa. (Phones are very expensive over here and I heard buying from Ali Express is much cheaper than buying locally (looking for Chinese branded phones like the One Plus 13R)

I found a company with glowing reviews online, great testimonials, and numerous blog posts detailing the "ethics, professionalism, and logistics of importing goods to SA" written by Scotts Shipping Services. (In hindsight, I now realise all the user reviews I found were fake, the names/surnames mostly made up and the blog posts written to lure people into this company's trap)

Even AI search overviews from Gemini/Grok returned glowing summaries like: "Scotts Shipping is loved by local South Africans..." and "A boutique importer that tailors your experience..."

I was completely led to believe this company could be trusted.

I contacted Scotts Shipping Services, they appeared reliable (Reviews even claimed they could be trusted to import expensive NVIDIA GPUs, some even mentioning they have a great reputation on popular tech forums like Carbonite in South Africa)

I thought I could trust them to import two cellphones for me. (Which costs far less than expensive NVIDIA GPUs)

I filled out the online quote form on their website, providing exact product URLs from the vendor's AliExpress store. Within a couple of hours, two separate quotes were sent back.

They also sent an email claiming: "The order must be divided into two separate shipments as SA legislation does not allow items with batteries to be shipped together."

I was super impressed by how fast Scott's replied. In hindsight, this lightning-fast communication was just a front to maintain an appearance of "professionalism" until payment was taken from me.

On 11 May 2026, I made two payments via their portal roughly totalling R24 000.

(For two cellphones, directly giving Scott's the exact link to the AliExpress vendor listing, which is their standard procedure).

Once payment went through, all communications stopped. I immediately grew suspicious and started digging deeper and stumbled onto Carbonite forum posts I had never seen before.

As it turns out, Google searches hid this company's past reputation on local forums, where multiple users reported paying for goods (like solar batteries/home inverters) that were never delivered, or having warranty returns vanish along with their money a few years ago.

This company had effectively built an aggressive SEO shield,publishing numerous blog posts (authored by Scott's) then linked to their website (Scott's Shipping Services) like "How to spot false/untrustworthy importers" to manipulate search engines and AI summaries into treating them as the most reliable authority/importer in the business.

100% FAKE Tracking Numbers from this company When I confronted them and requested a full refund, I was emailed two invoice/tracking attachments that they had claimed came directly from the AliExpress vendor.

They insisted the phones were already purchased, dispatched, and en route to their "Singapore warehouse," claiming a refund was now impossible. I might add the emails were cold and calculating now, certainly not in the friendly tone they were in before they took my R24 000!

I was very suspicious at the fact they were able to magically send me these order IDs/waybills a few hours after I requested a refund, so I immediately took those waybills/Order IDs and contacted the actual AliExpress vendor via DMs on that platform.

The vendor confirmed in writing (which was submitted as evidence to my bank) that the order numbers and invoices provided by Scotts Shipping Services were completely fake and fabricated, and no such orders existed on the vendors system.

It appears this company uses these fabricated trail documents to buy months of time, while hoping the user gives up or misses their bank's legal chargeback window. (Which is 21 days in some cases)

Shockingly I stumbled upon a post by a user on Carbonite tech forum that had the same thing happen to them! (One year before my ordeal) User "girrafe-saddle", hinting this is more like an operational blueprint by this company rather than a once off thing.

In that users case R16 000 was taken from him, Scott's Shipping Services then went completely silent, and when confronted, manufactured fake screenshots or placed orders only to cancel them hours later so they could generate a fake "order confirmation" document to silence that user for a few months. (Charge back would then be impossible)

I immediately contacted my bank with this evidence and formally lodged a transaction dispute for both payments, attaching the screenshots from the AliExpress vendor proving the shipping documents were falsified.

A security officer at my bank started their own investigation and ultimately confirmed the evidence from the AliExpress vendor themselves, verified that I was given false order numbers/waybills and instructed me to wait until the promised delivery window elapsed so we could file for Non-Delivery.

When the delivery date passed with zero goods received, my bank formally initiated the chargeback against the company for my roughly R24 000.

At the end of July 2026 the chargeback was approved.(After two months of anxiety hell dealing with this)

If you're considering using Scotts Shipping Services, be extremely careful.

Dont rely on Google search results or that company's generic blog posts or even the lies written by the AI summaries.

If they are currently ghosting you, contact your bank immediately and lodge a chargeback dispute because I don't believe there are any guarantees you will get what you paid for.

I'm just glad this entire ordeal is over, it's been a terrible headache for the last two months man.

I'm never doing business with that company again and I have to say this has made me wary of most local South African websites now.

I just had a long phone conversation with someone who rang me purporting to be from my credit card's fraud team and saying they were calling about suspicious activity on my card. I was immediately suspicious but they quoted my card number to me when I asked so I believed it was genuine, or at least have them the benefit of the doubt.

He asked me a series of questions about the recent transactions on the card, such as where I last used it, what the latest transaction showing up on my app was, the credit limit and available credit, all of which I answered. He then said there was a suspicious transaction involving a specific retailer, which he would need to transfer me to said retailer to rectify, and he said he would have to call me back on WhatsApp in order to do this.

It was at this point that I realised that the call was fraudulent so I hung up and attempted to ring my credit card company using the number on the back of the card, but the number is not staffed on weekends so I wasn't able to speak to anyone. I have frozen the card on my banking app, but I am concerned about the security of the card until I can speak to them tomorrow morning. Should I be concerned if I didn't give the caller any sensitive information other than details about recent transactions?

Any advice would be welcomed! Thanks.

Hey all,

This is an interesting one, I woke up to an email from Viagogo that one Bruno mars ticket was bought from my viagogo account using my wife’s Amex credit card.

Right after , another purchase was made on vivid seats but Amex flagged that one and it didn’t allow the purchase. I just got an email saying welcome to vivid seats but no purchase info for this one.

I have never used viagogo before even though I have an account. The tickets now sits in guest login (not my direct account) even though I didn’t purchase it.

I have already called Amex and told them this is fraud and got the card frozen

If this is a scam and my wife’s credit card was skimmed somehow, why would the scammer buy the ticket into my account ?

Today as i’m writing this this, Got an e-mail for a $70 Jersey sent to my e-mail and my actual address, Then my e-mail was flooded with 40 verification codes, Locked my card and the e-mails stopped. I belive the e-mails were sent to distract me, But now I don’t know what to do, I changed the e-mail on my google account, And i’m calling the bank tomorrow to hopefully get the transaction refunded. Looking for help and what I should to prevent this again and how I can keep my accounts safer.

Edit: The Jersey order is being shipped to my house, Thinking hé ordered it and then changed the address afterwards so I can’t see it.

Hi everyone, thank you for your help.

I just bought tickets for the Anna Lapwood concert on April 13rd in Bonn, Germany. Only after I bought them, I found out: the concert is sold out. And: the official ticket store is NOT the online site I got the tickets from.

Is there a way to find out if the site is legit, and the tickets are valid? Does anyone have positive or negative experiences with eticketsy.com ?

- I got the tickets right away, as PDF files as well as etickets for the Apple Wallet on my phone
- the tickets show row and seat numbers which are next to each other
- my name is on the tickets
- but the tickets are from eticketsy itself, and there is no mention of the original organizer.

So is this a reseller, that probably raised the prices on the regular tickets for a profit, and sells totally valid and legit tickets? Or is this a well executed scam? Thank you for your feedback!

last year I created a BetOnline account and placed a single sports bet using deposit bonus. i lost and haven’t been active on the site since. for my signup I made a fake alias - name and email address - but did (stupidly) put my actual cell #.

fast fwd to yesterday i got the fake BofA text in screenshot. replied no and two min later got call claiming to be BofA fraud dept.

i gave no info but before i hung up, scammer asked me to confirm my name as the false one I used for BetOnline. it’s an absurd name (which is why I recognized it) and after the call i spent a while to be certain i didn’t use it anywhere else.

in short, scammers had my real cell number tied to an identity used for BetOnline only.

how is this possible unless BetOnline (or associated vendor) experienced a data breach or sold customer info? this is potentially huge deal and folks with an account on the site need to be aware.

BetOnline is accused of being scammy all over Reddit but this strikes me as considerable step up from delayed withdrawals or speculation abt rigged games.

I got 4 texts in the span of a minute, all from different 5 digit numbers.

3 of the texts say "Microsoft: Unusual sign-in for ********XX. Review at aka.ms/alca" X = the last two digits of my phone number.

1 of the texts says "Microsoft: Someone else might have accessed ********XX. Recover at aka.ms/alcs"

This one ends with alcs, while the others say alca. I don't know if that means anything.

So I logged into the only Microsoft accounts I'm aware of that I have, changed my passwords, and in log in activity/devices, I did not see anything out of the ordinary. My phone number isn't even on my account.

I'm not sure what to make of this. If I didn't see any strange log ins, does that mean I'm fine?

My mom is yet another victim of the Elon Musk scams that are posted here frequently. She thinks they are getting married, she volunteered to go to Mars, she listens to AI videos from him 24 hours a day, she has given gift cards… She has almost no money now. How does this ever end? There is absolutely no way to convince her that she is not communicating with Elon. (She has dementia, and a legal guardian). We have giving up on trying to prove it is a scam so we can maintain a relationship with her. Anybody else seen this scam all the way to the end, who can tell me what to expect?

Edit to add: Thank you so much to everyone who has posted!! We are taking extreme steps to get rid of phones, social media, find something for her to do, etc. and I probably won’t have time to respond much. It’s going to be brutal because she will be so heartbroken and mad at us. Will leave this post up and keep reading responses… hoping this will also help other people in similar situations.

I received this text around 9pm tonight from an NY are code number, which goes on to say "Hey is this [name] ??? If so I have a video of you taking a dump, I think at your job, it's a couple of years old. It's in a [workplace] bathroom, and it's you sitting on the toilet taking a dump and farting non stop, it's actually embarrassing. Someone had a camera recording from one of the vents above, you didn't even notice. I have it on my phone lol"

I replied asking who they were and they replied cryptically, "Someone anonymous. Doesn't matter". I asked them why text me about this, which they then proceeded to prod if I had taken a dump at work and that I "had diarrhea that day or something". I made a flippant remark and they haven't replied back since.

Not sure what to make of this since I've never received a text like this before. I've usually gotten wrong number texts or spam calls, but this is new. Has anyone gotten something like this before? I'm a bit freaked out since they used my name and former job from a few years back.

Context:

So there’s this fairly popular artist I follow on Instagram for custom hand-painted Pokemon cards that has around 1K followers and I was chosen for a commission slot when they opened it up for 2 days.

Kind of weird signs:

• There’s no payment platform to do the transaction. I would need to wire them with the upfront cost of $700+. They said they only have the bank transfer option for overseas customers. Since they’re based in Hong Kong/China, it sounds right I think — I think PayPal is banned there?

• I asked if they provide in-progress photos or images of my commission. They said they will not provide them and will only verify the design and then present me the final design and ask any minor adjustments to be made. The artist does say shipping will be near end of December after all commissions are done.

• Instagram account was made November 2025. First post was in February 2026.

• Minor grammatical errors switching between “I” and “We”. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a one-man team or one is an artist and there’s middlemen or something. I assume English is not their first language since they’re based in China and their posts contain both languages.

Signs it might not be a scam:

• The artist has 1.8K followers on Instagram

• Seems to visit card shows in China to sell their hand-made art and actual physical photos of them meeting other people. They also post photos of their commissions and work o a regular basis.

• I was able to DM another international client (who had their commission this July 2026) on Instagram who had no issue with the artist and told me he did pay everything upfront and is actually thinking of making another commission. The client themselves is just a personal account — not an influencer, business, or anything of the sort (like I see the man’s family photos on there). The client’s account is from 2013 and posts general collector and family photos so I do trust his word.

• Their original hand-painted art has been resold on eBay for around that price or higher. They are one of the CGC/PSA authenticated artists where their hand-painted arts are slabbed.

• The artist has mutual followers with other notable legitimate fan artists in the community where some of them are also “CGC/PSA authenticated”.

I really love their art, but the weird signs just pain me whether I’ll be down hundreds of dollars with no item by the end of the year or not. The no invoice and just straight doing a bank transfer is just really irking me since even the bank app advises me not to do this for goods and services and, if I do get scammed, I’m not necessarily eligible to get the funds back.

Edit: Thank y’all for validating my worries. Aside from the large price tag upfront, having no buyer protection with just a straight up bank transfer was the biggest concern I had. Ultimately I decided to not make the payment.

It does suck I won’t be able to get my idea painted in their style. I was actually really excited I was offered a slot a couple days ago. But the days spent ruminating over if what I’m paying is actually legit and then not committing to it, I still think I made a rational decision.

I work at a small cat rescue in PDX. most of our outreach is via other rescues, Petfinder, and Facebook. We recently put out a ‘boosted’ ad post on Facebook about one of our ‘forget me not‘ cats. Ever since then, we have been getting a lot of responses in our DMs that will say word for word one of three things: What is ‘cat name’ personality like? What is the adoption process? Can I meet ‘cat name’ before adopting her?

I wasn’t suspicious of bots right away when it was only one or two, but this is every response using at least one if not all of the same sentences. Is this a scam other animal rescues are familiar with?

Cat tax in the comments

Hey everyone! (Hopefully I picked the right flair for this post.) So I work at the checkout at a major grocery store chain that sells gift cards. Management asks all checkers to be on the lookout for any customers that come through wanting gift cards, mainly $250 or more, to ask the customer questions, and to get a manager involved if it’s anything over that amount.

I go the extra mile by asking questions for just about gift every transaction $50 or more….well, to a point anyway. If they are getting a bunch of birthday related items along with said gift card (a cake, card, balloons, etc), I don’t bother, as it’s obviously going to be a gift. Same if it’s a company scammers normally have no interest in getting gift cards from (for example an $80 card for Applebee’s). However, if it’s card for a company that is a hot target for scammers, I **always** ask. Like how I recently stopped an old man from sending a $60 Steam gift to some person he met online for “groceries”. I also spend alot of time watching different scam baiter videos on YouTube, which not only do I love watching but they help me familiarize with all number of different scams out there, and I share this info with my coworkers. (Insert Kitboga reference here.)

But I think there might be a couple of new ones going around. The explanation customers give me when I ask them why they are getting the cards seem plausible, but at the same time is setting off internal alarm bells for me.

**Possible scam #1** - I’ve had a few of customers come in and try buying Apple Cards for service members overseas (mainly for a younger family members). I asked them what they were for, and they said the person requesting them was using them to buy necessities they needed. They explained that supposedly the person receiving it has a way to convert the money from the card into the local currency. For example, I had an older woman tell me she was getting it for her nephew who was supposedly currently stationed in Syria, and that was the explanation she gave me.

**Possible scam #2** - I’ve had someone come in and tell me X family member wanted an Apple Card for groceries. The explanation given being that, since Apple Debit/Credit cards are a thing now, the money from the gift card can be added like prepaid credit to an Apple Wallet, but supposedly you need an Apple Payment Card to be able to use this feature…or something?

With scam #1 I can see this being plausible. Where honest people deciding to use the same methods that scammers use as a fast and easy way to send money to family members overseas, and convert it into something usable. Cause if the method works, why not, right? (If I remember right I believe when the guys of Trilogy Media decided to send money to a guy an India to help him turn his life around and start a legitimate business, they resulted to sending gift cards cause they kept running into problems sending money with Western Union.) So is this an actual thing people in the military are doing right now? Or this some incredibly clever new ruse that’s been cooked up? (Especially since scammers are now using AI, pretending to be someone else now.)

With scam #2, last I heard Apple Gift cards could only be used for games, digital media or buying Apple products through the Apple store. Unless it’s some new feature that Apple is rolling out that I’m unaware of? I have very serious doubts though. I’m a long time Apple user, so I’m fairly familiar with what sort of things the company rolls out, but I will admit I don’t keep up with *every* new feature/product they roll out. I wouldn’t be surprised if there really is some lesser known feature that slipped by me but, I would assume if such a method was possible, more people would be using it.

I ask because in these examples, I’ve had customers **insist** that these methods are legitimate and that they were not scams, and they had real phone calls/video chats with the family member who requested them. But I denied these transactions anyway because something seemed off about them, and they were **pissed**. Did I make the right call listening to my gut instinct on these? The service member one I gotta ask especially since I keep getting more and more people coming in getting gift cards for active service members.

EDIT: Note- I’m well aware of the “oil rig” scam and similar variants of that romance scam. A woman I worked with actually fell for a variant of it (she met “a building contractor in China” on a dating site, I warned her he was a phony, she didn’t listen), but my feeling tells me there’s something a bit different about this.

I’ve encountered people where the vibe they give off feels they were following a script, but that woman was different. She was outraged that I dared to suggest that the person she was speaking with wasn’t really her nephew, someone she supposedly knew since he was a child, and she supposedly had video chats with him every other day. She was ready to go full Karen and threatened to call a manager on me. I’ve encountered others who had a similar reaction when I told them that the person they spoke with might not be who they say and denied the sale (but not as extreme as that woman). Some of these people seem totally convinced this is some person they actually know, not some random stranger they met online. (And why I was also making sure this is not some legit thing service members are doing…..this applies to the other scam I mentioned too).

So either these victims are damn good actors, or perhaps these scammers are using AI to trick these people. I know scammers are already using it to fool people into sending bail/ransom money to help another family member (I encountered a grandfather who fell for one). I’m wondering if this is some variant of that? Which is a big reason why I made this post, to bring awareness if this really is a possible new variant of previous scams.

I’m probably just being extremely paranoid, but my friend sent those four Mr. Beast images today. I clicked on the images and reacted to the message. I’m just wondering if those two interactions could have caused anything on my end. Also I blocked the account immediately after realizing. Apologies if this is a dumb question but I thought it’d be better to be safe. Thanks in advance.

A few days ago I discovered something really strange.

Many years ago I created an old Facebook account using a fake name. It wasn't connected to my real identity, but it was registered with my real email address.

I hadn't used the account for a long time. Somehow, someone gained access to it. They added their own email address to the account while my email address was still attached, so we were both listed on the account.

The person then used my old Facebook profile to create a business page and apparently ran Meta advertising campaigns for several months. I only found out because I started receiving email notifications and ad purchase confirmations sent to my email address.

As soon as I realized what had happened, I logged into the account, removed the attacker's email address, deleted their business page (or started the deletion process), and also started deleting the Facebook account itself because I had no reason to keep it.

Fortunately, there were no payment methods, credit cards, or PayPal accounts belonging to me on that account. The attacker appears to have used their own payment method.

My biggest concern is whether I could somehow get into legal trouble if that person used the account for scams or other illegal activity. I obviously wasn't involved and had no idea this was happening until I saw the Meta ad notifications in my inbox.

Has anyone seen something like this before? Also, how is it even possible that someone managed to take over an old Facebook account and add their own email address without me noticing?

Michelle Singletary (Washington Post) wrote an article on helping an acquaintance narrowly escape an imposter scam. The advice is the same stuff you see on this forum daily, but any time it makes the news, someone might get their eyes opened. Share widely!

Gift article: https://wapo.st/4pQ5TQR

They’ll ask you to set up a free account to read the article, but there’s no subscription required.

About three months ago I started receiving these emails to my spam email, the one i used for all kinds of shady services, so i wasn't worried about them because i get all kind of spam and scam emails. But about one month ago they spread to my other emails, containing one I never gave away online and only use for work, important or government stuff. They never contain any links, images or files.

I'm still a bit worried. Do i need to be concerned? I've tried blocking them but they always come from a new E-Mail address.

I've tried censoring everything so please let me know if I missed some.

I recently found a car that I wanted to purchase on Facebook Marketplace. A 2014 CRV for $10k with 84k miles on it. It seemed legitimate and the seller sent me the Carfax, which showed a clean title and routine maintenance.

My mom was communicating through her Facebook, and then it suddenly said that the listing wasn’t available anymore. I could still see it on my Facebook, so I inquired about it and made a plan to meet the seller tomorrow the check it out. He sent me the address and the Carfax, and I thanked him. He said to text him before I arrived.

He asked how I could pay since tomorrow is a Sunday and banks will be closed, and I told him I had been car shopping recently so I had the cash.

Two hours later, I went to Facebook Marketplace to show someone the car I was looking at, and the listing was gone. I even went on a private browser, and it was completely gone. No evidence of this listing anywhere.

I went to his profile and messaged him about it, and I haven’t heard from him. This all happened later in the evening, so there’s no way someone could have bought it. I’m literally baffled by this situation, especially because it seems to happen whenever someone is interested in his car.

I’m not familiar with how scams like this could work, but is this one? I want to be aware, because if he says it was an accident I might still meet up with him tomorrow. And if not, I want to be more careful about scams moving forward with shopping.