Mega-Thread - Share Stories Of How You've Been Scammed, Cheated, Swindled

[Roy]

My uncle was a criminal growing up and while age tempered the severity of his crimes, his narcissist manipulative behavior has never left even at age 63.

My sister lived at his house for 7 years without paying a single cent. I moved in temporarily to get a foot in a new province and he started overcharging me $900 for a room, then offers me a chance to "pay it down" (instead of giving me cash) by helping work on building his new house on weekends. Essentially extracting free labor from me. Mind you I was already working 40 hours a week for him doing extremely physical labor hardscaping.

I picked up on what was going on (albeit without acting soon enough) and gave him a month notice that I was leaving and looking for another job and place to live. Already knowing this was going to happen as discussed when I moved in, he still promptly explodes the next day and threatens me physically, realizing his manipulative scheme has been picked up on and is falling apart.

I quit work that day, and left without paying rent for that month. He refuses to apologize. Now there is a rift in the family. My parents are moving to the province, and my dad wants to clock him in the face.

He was lucky I didn't put him in the hospital or sue him that day for threatening me or denting my car. I was just too perplexed and dumbstruck at the time it happened.

[Preety_India]

7 minutes ago, Roy said:

My sister lived at his house for 7 years without paying a single cent. I moved in temporarily to get a foot in a new province and he started overcharging me $900 for a room, then offers me a chance to "pay it down" (instead of giving me cash) by helping work on building his new house on weekends. Essentially extracting free labor from me. Mind you I was already working 40 hours a week for him doing extremely physical labor hardscaping

Wow. He is a real dick. Charging a nephew. Absolutely heartless. Such people make relationships fickle. 

I have a couple of people who are like that in my family. 

It makes me hate the word "family," feels everything is fake. 

 

[QandC]

The old "tourist trap" in a European capitol. Didn't know how the "three cups 1 ball" trick worked so I fell for it. I guessed right the first time and they gave me a chunk of money along with my own money, they made me bet again and I won, then then I bet again after the stakes were doubled and they won everything back+most of my cash. When I got suspicious they were gone, poof, just like that. Like they were never even there. Real pros. 

Turns out it this is a pretty ancient trick haha

[soos_mite_ah]

My cousin got a text from a relative and the text said something along the lines of how he was stranded somewhere and there was some emergency and how he needed a couple of thousand dollars. My cousin sent the money, no questions asked. Turns out his relative's account got hacked and the hacker was sending everyone that message. 

My thing is... if there was a situation like that, my first thought would be to pause, call this relative to check in on what was happening, and then take additional action (especially when we're talking about that kind of money). A simple phone call would have been enough to verify what was going on. The whole thing was a major face palm moment and my other younger cousins and I wanted to make fun of him but the poor guy got depressed for a week and was really ashamed of himself for being an idiot.

[gggkkk]

I was at age 17 when I got a scam call by an Indian team. They claimed to be from CRA and told me that I violated some policy/rule and was responsible for $1500 violation fee. Otherwise I would have gotten arrested and taken into custody. (That's what they claimed and even put me on the phone with a "police officer"). They told me to deposit $1500 cash into a bitcoin machine located in a nearby convenience store. Although in retrospect I now realize how ridiculous this was, I am gonna say it was very well planned and played out. I was being controlled by a puppet master. 

Reasons for falling prey to this scam: 
Ignorant of how CRA notifies people for penalties. 
Ignorant of what bitcoin is and how it works 
Mediocre English skills 
0 understanding of psychology 
unconscious of the fear/anxiety state that I was in 

Man after I got told by my parents that I was scammed, I was in total shock and disbelief that such a massive recontextualization was possible. The quote "it's easier to fool people, than to convince them they have been fooled" applies to this situation perfectly. 
Anyways I have learned my lesson the hard way.  

[soos_mite_ah]

I also have a friend whose younger brother's idea of fun is out smarting people who make a bunch of scam calls. He likes to mess with their head because to him the scamming tactics are so blatant and obvious it's comical to him. He especially likes pointing out the holes in the scammer's logic and watch them stutter and get all freaked out because someone saw right through them and it's super awkward for the scammer. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by soos_mite_ah

[Preety_India]

32 minutes ago, gggkkk said:

I was at age 17 when I got a scam call by an Indian team. They claimed to be from CRA and told me that I violated some policy/rule and was responsible for $1500 violation fee. Otherwise I would have gotten arrested and taken into custody. (That's what they claimed and even put me on the phone with a "police officer"). They told me to deposit $1500 cash into a bitcoin machine located in a nearby convenience store. Although in retrospect I now realize how ridiculous this was, I am gonna say it was very well planned and played out. I was being controlled by a puppet master. 

Reasons for falling prey to this scam: 
Ignorant of how CRA notifies people for penalties. 
Ignorant of what bitcoin is and how it works 
Mediocre English skills 
0 understanding of psychology 
unconscious of the fear/anxiety state that I was in 

Man after I got told by my parents that I was scammed, I was in total shock and disbelief that such a massive recontextualization was possible. The quote "it's easier to fool people, than to convince them they have been fooled" applies to this situation perfectly. 
Anyways I have learned my lesson the hard way.  

That's a horrible thing. I have always heard about Indian scam callers. I never knew it was this bad. 

Our government is too corrupt and lazy to put this in check. They do nothing about them. It seems senseless to me. 

Right now I have several messages on my phone from Indian companies that send scam messages to get people to invest money in some ponzi scheme. 

And the Government of India constantly sends messages to Indian citizens almost regularly to avoid scammer calls and texts. 

This is like a routine in my country where I have almost become used to it. 

Once my mother was going to give all her bank details to an unknown caller who threatened her that she had violated bank rules. I had to snatch the phone out of her hands and warn her to not ever fall for that kind of rubbish. She doesn't understand and she is not that literate. She actually believed the caller and didn't realize that they were fooling her. 

For me it is such a regular thing that the moment I get such a call, I disconnect. I get at least 3-4 calls a month that are like that. It's shitty that the Government doesn't do enough to give the citizens some respite from this horror. 

Also every day some Indian citizen who is uneducated and naive usually ends up falling for such scams and end up losing their money and I really feel sorry for them

Unless the government does something severe this won't stop. 

So these are the recent messages I have on my phone, some from the scammer Indian companies and some from the Government of India urging citizens to not respond to scammers. 

Following are Messages from fraudulent Indian companies /scammers

 

 

 

 

 

These are messages from Indian Government warning to avoid scammers

 

 

 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Preety_India

[Ethan1]

Watched videos on YouTube with Rich Dad Poor Dad. Got ads to join a course called Amazing Selling Machine X. They pitched the course as a lucrative business course that was nearly fail proof. Never mentioned anything to do with the percentage of failed businesses. At the time to join the course cost $5000 I figured in 2018 I would have a chance to join & be successful. It was mostly people that were affiliate marketers that were pitching it to gullible people with available cash to spend. 

 

Just graduated with a bachelors degree in Finance & took multiple entrepreneurship courses in college. I figured I would go all in & devote all my energy to creating a business. I just had my real estate license & was about to buy a house. Decided not to & buy into this course. 

So I put down the $5000 on a credit card & paid it off the next day. 

I was all in. 

Spent nearly 2 years every single day nearly +12 hours a day on ASM working my ass off. Doing the course videos to a point. Actively involved in the forum all the time. Asking the most questions every single day among thousands of people. Excluding myself from having a social life. Devoted all my energy to it. Lived & slept for it. All I ever talked about or thought about. Obsessed over it. Zero life balance. 

I did everything I could. I ended up allocating $15,000 for inventory & freight forwarding. Got nearly 3500 units of "coffee pourovers". And got into a " sunk cost fallacy". Now I was +$20k invested into this “Amazon game“. All the hard money I worked my ass off on in the military working as an aircraft mechanic in hot ass weather overseas in combat zones. Work environment sucked balls but I saved every dollar to invest & start a business. 

 

Ends up I was one of the most dedicated people on the website. Spending nearly the most time compared to even most of the mentors on the website. Even spent nearly $2k to fly to Las Vegas event for a seller con 2019 event for amazing selling machine at the MGM casino. Was a waste of money. 

Networked with a ton of people that were beyond clueless and doing very skeptical things. Yet tons of successful people from all over the world were there too. 

I feel like they were basically praying on people's emotions to get a dollar. Not authentically trying to help people become successful financially & make a difference. 

 

Toward the middle of 2019 I was losing money on each sale b/c I was stuck in a price war. I lost my ranking bc I ran out of inventory. I had nearly a perfect product but the course never prepared me for competitors that could buy out the market. Who have deeper pockets to blitz the market with more sponsored ads and have a larger inventory to sell at a lower price. Essentially a price war. I lost out because I didn't have enough inventory to sustain. In addition people were buying fake reviews which became a headache. People were manipulating the system in so many ways. Chinese companies were entering the market and hyjacking everything. I was trying to force sales with sponsored ads. Wasted a couple thousand dollars on ads on Amazon. This ate away all the profits and cost me big time. Bc I was selling below profit & using too many ads to compete. 

 

Created a mastermind group outside the course with some of the top members of the forum. The members of the group were aware of how outdated the course was and how people were being mislead. 

Ended up losing upwards of $7k. Not to include the course which was $5k. Overall, $12,000. Also, other random expenses that were added on for the course. Such as "seller pro" which was an extention to the course to give more micro courses. Also other websites like helium 10, hiring tons of people on fiverr. 

 

I also got really screwed by a marketing company I tried to hire in my local town. I asked help with creating the brand. Cost $1400. I put down $700 upfront & gave them free products to test out. Told them what I wanted & expected. They didn't get back with me for a few months. 

 

They then sent me an email with the work they did. They simply wrote a super short slogan & a really bad brand story. Then requested I pay the remaining $700 now. I thought they were joking. Felt like I was being coerced. I literally paid $15 on fiverr for some Nigerian guy to write something similar. He did it within a few days for way less. His writing was 10x better. It felt like I was being bullied by this company b/c I was younger than them. They did not take me seriously & were being disrespectful in soo many ways. I saw their true colors. They were being bullies. Ended up not paying the 2nd half. I thought I was going to go to small claims court about this but didn't. 

Talk about a waste of time & money. 

Also tried to get my money back from the Amazon course & they would not do it. Saw tons of naive people join the course and lose their shirts. People would put all of it on credit card thinking it was a get rich quick & pay off the credit cards. NOPE. People with kids & bills to pay got deeper in debt. 

Even saw people that had 1000s of units in inventory short sell bc they were over their heads. The course did not disclose anything with the financial risks upfront. Let alone preparation for the amount to invest upfront. Let alone proper business plans or full due diligence. Any one with $5k or willingness to pay installments could join. 

 

The people who made the course were making a killing with over 15,000 members in the course.

 

Learned that it's your responsibility to do your own research. Not to depend on a course to tell you everything. That business is not black & white. That even business school will not prepare you for all the blinds pots with the real world. That there are tons of unethical people out there that will do anything for a dollar. That you have to have multiple competitive advantages to win. That you have to be extremely concise with expectations upfront for people or they will short hand you if possible. That these courses are in it for their own best interest. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Ethan1

[Preety_India]

@Ethan1 you lol. You're gullible. You need to take a tiny bit of blame here. From all the stories you said, you tend to easily trust anyone who wants your money. Have you explored that a bit? Maybe you should? 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Preety_India

[Ethan1]

@Preety_India

Yep, I know. Way too gullible lol.. 

I was wrong because I bought into all the hype & the presentations they had. They put all the value up front. The course was pretty high quality too but still was outdated techniques that were short term strategies & not organic long term game. All in all, I learned a ton from just starting a business. What to do & what not to do. Failing isn't bad. Failing big is bad. I recommend failing with small investments to learn. Not with sunk cost fallicies. 

I was under the impression based on the social proof of others saying only good things.

Not many places on the internet had negative feedback to say. 

There weren't many people saying bad things because they were being silenced, deleted, and banned from the forum. 

Of all the financial decisions I've made prior haven't been that bad of decisions. This was me being greedy and naive. I guess it was karma. 

As of now, my Enneagram is 6 for loyal skeptic. So Id like to think I'm pretty skeptical. Although I do trust wayy to easily focusing mostly on the best of others.

 

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Ethan1

[Preety_India]

Just now, Ethan1 said:

@Preety_India

Yep, I know. Way to gullible lol 

[Ohsee]

I was rear ended in a grocery store parking lot, and given false name, and insurance information. 

I was leaving a Fred Meyer's parking lot and I approached a stop sign-- stoping. A moment later, I feel a big hit from the back of my truck, and looking in the rearview, I see an old man with a weird smile on his face in my mirror. We pull over to the side and I get out and walk to his passenger side window which was rolled down.. I asked him if he was okay and also said I had never been in a collision before then asked for his information. He said he had forgotten his wallet at home, gave me a name, and insurance information and I took pictures of the info and the damage done to my truck.. After calling my his insurance company, the number was actually some cable company, who said they've had about 10 or 12 calls about this same guy and his false insurance. 

 

I learned from this experience to not share what doesn't need to be shared, such as me never being in an accident before and distrusting my underlying feelings that this guy wasn't genuine, after I had seen him with a devious look of pleasure on his face in my rearview mirror- I had a feeling that he had done this on purpose, but gave the benefit of the doubt and was burned. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Ohsee

[Preety_India]

38 minutes ago, Ethan1 said:

@Preety_India

Yep, I know. Way too gullible lol.. 

I was wrong because I bought into all the hype & the presentations they had. They put all the value up front. The course was pretty high quality too but still was outdated techniques that were short term strategies & not organic long term game. All in all, I learned a ton from just starting a business. What to do & what not to do. Failing isn't bad. Failing big is bad. I recommend failing with small investments to learn. Not with sunk cost fallicies. 

I was under the impression based on the social proof of others saying only good things.

Not many places on the internet had negative feedback to say. 

There weren't many people saying bad things because they were being silenced, deleted, and banned from the forum. 

Of all the financial decisions I've made prior haven't been that bad of decisions. This was me being greedy and naive. I guess it was karma. 

As of now, my Enneagram is 6 for loyal skeptic. So Id like to think I'm pretty skeptical. Although I do trust wayy to easily focusing mostly on the best of others.

 

 

I'm like you in that regard. Happens. But we learn eventually. It's far too common. I don't have a sureshot way to avoid being scammed because in reality there is none, manipulation is such a thing that when it's really well orchestrated, it's kinda hard to know what's going on behind closed doors. 

One suggestion is to always invest in something that's fully transparent. If there's anything the company chooses to not disclose or there is stuff you aren't sure about, then never invest in that. 

Go for something that's so transparent and popular that it just cannot be a scam

For example, if I attended a Tony Robbins session, I can never call it a scam. Everyone knows it's your money's worth. 

That's why branding is so important. It builds trust. 

Most companies or organizations that scam people are not good with branding, obviously because they can't build a brand, given their shaky reputation. That's their weak spot and that's where you catch them. 

And another suggestion is time. Give some time before you take the leap. Time is a great teacher. If you allow more time, you are more likely going to find something about that company or offer that will make you to pull back. Some things are good in the beginning. But give it a couple of months, don't invest and you will receive a call from some acquaintance telling you how they find that company /business shaky. What I mean you tend to gather more clues if you wait for the right opportunity where everything gets exposed sooner or later. It's more or less like detective work. 

 

[Ethan1]

@Preety_India I do think that low vibration energy is usually really lavish & pleasurable on the front end. But it takes on the back end.

Such as something of pleasure gives on the front end but long term can have consequences of taking. 

I'd like to believe that those that are corrupt will energetically pay for the bad energy they put out. 

What goes around comes around I guess. 

Honestly I don't know much about karma. 

 

I do believe things happen for a reason to teach us hard lessons & to learn to integrate the lesson. Learning the hard way. So I guess it's best to learn from the mistakes of another to not fall into that karma cycle? 

[Preety_India]

Just now, Ethan1 said:

@Preety_India I do think that low vibration energy is usually really lavish & pleasurable on the front end. But it takes on the back end.

Such as something of pleasure gives on the front end but long term can have consequences of taking. 

I'd like to believe that those that are corrupt will energetically pay for the bad energy they put out. 

What goes around comes around I guess. 

Honestly I don't know much about karma. 

 

I do believe things happen for a reason to teach us hard lessons & to learn to integrate the lesson. Learning the hard way. So I guess it's best to learn from the mistakes of another to not fall into that karma cycle? 

Well if you want to take it spiritually then Yea, I agree with the whole karma thing. 

But practically speaking, you need to step up your A game and not let someone poach your hard earned money. Be slick, be smart, do your research right and always be vigilant. 

Their karma will be taken care of in the mean time. 

[7thLetter]

• Got myself involved in the usual pyramid scheme/multi-level marketing business at 18 years old, the company was called "ACN." This guy from my high-school noticed me at work, befriended me and invited me to a presentation and all that. Sign up fee was $499, and I actually wanted to try it out. I was in it for a year, recruited a few people and I made a total of $300. BUT, when you're involved with these pyramid schemes there's so many fucking fees that eat up the money in your bank account. Every week $5 to $20 for the sATuRDAy bUiSNESS pRESenTatioN. $20 if its some "Regional Vice President" from the fricken' US. Training events every couple months where they teach you how to be a better scammer, probably around $80/ticket. And last but not least, International events where you travel to some state to meet at a sports center with a bunch of other scammers from across the world involved in ACN. International event tickets are $200. Then you pay out of your own pocket for transportation. If the state is across the country, you buy your own flight ticket. If the state is close, they overcharge you for a "Team Bus" ticket which was around $200. Sometimes they would rent cars and also charge us $200 for 'gas.' If you question this charge they get pissed off. Hotels, they overcharged us too. They packed 10+ people in ONE ROOM. It costs them about $300 for one room, and they charged each person $200 so they profit. If you complain then they tell you to get your own room, but you'll quickly realize if you got your own room its more expensive, $300. They're manipulative about everything. In total I'm down around $5000 because of all those fees, this was 7 years ago though.

 

• Got involved in a crypto pump & dump scam in 2017. This guy had a Youtube channel called "High on Coins" where he would cover crypto related topics. Then he started promoting this token called "Chain Coin," telling us how it would be bigger than Bitcoin. It was worth pennies, then he got it to pump to $7, I put in only $300 around $5 per token and it quickly dumped below $1 minutes or hours later. On his Youtube channel he kept telling everyone he's still holding because "its going to reach $1000 per coin!!!" He blamed the crash/dump on some other Youtuber. He never ended up admitting it was a scam he just blamed the development team for being lazy. These pump & dumps still exist today at a larger scale. People pump & dump coins all the time without a Youtube channel, all they need is a Telegram or Discord group.

 

• Got phished for gold coins in this online game I used to play. The gold is actually worth real money. They had their phishing link at the top of the Google search results through Google ads. I was looking for a site to sell my gold then clicked their link because they falsely advertised a good exchange rate. And I didn't just trust some random website, they literally copied a well-known legit gold site's webpage and slightly changed the domain name to make it look like the legit site. I traded the guy the gold and bam, lost $400 worth of gold.

[Logan]

I was a naive fool just out of high school when this happened so don't judge lol.

Scammed

I was called by the "IRS" and was told that I was overdue on my taxes and would be arrested by police if I didn't pay immediately. They had me go to the bank and take out cash. Then they had me go to their bank and transfer the cash into their account. I wasn't "allowed" to hang up, so I left my phone connected in my pocket when entering the bank. They were very forceful and I didn't know how to deal with "authority figures." I thought it was the government so I didn't ask questions. 

Lesson 1 - The U.S. Government may be a bit corrupt, but they won't bully you like a loan shark or make you send cash to a private account. (unless you have some serious dirt on someone in a position of power)

Lesson 2 - Question everyone/thing: Authority figures, government, myself, books, news, teachers, family, friends, peers, guru's, salesman

Lesson 3 - Untether my inner demon a bit to show I'm not to be fucked with.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Logan

[Michael569]

This one is more of a scam on national level but in my home-country, in eastern Europe we were promised that a highway would be built all the way from west to east of the country. At the moment it goes from west to somewhat middle and then you are left with shit roads for another 150 miles. 

The highway has been paid for through taxpayers money at least 3 times now in the last 20 years. Billions of euros have dissapeared. It still hasn't been built. The company that got paid still exists and operates. However suspiciously politicians have become rich, houses worth tens of millions have been built....and the highway is nowhere to be found. Nobody has ever ben found guilty. ....

The last 3 governments we had were ruthlessly exploiting the funds of European union and openly stealing money from the national treasury. Nothing ever happened for decades the country was robbed blind by the government it elected because the majority of the country was too dumb and too blinded by their poverty and lack of education to vote for a better party.......thank god that generation is dying out now and it looks like we are finally heading towards better times. 

[Shmurda]

@Ethan1 you had me cracking up 

[Hulk]

the reason scam happens because you are not thinking logically.