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

[Endangered-EGO]

@Leo Gura I had a joint venture with 2 people in ecommerce. I was exploited and  scammed

Long story short: They ended up continuing without me after our first big success, just so they could continue growing with the value I added without my 25% part of it.

 

Here are the things that were suspicious all along:

1. Never sharing too much information, or access to their programmed "technologies". Exagerating (10fold) the values of their assets.

2. Controling everything I did, as if I was an employee and not a partner.

3. Being pushed a little bit outside of the main strategy.

4. Always wanting to reinvest the money we got.

5. Playing with numbers so I would get as little money as possible. I always had to correct them, and they found excuses for why they miscalculated it "that way".

6. Listening to me, but me not being able to veto big decisions.

7. I brought in a new big-fish partner, and they quickly isolated me from him. Directly hiding information from me.

8. Isolating me from group calls with the new partner, and telling me they would talk about different things.

9. Not allowing me to talk to our employees.

10. Blaming me for a big loss we had, and then gaslighting me, trying to manipulate me into thinking I didn't want to be a partner anymore.

11. Making me do "data-entry" work for which I was obviously overqualified at that point.

12. Ending the partnership after having put up all the necessary automation for the Project. To keep my 25% for themselves.

I got some my part of the money from the websites that were still running, but couldn't use the technology to create more, so I couldn't work with them anymore or be their competition.

 

Eventually a few months later they failed because they had no idea what they were doing, and blamed each other for it.

I had a big burnout at that point, couldn't work anymore, drank a lot and got paranoid. I needed to do a alcohol rehab because I drank excessively every day for months.

[diamondpenguin]

A scam has never been successful against me, because I can see right through everyone, I can read people like a book, there isn't anything anyone can hide from me. I am too intelligent. I am a GOD>. I have the intelligence and intuition of a GOD. 

[Preety_India]

Just now, diamondpenguin said:

A scam has never been successful against me, because I can see right through everyone, I can read people like a book, there isn't anything anyone can hide from me. I am too intelligent. I am a GOD>. I have the intelligence and intuition of a GOD. 

 

 

[yetineti]

I remember in kindergarten or first grade I grabbed a GI Joe book for the first time and decided to give it a try. As I grabbed it and was walking away, one of my friends began telling me how lame the book was and shaming me a little for choosing it (this is elementary school mind you, no grudge here, I find it hilarious).

I put the book back, he picks it up and I realize it was the only one. He checks it out.

I got swindled.

[JosephKnecht]

About 7 years ago, I fell into a tourist trap in Budapest Hungary. 

Together with a friend of mine, we were visiting Budapest for a weekend trip. Late Friday evening, after drinking in some bars we decided to go to a strip club. We got into a cab and told the taxi driver to take us to the best strip club in town. We were half-drunk at this point. 

We get to the strip club, and the place was literally underground. There were very few customers and the place looked very shady. They give us a menu of drinks, but without any prices. We order whiskey or something like that. After 10 minutes or so, my intuition told me that there is something wrong here, so we ask for the bill since we wanted to leave. 

They bring us the bill, and it turns out the price of the drink we ordered is about 400 euros. (Keep in mind that that is probably the average monthly salary in Hungary at that point.) We argued with the waiters, they called the bouncers. It wasn't pretty. Eventually, the bouncers escorted us to a near ATM to take out money to pay them. It turns out that the max amount you can take at the ATM was 400 euros, otherwise they would have charged more.

The scam involved the taxi driver who gets paid a commission for tourists that he brings. Apparently, the prices of drinks were written near the entrance of the club with very small letters to circumvent local laws if the police get involved. 

So if you are going to Eastern Europe, watch out...

https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/eastern-europe/hungary/budapest-bar-scams

[Null Simplex]

I once gave some panicked meth heads some “gas” money for their mother dying a few hundred miles away.  I didn’t believe their story and told them this to their face, but a part of me wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt, knowing I’d never hear from these strangers again.  The lesson I learned is to listen to my intuition more carefully.

I had also assumed that graduate school would be less memorization based than everything else has been since grade school and more focused on research and creative thinking.  This was false.  Graduate school from my experience has been a carbon copy of grade school style of learning.  There’s a saying “You don’t go to school to learn, but to learn how to learn”, but in reality if you can pass high school, you can graduate college, as the skill set is identical and you won’t be picking up any critical thinking skills you didn’t already develop during high school.  Here I learned that if you want to learn something in depth, or do research into a topic, you must go it alone.  Others such as private companies and universities do research based on things that are important to them and their survival as an entity, not necessarily on what is interesting as this is more of a subjective, personal quality.  Research what interests you independently.

[EternalForest]

@ZenSwift Love the way you write!

[EternalForest]

@undeather That's fascinating and equally frightening

[Strangeloop]

This was while I was working. I'm a taxi driver.

I picked up this guy who I drove around a few times before. Before this time he was ver confused in his surroundings and was jumping from thought to thought without being certain of where he wants to go.

When he climbed in he told me a story of that one of his friend needs his help that there is an emergency and we need to go save her. He also told me how he bringed a screwdriver with him to be prepared for what's coming. And he showed me it. 

When we got to the place and this wasn't local drive we went to a different city where it costed more.

So we pick her up, (before she gets in he tells me to keep my mouth shut about the story he told me.) we drive back, and we started talking about the money being paid(we talked about it on the way, but he always distracted me with something else) we got to the place and climbed out, and I said "Okay it's time to pay up" and he promised me to give the money tomorrow, because he doesn't have any at the moment and there was a bunch of excsuses as well which I don't remember.

So the money didn't get paid and I drove him around for free that time. And the funny thing is I confronted him next time I met him, he wanted to do the same thing again and I just said no, I'm not going to drive you. He react in a weird way but his friend was very upset and angry so he said to me to fuck off. Now everytime I see the guy I remember how he scammed me and that that man shouldn't be trusted. 

[asifarahim]

Cofeezilla is a youtube channel whos content is all about scams

[Revolutionary Think]

Dan Lok's High Ticket Closer Program it's all here. 

  

[Elton]

I had failed terribly in my exams and wanted to make up for it doing a part time job, my best friend had failed in his discipline too.

We found this add for a work from home data entry job where we were supposed to pay INR 6k to get the job and then based on our work we could earn around INR15k every month.

So we signed up and they handed over to us some pdf documents and we had to type them in word format.

The clause was that if we made a mistake some amount of money would be deducted from 15k which we would get only if everything was copied correctly. 3 mistakes were allowed each page

We found the exact text on Google and copy pasted it word to word.. we thought that there was no chance in the word that we would not make money now. We thought that how can the tricksters be tricked ?!

Unfortunately the company came up with mistakes saying that commas and fullstops were not correctly added. These punctuations on their pdf itself was not clear to understand and it could be interpretation in two ways, eg. If we would have put those fullstops hey could say that it's not there.

We thought we would cheat that company by copy pasting data from Google. But we were the ones who got cheated.

 

 

[Jakuchu]

Not really a scam but an attempt. Sold a pair of pants for $220 on grailed, a website for selling and buying menswear. Bit like eBay but more niche. The guy who bought it was in the Bronx, i am in Germany. He told me to ship it without signature. But i already knew what he was up to and that he was trying to scam me. Because you can open a case on Paypal telling them that you haven't received the item. Without the signature it is more likely that they decide in favor of the buyer

Lesson learned: if you sell something online, always with Paypal, tracking number and signature

Edited August 21, 2021 by Jakuchu
Correction

[7thLetter]

Just remembered another instance where I've been scammed, I once got scammed with a modified iPhone a couple years back.

I got into phone flipping back in the day, buying phones below the market price and selling them for a profit.

I was on Craigslist one day looking for good deals on iPhone 6's & iPhone 6S'. I found a rose gold iPhone 6S for about $400 (At the time I believe the average price for this one was around $500-$550). So I instantly messaged the guy to meet up & buy it.

I knew it was a great deal, the ad said he was selling it for his GF who upgraded her phone. But of course if its too good to be true, maybe it actually is.

I told the guy to meet me at an Apple Store before 7pm so I can have an Apple employee check it out, before they close the store. Which he agreed to do so. Everything seems fine at this point now since he agreed right? Wrong. He basically manipulated me into believing he was willing to meet with an Apple employee with his agreement, but he actually showed late up AFTER 7PM. 7pm is when the stored closed, so I believe he purposely showed up late so we didn't have to get the phone checked out. I was like whatever, so I inspected the phone on my own, everything seemed fine with it until I was about to test out the camera on the phone. At this point he grabbed the phone out of my hand, not in an aggressive way but in a way that made it seem like he was trying to be helpful. Grabbed the phone out of my hand, acted like he was just trying to show me how to reset the phone, then he actually reset it.

And if you own an iPhone, you would know that if you reset the phone you can't really use the phone at this point until you set it up again. So, the phone was reset, I couldn't check the camera or anything else because the phone takes a few minutes to reset, it was stuck on the loading screen.

He made it seem like he was in a rush, so I handed him the money and he walked away.

I later found out that the phone's camera was replaced with a shitty camera, so then I had to get the camera replaced for $100.

Everything else with the phone was fine though luckily, and I sold the phone later at break-even, or a $10 profit.

[danilofaria]

When living in New York City, I listed a piece of furniture on craigslist. I immediately got a message from someone interested and they even wanted to pay a bit more to secure the deal.
So he said he would pay by check and that the check would have a bit of a higher value in it so that I could pay the difference to the movers who would come to pick up the furniture.

When the check arrived, it turned out that it had a value of over $1000 dollars extra. I thought it was a bit weird but I put the check in the ATM and it went through fine so I thought it was ok. Fortunately, I talked to a friend who told me that in the US even though you get the value of the check immediately on your account, after a few days the bank does a proper validation of the funds backing up the check and it may eventually bounce back.
So I told the scammer guy I would wait a few days and sure enough, it did bounce back. I told the scammer to f*ck off and never heard back from him.

I learned that the bigger the city, the more there will be people trying to take advantage of the naive. Gotta be very careful when moving to a place like New York. 

[Null Simplex]

Artist Steals $84,000 From Modern Art Museum, Calls It Conceptual Art 

[Carl-Richard]

3 minutes ago, Null Simplex said:

Artist Steals $84,000 From Modern Art Museum, Calls It Conceptual Art 

Genius 

[Ora]

usually all those art pieces that go for tens of thousands to millions are just tax evasion methods. millionaires and billionaires buy art to write it off their taxes. not unlike nfts.

[peqkno]

"con-artist deprogrammers" took advantage of people's fears and feelings of urgency (one interpretation)

Quote

Selecting the right counselor is a key step in organizing and making a plan. They can help you plan, strategize and avoid missteps. Most cult counselors are very caring and have often helped a tremendous number of people out of mind control groups. Above all, be a smart consumer. After the Jonestown tragedy, a dozen or so con artists calling themselves deprogrammers appeared out of the woodwork, took advantage of numerous families, and stole their money. Some of these people were actually cult members themselves, attempting to give deprogramming a bad name. Be careful. A person’s claims to be a cult counselor don’t make them one. Check credentials and references from multiple sources. Check with several families the person has worked with over the years. Plug their name into a search engine—and dig deep; don’t just look at what pops up on the first page. Be careful, as cults and others with a negative agenda will often post deceptive material about counselors. And trust your instincts. You have to feel that the cult member will be able to trust and relate to the counselor as a person.

source: Steve Hassan
(emphasis mine)

 

[trenton]

There were a lot of pick pockets when I went to England, France, and Germany with my sister and my high school.  While I was watching the street performers in London, it was night and they were spinning on their heads and singing songs.  A suspicious couple walked up behind me and tried to pick pocket me just as the music was getting loud.  I was suspicious, so I was listening to the movement behind me carefully.  They quickly unzipped my back pack to try to reach two fingers in and grab something, but I felt the vibrations and took off my back pack, turning around to confront them.  They walked away, but they didn't get anything.  There's a lot of pick pockets in these areas that target American tourists.  There were also bullies in school who messed with my back pack and tried to steal my things because they were jealous of my good grades.  Maybe this made me more sensitive to pick pockets.