r/Scams

Today I was out grocery shopping, a lady approached me with a very small toddler and a newborn baby. she was very apologetic and nice. She explained her food stamps had been cut off and she couldnt afford baby formula, we chatted for a bit, she showed me which ones her babies use and i ended up paying for $270 worth of baby formula. she was very kind, and gave me her phone number when i asked to keep in touch. when i came home and explained to my fiance why i am $270 down on my grocery budget, he told me he was pretty sure it was a scam :( I cant believe i didnt even consider this, but she seemed so genuine and gave me her phone number, so im not convinced it was a scam. does anyone know?

My Dad is 83 and bedridden in long-term care with cancer. Long story short he probably has between months and maybe a year to live.

He has been getting increasingly confused and scammed by supposed women who are messaging him with companionship but are getting increasingly bold in asking for money. He has sent thousands of $ so far even though I have tried to limit him to $500 a month, he blows past it and some months is sending $1,500 or more. He doesn't have much money and I'm afraid of what happens if he runs out as I can't afford to support him myself (the place he is in is $5k/month for example.

I am seriously considering taking his phone away and replacing it with an iPad mini where I can put parental controls on and stop him from adding his bank account and sending money. My hope is he can still go online and have some entertainment, without draining his funds. But I know he will get upset by this and he has basically no family besides me to serve as a lifeline. And the scammers will probably stop messaging him when they realize the gravy train is over.

What are the ethics here? On the one hand it's his money. On the other these are clear scams and fake profiles that he is falling for. I'm just struggling with what to do and trying to protect his limited funds in case he survives longer.

For 5 years now my 77yr old mother has been in contact with a guy named Micheal on the internet, phone and email, etc. Now I don’t know all the details but she won’t tell me much. What I’m going to tell you is all know.

He drained her bank account of over $2 million by asking for money and now they have a bitcoin business together where they transfer money to “clients” using bitcoin. I heard her phone calls last month when her bank declined a transfer of 100k and closed her account. Some of the things they said are sketchy things she’s doing like, she didn’t know the clients name and they said the bank account it came from was also a person named Michael. So my thought immediately was that it was the same person she’s got the business with. She said it wasn’t. But there are other things too. She allows him to remote connect to her computer and I saw one day he was looking through her email without her permission.

Now they apparently are starting another business together. She said it’s a construction business and wouldn’t tell me more. She doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing and why. When I asked what kind of business she said construction and I said why and she said I dont know in a submissive tone. The banks that closed her accounts obviously know something is up. And I do too. This Michael dude keeps telling her that he will come visit her in the states and will give her the money back and then take over the businesses but it’s been 5 years of saying this and I’m scared she’s being scammed. Hook line and sinker. I don’t know what to do. But I am going to start to gather more information so I can tell the fbi. Just don’t know how to do it, and what rights I have to interfere. Like do I have the right to call the banks she has and let them know. I don’t know what to do. Someone help please.

I just received a phone call at my workplace asking for the vice president by first and last name. He asked if he was available but he is out today. I said I could take a message and the man on the line asked if i had a personal phone number he could have and I said no im sorry i can’t give that out. he then proceeds to tell me his name and only the first initial of his last name, and says he needs help getting out of a concentration camp? i unfortunately didn’t catch the name of where, and i don’t know if he said somewhere in the US or internationally. I was caught off guard but then asked for a phone number to call back but the line immediately hung up. Since we are a business we get tons of scam calls, but this one was super weird, and unlike all the other ones we get. i am not sure if i should tell the owner so he can contact the vice president or just leave it alone.

Every scam starts with first outreach.

Email or phone call.

Unknown call: ask to call back and the name of the person to speak with. Take your time to verify caller identity via official sources (bank, insurance, FBI, etc). You call them back and ask what happened.

Unknown email: right to the bin. Even if you know what it could be, do not rush to hit the link. Use app or official webpage to check if there is anything you need to update or approve.

Know your environment: most of these** attempts **are 100% random and the game of numbers. If you have no uncle Benny out there, make no sense to respond to inheritance lawyer emails. Chase bank account being blocked? Too bad, but it’s already blocked. I don’t want to talk about it right now on the phone, I’ll call you back. Untie Marsha just went to the hospital and need 300 bucks on her CashApp? Meh, I’ll visit her in person, let me know where she’s at? It’s all about your environment and how you aware of what’s going on in your life.

Simple as that.

No rush. Chill. Breath out.

It was just another attempt.

You’ll be safe and alright.

Now I’m getting texts and calls from a random number saying they found the iPad at a gas station and want to set up to give it back to me. They said whoever stole it probably couldn’t access it so just dumped it at the gas station. Sounds fishy.

Im thinking I can ask them to meet me at the police station and if they refuse then I’ll just ignore them. Is this a bad idea?

Posting this to warn others planning a visit to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London (Harry Potter experience).

The fake site is extremely well made. It uses the official Warner Bros. and Studio Tour logos, lists real upcoming 2026 events (Magical Mischief, Summer Feature, Dark Arts, Hogwarts in the Snow), has a full navigation menu available in multiple languages, and even links to real TripAdvisor reviews. It is almost impossible to spot unless you carefully check the domain name.

The real official booking site is: book.wbstudiotour.com

I fell for it and made a payment through this fraudulent site. The amount charged was close to a legitimate Booking.com reservation I had made previously, which made the transaction seem less suspicious at first.

**What I've done so far:**

- Blocked my payment card immediately

- Contacted Booking.com (they opened a case with bank transaction screenshots)

- Reported the site to fraud authorities

- Contacted Warner Bros. Studio Tour officially

Unfortunately my bank says the payment cannot be reversed since I validated it myself (3D Secure). Booking.com is investigating but no refund confirmed yet.

**If you're planning to visit the Studio Tour, please double-check the URL before entering any payment details.** The only legitimate booking platform is book.wbstudiotour.com.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation and managed to get their money back? Any advice welcome.

Stay safe.

https://preview.redd.it/biyrf06wzktg1.png?width=2551&format=png&auto=webp&s=b576641a6d5ffc66f6300cf7e80dcedbb415f047

I visited a friend recently who lives in Florida and met her 5-month old Ragdoll kitten. I had never heard of a Ragdoll and she said that legitimate breeders sell them for $3000-$4000.

Well, I fell in love with the kitten and wanted one myself so I went looking online for Ragdolls for sale. And found a rich environment for scammers. In fact, the same ad for one kitten is posted in different locations around the country on Craigslist.

Look for scammer tactics:

1. Post ads on Craigslist, Petfinder, Adoptacapt, Facebook, etc. that don't provide many details about the kitten(s) and may include altered phone numbers, i.e., 518-80x-89eight6, 5 0 4 3 3 x 0 7 31.

2. Offer a considerably lower price for "rehoming" and require a deposit through non-bank payment apps like Chime and Venmo to reserve the kitten. They might tell you that you can request a refund if they don't show up to deliver the kitten. You'll get a fake name from them.

3. Ask for more money after the initial deposit and/or ask for personal information before you can meet the kitten (which they typically say is 2 to 3 months old). They may even offer to send pictures or videos to try to emotionally snag you.

Don't ever pay someone a "deposit" for a pet you can't meet first. Remember, if the offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Insist on paying cash or check when you pick up the purchase, not through a payments app or even Zelle. Don't send money first to "open" an account with them. They don't need to know your home address before the final transaction.

https://preview.redd.it/tjwjj40qjmtg1.png?width=990&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c2464c87e82c5c20713dcd82178b77899ffcf68

My dad, who recently retired, was scammed out of his savings through a fake investment, amounting to about RM600k. I feel extremely depressed and heartbroken. The moment he realized it was a scam, I could see him completely shattered. I know he got involved because he wanted to provide a better future for the family, but that’s a huge amount of money to lose. Now my mom isn’t talking to him, and the atmosphere at home is very tense and painful. I’m trying to stay strong, but it’s really hard seeing him blame himself and withdraw. I just don’t know how to support him properly or how to handle this situation as a family. I really need some advice and emotional support on what to do next. or is anyone else in the same situation as my dad? pls do tell how do u guys recover.

i love my grandmother she’s a very generous person, though very vulnerable to scams and she’s getting old. to start, she was a teacher to this student who claims he watched both his parents pass which has left him with troubles and he’s apparently “homeless” and struggling. he asked my gg for money one time as an “emergency” and kept asking from there. she probably gives him atleast over 20+ dollars a week from what she’d let me look at. he also has been asking for money for random things without labeling what he’s buying or who the money is going too, because he asks for money for his girlfriend and “friends” who are stranded, which leads me to think he may have a home and be using my grandmother as a extra income to supply his drug addiction. he also is obsessed and needs the money within 5-10 minutes or he sends my GG 10+ messages and spam calls her within 3 minutes…

i just feel horrible for my grandma because she has cancer and is crippled, she has also been exploited her whole life by her ex husband who was the father of her three children ( aka my dad and aunts) and she doesn’t fully understand he’s using it for bad things and not actually using it for food or rehabilitation back into a normal life. he just uses his trauma on my gg and it works because she feels lik she needs to give him money because he watched his own parents die.. im sorry for the long message im just fired up because my gg doesn’t see its a scam yet and my mom didn’t see all the messages i saw between him and my grandma. thank you for reading and any help is greatly appreciated, i want to protect my grandma as best i can

So I received two different tracking codes for packages one saying it’s from TT warehouse 64 which I have never ordered anything from them and have no idea what it is another says it’s from stamps.com which I have never ordered from what’s also throwing me off is when I called my local usps and the tracking number are real is this a new type of scam or something I am so confused I know I have received a tracking code that said it was from stamps.com but nothing ever came even when it said delivered what is going on

A random stranger sent me 1 dollar on cashapp with the note “can we talk”. I blocked the person immediately as I expect it’s a scam. I don’t really see the point of them sending 1 dollar. I guess I would just like to know what to anticipate happening next

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but I was wary of it and wanted to post here in case anyone deals with similar issues going forward.

Buyer bought a for parts laptop from me after haggling the price for like 2 days - finally made the sale and the address was routed to a Flybox location in Doral, Florida. I look up the reviews for this place and almost every review is talking about how people make purchases from outside the US, have them shipped there, then have it shipped to whatever country they’re in (sorta like a proxy shipping service) but all purchases are made from stolen credit cards or with fake information and sellers mentioned getting hit with “item not received” refund requests, among reports of legit customers having their packages stolen.

I really didn’t feel comfortable with it since it just seemed sketchy and I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet with putting myself through disputes. I just refunded the buyer and reported it.

I just wanna say I hate these apps that pretend to be mods for really popular games that appear to be for mobile but they're not. I'd include a link to the app but I'm unclear if I can or not so I'll be safe. If I can I'll add it in the comments. If I'm right, this app will charge you three separate subscriptions for three different things you can do on the app. 12.99 per week. I just saw an ad for one on YouTube

Though I've not been scammed myself, I was approached on Telegram and given that link with the promise of £599 per week (as a base salary but with bonuses) for data entry.

In the UK, that's a very good salary. Too good. Especially when the Telegram contact is pushy.

I've looked at Yahoo Travel and this looks like it doesn't connect to Yahoo at all.

I'm almost 90% sure that this is bullshit and if it's real, the consequences I don't really care for either way, but for some context I have been enjoying the pleasures of a cyberattack for about two weeks now which compromised my gaming accounts primarily.

So maybe this email is just really well timed in that respect and I've never been to the website they listed, but here's the email.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,

We are ShinyHunters hacking group.
We've known each other for a while, at least we know you.
A few months ago, we gained access to your devices and started monitoring your online activities.

What happened:
We got access to the database CarGurus.com where you had an account with and easily accessed your e-mail.
You weren't very careful about the links you opened.
A week later, we installed an exploit on your devices including your phone, giving us access to your microphone,
camera, keyboard, and all your data.
We have your photos, browsing history, conversations, and contact list.

Besides other things, we discovered that you frequently visit adult websites and watch explicit videos.
We managed to record you and created videos of you pleasuring yourself.
With a few clicks, we can share these videos with your friends,
colleagues, and family or even make them public.

Proposal:
Send us $2000 in Bitcoin to the following wallet:
bc1qlc74nwqt255zuh0904q3xt389mfhxppaasngzg

We'll delete everything immediately.
You have 48 hours from the moment you opened this e-mail.
Once the payment is received, we'll remove the malware from your devices.

What you should NOT do: 
Do not reply (email is sent from a hacked account).
Do not contact the police or anyone else—we'll release the videos along with other stuff all over the internet.
Do not try to reset your devices—everything is stored on remote servers.

What you don’t need to worry about:
Will see your payment immediately—The wallet is generated specially for you.
Will not share your videos or other things after payment—There is no reason to keep causing problems.

So my grandpa (68) got contacted by someone about a crypto investment.

She claims she’s a Hong Kong born woman living in London, and that her father is an investment broker. Already sketchy, but it gets worse.

My grandpa asked me to check it after he bought ~$100 of Bitcoin. She then pushed him to trade BTC futures using USDT instead of just using a fiat.

That’s when my alarm bells went off.

She sent a website (supposedly with Hebrew support), but it looks super sketchy stretched images, fake-looking certificates, and overall bad design.

There’s also a download button for an app, but the link doesn’t work and the app isn’t on any official store.

The Hebrew translation is terrible too—clearly word-for-word machine translation with broken grammar.

My guess is that it’s one of those setups where the , assumes that there login credentials are the same and use them for the trading platform. so once you deposit funds, they can just take everything. anyone seen this before?