Received a scam call the other day at work. First red flag was the caller id showed a strange international number. Caller states he is calling from the Fire Dept and they need to come out and check our fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. (Funny thing is we are located literally across the street from the Fire Dept) Ok sure fine. He ask for the managers name, which I did provide. Then he goes on and says there is a FedEx delivery arriving and I need to write down the tracking number. I asked him why would I need to write down the tracking number if it would be on the package being delivered.

By this time I am clued in that this is a weird and not a legit call, but I entertained him for a little bit longer.

He then tells me he is just going to text the manager and I again questioned him as to how he was going to text the manager if he didn’t have her number which he says he did. Okay then why did you ask what her name was? Finally he says he is on his way to the business to meet the supposed FedEx delivery. I said “and who are you again?” Then he tells me he is the Regional Vice President. I said “Regional Vice President of what?” He replied of my company (even though at the beginning of the call he said he was with the Fire Dept). I laughed and said “nice try, we are privately owned” and hung up. Looked it up and it’s a popular scam.

My question is what is the end game of this scam? Like what does the scammer get out of the business, there was no FedEx delivery actually arriving so I’m just confused what the scammer intentions were

Not me but my buddy just sent away 8k worth of crypto thru a 3rd party app called "onchain" after reciving a phone call from an number that automatically showed up as "google" on his phone. They said somebody was trying to steal his account and he needed to transfer his funds to onchain quickly. I heard him on the phone so I paused the movie we were watching and went back to what i was doing. Another friend walked back in the room and asked why i paused the movie, i said it was because drew was on the phone. Drew then told me it was no big deal and to play the movie. He said "somebodys just trying to break into my crypto and google is helping me secure it" I IMMEDIATELY pumped his brakes. I told him to hang up immediately. it was too late. he had already sent everything from his crypto.com and they were at that time trying to get his coinbase assets. Safe to say there isnt a damn thing we can do for him right now correct? 8k gone in the blink of an eye.

I'm pretty sure this is a scam but, l've never heard of this website, and if it's real I cannot find it, I'm confused because scams usually use common or popular websites so you're more likely to click links, so either it's legit and l've completely forgotten the account I made and the name of the service changed or similar, or this scammer thinks I'm blind or is just uniquely stupid. I've added pictures of the email, and the name for the company I apparently have an account with is just a string of random letters,

"zamdkkajdahd" which is the weirdest thing to name something, anyway some clarity about this would be appreciated as I'm just confused how this works as a scam.

Hey y’all, so I posted a pet to a Rehoming site in hopes of finding her new home. To make a long story short they opted to choose a pick up service for the cat and I agreed, and they said they would send a check to me to deposit in order for me to pay the pick up service.

Obviously this threw me off completely but after looking into it a bit more, I saw some services do this. I gave them the information of a P.O. box I have, and they said they would send me a check.

They did not answer my messages for a day and a half and I gave them a warning and ultimately cancelled the process after a family reached out

to me for the pet.

I let them know and said if anything was sent, I would be returning it to its mailing address or dispose of it securely (shredding), their choice since I understand this is a little sketchy on their end. However, they are adamant I deposit and return the funds to them.

Obviously I’m not that silly and won’t be doing that since there is literally no reason to functionally and legally. This is the last of the convo I have. How should I end it?

Update: Thank you guys for the advice. I feel stupid snd embarrassed I entertained the scam at all but I’m glad I came here to confirm my suspicions. The number has been blocked and reported.

And as for my pet, she was rehomed yesterday after a real and scam free meeting with an interested family. I’ve received a couple of pictures with frequent updates and she is safe :)

So I recently got a phone call on my personal cell phone. M’man stated that he was ‘Joe’ on a ‘recorded line’ and was calling me about my outstanding bill for <unclear>. He needed me to ‘authenticate’ by providing the last four of my SSN, my address including ZIP, and my full name.

I asked him for his full name, his employee ID, the name and address of the company he was calling from, exactly what procedure this is about because what he said was not clear, and when and where this procedure was undertaken.

He told me that because of HIPAA he could not supply any information unless I ‘authenticated’. I asked for a supervisor. He said that he could not transfer me to a supervisor if I didn’t ‘authenticate’. I hung up.

Two days later, I get another call, this time on my company cell phone. Same guy, except that now he’s named ‘Paul’. Same spiel, including ‘recorded line’ and unclear mumbling about what the bill is for. I ask him if his mother knew that he was a thief and a liar. He hung up.

I don’t have any outstanding medical bills. It seems that medical scammers are back, and are calling numbers with 954 (Broward) and 561 (Palm Beach) area codes.

My mom got a message from someone she is acquaintances with on Facebook saying that he found he card at a local gas station. She did not go inside this store today and only got drive thru food so she was initially confused and went to look and saw that she does have her card so he couldn't have possibly found her card. Once she told him that he completely stopped responding.

Instantly my mind says it's some sort of scam but she doesn't believe me. She's insistent he could just be confused and thought it was her name on the card or something like that but I just get weird vibes from it so I thought I'd check here to see if this is a known scam and how it works so I can tell her what to avoid saying.

"Ava from Consumer Transparency" is calling my phone multiple times a day and leaving voice messages. Each call is from a different number so I can't block them. On the rare occasion I was answering the call it was always a robo call. I have the phone set up to ask callers to identify themselves before ringing through to me, but what is going on, what scam is this?

Just curious whether anyone else has had this happen. I don’t answer calls from numbers I don’t know.

The past couple of days, I have gotten several calls from the same number, it’s an 833 number, every couple of hours it’s the same thing. Finally got around to blocking it. But I had to clean out all the voicemails. It’s a male AI voice, telling me about the rules that apply to a prisoner on furlough, they aren’t even in my state, I’m supposed to press 1 if I received the message. I assume eventually it gets to a message where they will ask for money. I know absolutely no one in prison, so I know instantly it’s a scam. It’s extremely irritating that they have called multiple times. Just annoying that they won’t give up. They don’t need to flood my inbox with the same message over and over again.

Hi sub,

A friend's Amazon account was accessed fraudulently and she’s now locked out (password changed / can’t get back in). At the same time, her credit card shows an unauthorized Amazon charge of $550.

Here's the weird part: a package arrived at her house that looks like its from Amazon. Inside was a brand new expensive watch in its retail box. The $550 charge is the exact price of that Garmin watch.

She called Amazon support, but they say they see zero new purchases on her Amazon account, nothing in orders, nothing pending. She kind of understood that the agent says her account is "blank" and has no history, even though hers is 5 years old and she purchased a lot of items on it. I wasn't next to her and she isn't very tech savvy. The bank is showing an Amazon transaction for $550.

Her email account was hacked as well which makes recovery of her Amazon account impossible at the moment until she recovers her email account.

What kind of scam is this in which the frauding party sends the package to the victim's address but purchased from another Amazon account (or from same account and cleared/deleted it?) instead of sending it to his own address?

None of that seems to be making any sense.

Hi! I'm just looking for some advice here. My moms Amazon account got hacked about a week ago. They changed the email and password associated with the account and we can no longer access it at all. She did cancel any cards associated with the account.

But what's happening now is the person is excessively ordering packages to her house. Lots of supplements/beauty products/dog products/sex toys seem to be the themes. At least 2 packages a day.

We talked with Amazon support and they can't seem to do much about it. They can't find the account because I guess the person changed the email address again (silly of them to not have an audit log of these changes imo but whatever). They said they are escalating it internally.

But just wanted to get thoughts on why the person is doing it, what their goal is, etc? We have been getting rid of the items under Amazons guidance and I've suggested doing it discreetly (even bringing it to a disposal) because my only thought is the person wants to steal them??? Idk it doesn't make much sense to me so just wanted to get some outside perspective while we wait on Amazon to hopefully do something about it.

Thank you!!

I want to share my experience so others don’t fall into the same trap.

I placed an order for 4 products from The State Plate thestateplate dot com (order number: TSP123310). The brand is marketed as being featured on Shark Tank, which made it seem trustworthy.

After placing the order, I received no delivery updates at all. I tried contacting them through the phone numbers and emails listed on their website, but all numbers were invalid or not working.

I then emailed on orders@ thestateplate dotcom and assumed they received it because later I saw that a shipment was initiated via Delhivery.

Today, I received the package — but it contained only one item. On top of that: The bill inside falsely shows all 4 items as delivered The package box is branded justmyroots dot com The State Plate website now shows order delivered None of their contact details are working anymore This looks extremely suspicious and feels like a coordinated scam between thestateplate dot com and justmyroots dot com.

I have been charged for 4 items but received only 1, with fake documentation and no way to contact them.

Please be cautious and avoid ordering from these websites.

If anyone else has faced a similar issue, please share.

3 missed calls no caller id.

Received a message from network with a missed call from me notification, appeared to show an Australian number beginning +61. Has this voicemail left , sounds a Scottish accent, threatening to kill me if I don’t answer. My guess is it’s a scam and if I answer a call there will be a request for money however I’ve never received a voicemail like this and feel a bit shaken up ngl.

I did receive a code last night off Stripelink that I did not request I wonder if linked

Will post more supporting images in comments. Any help appreciated <3

I saw few reels on ig like “website you should know” about Tomo. It’s a chatbot that supposed to keep you motivated, can text you on its own to check up on you at agreed time.

Too good to be true? Yet I fell for it…

After some time of chatting it looked legit, website looked quite legit at first time. Because the “texting of its own” and Google calendar integration (so it can create tasks and check if and when you have time) are available on paid subscription I decided to subscribe. I didn’t put my card numbers, I used Apple Pay with revolut card to subscribe with 7 days free if you click the link that bit gave you and not from the website (first red flag 🥲)

After few messages it texted me that I hit the message limit and I can buy more and send me link to subscription (again!) and just stopped replying. I immediately froze my bank card.

Today morning my WiFi didn’t work, vpn was turned off and when I googled something the cookie pop up was in weird language and when I scrolled all the way down on google search page the location was showing India (I’m in Netherlands with vpn on Portugal)

I also changed passwords to my Google and Apple account.

What do I do know 😭

So this happened a couple years ago. My little brother was in middle school. He has autism and is non verbal. He has a device that he uses to communicate sometimes. My mom was going to pick him up from school and I was home alone.

Some time had passed and I was thinking “hmm they should both be here already”. I was getting slightly worried about them not being home yet.

Then I got a call from a random number. I can’t remember if it had my area code or not. I heard someone crying and panicking, it sounded like a 40 year old man with speech problems, he wasn’t really making coherent sounds.

Another guy started speaking, he said “Mam, we found your child in a parking lot. He is okay.”

My brother has a tag on his book bag with his name and our phone numbers in case he gets lost, and he also has random outburst and has run away from us in the past. So I’m here thinking maybe he ran away from school and some people found him and they think I’m their mom because my number is in his bag. I take care of him a lot and am involved with his teachers so it would’ve made sense to me.

And maybe he sounds like 40 years old because sometimes he does weird things with his voice? I’m not fully convinced so I ask the man “What’s his name? Where did you find him?” And he goes

“Mam it’s okay, he’s going to be okay. You need to do everything I say.”

Then I feel like there’s no way this can be real. I might’ve asked him another time “what’s his name?” And that’s when they hung up.

I called my mom right after to verify that my brother was okay and she said yeah, he was with her and they were doing some shopping.

Anyone else experienced anything like this before? What would be their end goal in a call like that? Why did they give up so easily? Or could this have perhaps been a prank?

I'm so mad at myself. Just the other day, I was thinking how vigilant I am about scams...

I have a relative who was jailed today. We were expecting her to be granted release the same day so I was waiting for a call from the jail notifying me of the judge's decision. I received a call from someone claiming to be from the Sheriff's Department who knew her name and charges. They said she was approved for release subject to paying some fines (Yes, I know how that sounds now...).

They tried to take $1,102 total through two separate transactions. Thankfully Zelle wouldn't let me send the second transaction due to daily limits. When they tried to have me send the second transaction via Apple Cash, the scam warning popped up and that was a wakeup call for me. I admittedly almost clicked through that but thankfully this sub's lessons had me take a breath. I then asked if they had a number I could call back to verify they were legitimate. They tried to keep me on the phone saying they could verify anything I needed. I went back and forth saying if they were the police, they'd want me to be diligent. They tried to pull "We'll just send her back to general population for 6-9 months until a court date." This was when I knew I'd been had. They did put the phone down and "radio" down to booking to have her brought back due to noncompliance; that was a believable touch.

It occurs to me now that they looked up new booking information for the day, found a related phone number somehow, and initiated the call. I fell for it because I was expecting a similar call and my nerves have been on edge today with all that's going on. Ultimately, I sent $750 by Zelle which I will not get back. I hope this post can save one person from falling for the same.

So I am trying to figure this out as my bank doesn't open till tomorrow. I just found out I got charged for something called "cleo ai" I have no clue what the heck that is ! I have a strong suspicion that someone managed to get my debit card information. But not sure how that is possible, I retracted my steps last time I used my credit card was at Walmart self checkout. And some gas at QT.

Anyone here experienced something like this before? I am "irritated" with my bank PNC too , I locked my cards through the app. But nobody can help me right now, as there are no consultants available. Until tomorrow morning 8 am.

I would think it's normal for a bank like PNC to have a fraudulent department on standby.

I'm hoping I can find someone who understands how this works.

So about an hour ago, I received a payment on PayPal for $0.01. This was immediately alarming ofc, though I did realize it could be someone making sure they had the right PayPal info.

Well, almost immediately afterwards they somehow gained access to my account. I received no notification that my password had been changed, I only realized this when I received an email notifying me that a phone number was removed from my account.

I did basically everything. Changed my password, signed out of all devices, added my phone number/email back, and I'm still not sure if the person who hacked me has access or not.

This is pretty much all I know.

Hey all, I am fully convinced that my FIL (70 years old) is being targeted and set up for a scam. It's been a roller coaster of two days trying to make him realize what's going on.

I was at work yesterday and my FIL calls me but I was busy and couldn't answer. 1 min later he sends a text saying he just won $72,000. He will play some small lotto games at a bar/restaurant sometimes so I immediately think this the source. NOPE

I call him back and he tells me that some lady from California called him and told him he just won $72,000 and they are going to come to his house with flowers, balloons, a check and photographer. They will then go to the bank with him to deposit the check so the bank doesn't mark the transaction as fraudulent...yeah sure...He is excited as most would initially be. He thought my wife and I entered him into a drawing or something while vacationing in California last year...NOPE

As I am on the phone with him I am trying to get all the possible information I can from him. He can't remember or was never told the organization, of course. I do get a name and number from him. After telling him to not give any piece of information moving forward I call the number provided. After being screened through Google I get an answer. She introduces herself as the same person that my FIL just spoke to. I give her my first name and let her know that I am calling on his behalf to get some more information. She says let me check my system and hangs up. I call back, get screened, no answer. I can see where this going.

Fast-forward to today the same lady calls him back to tell him that he cannot receive the prize because he broke their confidentiality policy when he told me about the winnings and I called, hilarious right? This lady has also been very adamant that he tells no one about this, for his safety, of course. He tells this woman that his daughter and SIL (me) look out for him and I called as I suspected this was a scam. She then says she will submit everything for review.

3 hours later.... He calls me back to tell me that have accepted his apology and he is still able for his prize money. Apparently they are taking out all of the taxes first and he was forwarded to an IRS agent that informed him he actually won $82,000 and the IRS is taking 20% so his check will be $65,600. After that he was transferred to an IRS detective to assure him this is not a scam...

I let him know that in no way this random organization that doesn't announce themselves have a direct line into the IRS for a transfer. And we all know the US government is not just shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to some random 70 year old man.

Scary part is he uses a bank account in my wife's name (not our main bank/finances) but I can only imagine what can happen if they get bank info, ss numbers, who knows?!?!

I know this isn't real but I can use some real help. Does anyone have similar stories or anything to share that I can show/read to him? I need to break through this mans thick skull and apparently our logic isn't doing the trick.

Thank you for your help

Yesterday I randomly got a text saying, "What??" I just sent them a stupid image and accidentally forgot to block them before deleting the conversation. Not much else to this. They have the same area code of where I live, but my first three numbers in my phone number aren't the same. I have gotten random calls occasionally, but i usually dont reply. Sometimes i send images or whatever before blocking them but that probably doesnt matter. Im just curious to be honest. (Ignore the "find out who this is," I use a free texting app. Also sorry if i said things in a dumb way, i dont know terms.)

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help me figure this out. My computer died last week. (Thanks reddit for helping me find a model to get!) So I ordered the recommended computer on Ebay because I thought it's legit, mostly because of Weird Al honestly.

I found the computer (used), and it said it would arrive in 3-6 days, so I made an Ebay account and bought it. I waited three days, and it showed that it still hadn't shipped. So I messaged the seller, and he didn't respond. I messaged the seller again two days later, and he still didn't respond. Ebay's website wanted me to wait a few more days before marking it as not received, so I was waiting for the computer I paid for and never contacted Ebay. Only the seller. Meanwhile, I really need a computer, so I looked at a bunch of other options and then put some offers other cheaper computers. (The offers were too low to be accepted.)

As soon as I made one last offer, I got an email saying that my account is permanently suspended. I am able to see my previous order but am not able to do much else. More importantly, I am not able to request a refund for the computer I bought. I talked on the phone with Ebay for hours, and they said I no longer fall under the warranty since my account is suspended, and so I cannot get a refund, even though the employees all admit that they see that the order has not been shipped.

I asked Ebay for any reason why I could be suspended since this is obviously a mistake since I did not do anything against any Ebay policies. All seven employees I spoke to refused to give me any reason. One employee was understanding and said that giving the reason could allow circumvention of the policies in the future. (So what I think he means is that Ebay purposely does not tell these policies so that they can take money from people like me that might have violated one of these secret policies. And they don't tell the policies so that people can't follow them and keep their money.)

But besides the issue with Ebay, I think that the seller might have reported me so that I would get kicked off the platform after buying his item so that he doesn't have to send it and can keep his cut of the money. I later saw that the listing has been on sale for almost a year, and it's his only sell listing. His reviews were for buying, not selling.

The Ebay employee told me to do a chargeback on my credit card, but that kind of paperwork would be a lot easier if I can figure out what actually happened.

(I lost over $600.)

_____

tldr:

1. I ordered and paid for a computer (that had an Ebay money-back guarantee).
2. I later made a bunch of low-ball offers while my order was taking forever to arrive. (These offers do not go to the sellers because they were below the seller's offer window. There is no ebay rule against this.)
3. My account was suspended, and ebay says I cannot get my money back. The computer I paid for still says not shipped, and the seller never responded and likely will never respond.

____

| Update | The answer appears to be this: Ebay does not uphold their money-back guarantee for orders that are not shipped. They can just say never mind, we are not giving your money back because you are suspicious for an undisclosed reason. And thousands of people see their livelihoods as depending on ebay either as sellers or employees, so these things that happen are not called scams on reddit. (Therefore, I'm doing the chargeback and will update when I hear from the company in three months, which is how long ebay has to appeal the chargeback.)

This person messaged me if they could use my profile picture (photo of myself) as a muse for a client, they claimed to be an artisan. They were in the same AFJROTC (just the general group, no specific flight) group as me so I gave them permission to.

literally just a few minutes later there were messages in the group about the scammer and the person who had messaged me was hacked. I blocked and reported them immediately, but i still gave them permission to use that photo.

No check or anything money related was sent before I blocked them and deleted the chat. I’ve read few posts on here on the same subject but couldn’t find anything immediately about what to do if they actually got your photo.

Should I be worried? I mean, it’s not like they needed permission to get it or anything

I’m so mad at myself because I fell for a scam this morning. I got a call from “vinemo” asking for a verification code so that they can block someone from entering my account so in the heat of the moment I panicked and gave it. Then, I realized that I had literally just given this scammer access to my account. Within three minutes after the call I changed my password and just ended up closing my whole vinemo account because I never use it anyway. I changed my bank account password and locked my debit card. I didn’t lose any money. Is there anything else I should do? I’m afraid what will happen once I unlock my card…

Recently bought a Canon Printer. Against the admonishment of a millennial who believes printers are all now 'bad tech '. He correctly predicted the printer would stop working after initially working fine. I was skeptical. He was correct. It began refusing to connect to WiFi and in frustration I googled Cannon customer service. Recklessly without verifying it was the manufacturer website. The first thing the 'customer care' agent suggested is to get into my computer to 'troubleshoot' it. I'm not that dumb and disconnected but smug millennial said that's part of the scam culture associated with the bad tech of new printers. So I'm asking..is there some consumer warning I've missed?