The Most Elaborate Scams People Fell For

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mattstaff
Aug 20, 2021 10:00 AM EDT

It doesn't seem like the world's scammers are going anywhere just yet. There are far too many people out there still falling victim to all kinds of maniacally elaborate scams. Honestly, when you read through some of these kinds of stories about people's experiences with nasty, elaborate scams it can serve as further motivation to always keep a wary eye out for the next scammer that might be trying to catch you when you're off your guard. To shake up the tone just a little bit, check out this post about incompetent scammers who were their own worst enemies.

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  • 01
    Font - throwaway74274380 · 7h I had a visa gift card for $100 I got for my birthday, and wanted to check the balance after a few purchases online. I look up "check visa gift card balance" and clicked on the first thing i saw. G Reply 4 371 3 ...
    via r/AskReddit
  • 02
    Font - capracourt · 4h My grandmother gave away my grandparents life savings to a Nigerian scammer. She fell for one of those emails from someone stating my grandfathers long lost uncle died and left them $2 Million and 2 Mercedes and they needed $5K to process the transaction. This went on for close to 2 years. The money was taken slowly. Each time they called, it was a different excuse. The car was stuck in California in customs and they needed money to get it out. The car was halfway there bu
    via r/AskReddit
  • 03
    Font - cheeseslicee • 4h A website faked itself as official passport department I filled the forms for passport update there made payment and all and in the end realized.... It was fake. Never got the money back! G Reply 4 23 3
    via r/AskReddit
  • 04
    Font - haxajo • 7h On my first trip to San Francisco, some guy stopped me and asked the time. He mentioned he was late to the sold out Metallica concert, which was happening that night. We got to talking, and, he said he had a hookup, and could probably get me into the show. So, I said sure. We hung out most of the day, visiting some tourist areas. We talked about Metallica, music, and just got to know each other. When we got to the venue, he said he needed $20 to get the wristband. Now, we had
    via r/AskReddit
  • 05
    Font - liniyedf · 3h When I was around 12, I really enjoyed playing FIFA Ultimate Team, which I'm sure many others do. However, the game at that point did take quite a bit of grinding to get a lot of in-game currency. So I though "hey let's find an In-Game Currency Generator". So I downloaded like 7 of them on the internet, tried transferring coins to my account, and got 7 viruses. What a shocker G Reply 4 16 3 +
    via r/AskReddit
  • 06
    Font - Jealous-Network-8852 · 3h When I was 18 or 19 I was a front end supervisor at a local chain drug store. Shoplifting was a pretty big issue, so we were always watching. An old man came in once to return two packages of Polaroid Film cartridges, which were like $25 each. It seemed pretty clear that he had taken them off the shelf and brought them to the counter because I could see where he ripped the security tags off. This guy was definitely a pro though. He immediately asked my name, alte
    via r/AskReddit
  • 07
    Font - damndingashrubbery · 2h My wife manages a consignment store, and one of her employees fell for this: Guy calls and says he is Washington State Police (we live in Texas), and that the store is being investigated for tax fraud. The girl that answered is 16-17, and fairly sheltered so she is immediately freaked out. WSP guy says if she doesnt cooperate she would be added as an accomplice, and such, but she could just get the whole issue resolved. All she had to do is get $1k out the safe (gi
    via r/AskReddit
  • 08
    Font - nalc · 2h In elementary school my friend convinced me that his dad worked for Blizzard and was in charge of creating StarCraft II (this being in the late 90s approximately a year or two after StarCraft came out and over a decade before the actual StarCraft II release in like 2010) For months, every day at lunch he would tell everyone at the table about how the latest missions that he was play testing and all of the new story and the new units. The hero of StarCraft II was a Terran FireBat
    via r/AskReddit
  • 09
    Font - SinfullySinless • 2h Not super elaborate but this guy in OS RuneScape told me about this secret easy money making technique, but it required putting on my best armor and weapons, bringing as much money as I was comfortable with, and following this dude into the wilderness. This was before the Wilderness was nerfed to not be exploited as a scam center. I lost so much money and my full rune set armor, which was really heart breaking at the time. G Reply ...
    via r/AskReddit
  • 10
    Font - 3rdEyePerspective · 3h Had a 280$ knife stolen from me by some russian kid over discord. Was trying to trade my butterfly knife on csgo and he copied a popular traders account and social engineered me in a discord call to take it from me by looking at my Screenshare, looking at the bot trades name that I sent, and simultaneously using another account to copy the bots name and try to trick me. Well it worked. I was already pretty defeated at that time having got collar bone surgery and had
    via r/AskReddit
  • 11
    Product - HiddenHed · 7h I think a lot of us had that one guy who we would lend video games to, just so that he can ignore us and keep the game afterwards. Its not much but it still hurts man. G Reply 1 80 3 Pissgf OP · 7h This one hits deep. Also with books 4 24 3 ...
    via r/AskReddit
  • 12
    Font - shine83 · 3h Almost fell for it and l'm ashamed because I studied this shit super closely in school. Almost rented a house I saw from Craigslist 8 years ago when I was moving, because it looked nice. I wasn't from that area but still thought it was nice, but it was someone else using real estate photos and posing as a landlord. Thankfully my boyfriend at the time but now husband drove past it and said nothing is for rent here. But got super close to filling out an application with my SSN
    via r/AskReddit
  • 13
    Font - Jealous-Network-8852 · 2h In the late 50s or early 60s, some guy came into my grandpas shop selling color TVs out of the back of a truck. The family had never had a color tv, and the price was way less than what a store charged, so he bought one. He excitedly brought it home, plugged it in and turned it on. Black and White. He played with the knobs and antenna, nothing. No color. The guy took a bunch of old black and white TVs, slapped a rainbow sticker on them, and sold them as color. Br
    via r/AskReddit
  • 14
    Font - OkRip3552 · 1h So one day I woke up, and my friend had texted me that he found a website selling oculus quest 2 for $100. So I called him and was like "if you get it, I will get it" and after like 10 minutes I told him that the "deal timer" was almost expired and that we need to buy it now, and so we did and the second I bought it I realized it was a scam, and I tried calling him to stop him, but it was to late and we both lost $100 from a person who built a better looking website than he
    via r/AskReddit
  • 15
    Font - maybenomaybe · 32m A girl I worked with faked having breast cancer. She even cornered me in the women's washroom one day and cried. Told me how scared she was of the biopsy blah blah blah. My mom had breast cancer so I felt pretty bad for her. I got her a card and made everyone at work sign it. A short time after that she got fired for work performance-related issues and when we were tidying up her computer files after she left we found we were able to get into her personal email account,
    via r/AskReddit

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sketchy FAIL criminal askreddit ridiculous scam Reddit
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