Elaborate Scams

[nick@dunsdale]

After seeing a post about scams thought i would start a Scam thread

Whats the most ingenious scam you have heard of
Unfortunately typing about scams probs take a bit of time

Buyer Scam

Man selling a Digger on the Internet £11,500.00
Buyer comes and views the digger happy with the price try's half hearted haggle, they agree on £11.000.00
Buyer has arrived with a big lorry to take the digger away.

So he ask the seller to run him into the local bank where he will withdraw cash
Seller runs the man to the bank, sure enough in he go's come out ten minutes later and pays him £10.000.00 in cash all nice and tidy new notes in bands of £1000.00.

The buyer counts the money and runs him back to the site, they load the lorry and off he toddles.

The kicker they were all fake notes he had them on him all the time he went into the bank and did god knows what and came back out again.

This happened a good few years ago before banking app's and online payments were popular


Rent scam
Farmer rents out an old barn to a guy, the guys pays three months up front, 4 months come and go no more rent Farmer phones the guy disconnected number, give the guy a chance leaves it a month still no rent

So the farmer goes to the barn breaks of the new padlock and the barn was full of tyres stacked to the roof apparently 9'000 odd tyres

[AndyPen]

Smart hotel in Cornwall, not so smart night attendant.

All rooms had just been refurbed on top two floors. Lorry turns up and claims to have all the new TVs for the next stage of refurb where the rooms are empty of guests. Of course they are taking the old TV's away too, and have a signed note with the hotel owner's name on it. Night Attendant reluctant to ring owner at that time of night to check - assumes all above board.

Two and a bit hours later with lots of shhhhh so the guest's don't get disturbed, the lorry leaves full of the old sets, with nice looking new boxes in each room.

... yep, just empty boxes, which due to being quiet, they only opened next day!!!

Luckily the insurance paid up and the lucky night attendant went on to a very successful career, but I'll never forget the evening we spent with him drowning his sorrows!!

[timmy201]

-Buy something on eBay with a discount code (like 20% off)
-Realise you bought the wrong thing and ask for a refund
-Seller refunds the total amount and you get left with the discount amount in surplus

[winabbey]

-Buy something on eBay with a discount code (like 20% off)
-Realise you bought the wrong thing and ask for a refund
-Seller refunds the total amount and you get left with the discount amount in surplus

Timmy - if I didn't know you better I could easily think your ancestors arrived in Oz in chains with the First Fleet, bringing their criminal habits with them and passing them on to future generations.

[timmy201]

It was such an elaborate scam that even I didn’t know about it at the time

[Spider]

This one isn't elaborate, but just to show how long some scams have been around for.

In the days before the Internet - 1995 - I received a typed and posted letter from our old Nigerian Friends;-



while I've covered the details, it was actually address to our company and myself as a company director.

As laughable and 'scam' as that letter is, it seemed some poor greedy fools actually fell for it.

Newspaper clipping a few months later

[nick@dunsdale]

Mr Godspower !!

Back in the day i used to get a quite a few emails from Nigeria

They were always worth a laugh, i guess G-mail filters them out these days havent seen one for years

Amazing reading that article that the well healed fell for it in many occasions

[mab01uk]

Covid scams: how landing a ‘well-paid’ job nearly became a costly mistake
Jobseeker says fake ad offering the chance to work remotely could have wiped her out financially :-
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/ ... ly-mistake

(Action Fraud, which is the UK’s national reporting agency for scams, says it has been alerted to 4,540 Covid-19 related fraud and cybercrimes, resulting in total losses of £21.8m. Action Fraud said scams were getting harder to spot: “Criminals are becoming more sophisticated and will use every opportunity they can to defraud innocent people.”)

[Polarsilver]

Not any Elaborate Scam but annoying all the same .. Wife phone quite regular gets incoming call with a 07 number displayed can also be displayed from Liverpool or London ..me answering the call today without any City showing knows straight away this is a Scam because of the delay in response so you know that next .. "this is the HMRC and you.".. just Sod Off.

[roymck]

Had one today on my mobile 07 number as well , my national insurance Number has been withdrawn by the National Crime Squad
and they will sending somebody to arrest me . Recorded massage though, as I would have told them they wouldn’t take me alive.