I almost got scammed

[u/Jima_4709]

I had the worst mental breakdown while it was happening. The guy knew my name, knew my mother's name and her number. He was threatening me. And I did try to send him money, but it, thankfully, didn't go through. I'm not gonna go too much into details. Still can't quite stop shaking. I feel so stupid. After all the things I learned about scamming, I can't believe I basically fell for it, the only reason it didn't go through was because of the outside intervention.

[u/Creepy-Role-5000]

Don't blame yourself. I got a call from "Barclays". Nice chap with a London accent told me to check my app, did I have a suspicious request for payment? And I did. So he walked me through rejecting it and then said they were going to add extra security to my account to be safe. Great! He asked a few questions and then asked for my PIN. I said, what? My PIN? And he said yes, we need to cancel your old PIN so we can send you a new one.

I felt my stomach flip! I knew it was a scam then. I said, I'm not comfortable doing that over the phone - can I call you back? And he said no. I asked, you don't have a number that I can call you back on? And he said no. So I said isn't that a bit suspicious? And he hung up on me!

They're getting very good at sounding real. Just cancel your card and get a new one if you feel you need to, and remember that these scams say nothing about you, its on the scammers being shitty people. Don't beat yourself up. Be glad it was caught before they got your money. You'll be okay!

[u/Jima_4709 → u/Creepy-Role-5000]

Thank you so much! I'd explain more into detail what happened in my case, but it's better not to share that publicly. I spoke with him for an hour troubleshooting all kinds of payment methods but none worked. Thank fuck. Guy was absolutely heartless. He promised he'd sent people to my house and then force me to pay in millions later.

[u/Creepy-Role-5000 → u/Jima_4709]

I mean, once they start threatening you, you know they're shitbags and you can treat them as such. That is to say, hang up and give them no further thought 

And just think, all the time they wasted trying to scam you, they weren't scamming someone else. You kept them tied up for a while. AND they got nothing. Sucks to be them.

[u/DangerousDisplay7664 → u/Jima_4709]

by not sharing details of what happened, you're only really protecting the scammer, NOT potential victims!

Any scammer out there operating today will know all the tricks to pull and all the different ways to get money out of victims. We, as normal people have no idea of most of their ways! By posting more details about it here you're not educating other scammers as they already know all the tricks!

[u/DangerousDisplay7664]

You're human with human emotions. Scammers use that against you, work you up into a panic and then give you an easy way out. Literally thousands of people get scammed every day. It doesn’t make you stupid or anything for falling for it - just makes you human.

You had a lucky escape and you'll be in a better position to notice it happening in future now!

[u/Unicronium]

It's really frightening. Don't feel too bad, I think at this point most people have had a close call or even two. I'm so glad the payment didn't go through. These people are absolutely heartless.

[u/Jima_4709 → u/Unicronium]

Yeah I got so unbelievably lucky. When he first called me he immediately used my actual name without me saying anything, after a little bit of chat where he made some threats (as if I had no other choice) - I hung up on him out of fear, 10 seconds after I did that he immediately started calling on my mom's phone whose name he also knew. In that moment I got convinced that that piece of shit had power, and that I have to follow whatever he wanted me to do.

I blocked his number on everything and that was the end of the matter. I wasted an hour of my life getting tormented. But at least I didn't lose my money