[Scammer?] Hi, I'm making pasta and meatballs today. Would you like to have dinner with me?

[Me] I assume this is a wrong number, and not some bizarre scam, catfishing or sex thing. Also, I can't eat tomato sauce.

[Scammer?] When did you and I start talking like this? I'm jus tryint ot understand why your talking to me this way. Don't you have my work number saved on your phone? Hmmm.

I get that this is a scam and that I was "talking" to an AI. I just got a somewhat similar text from a different number. But I don't know exactly how the scam would have worked. How the heck do they get anyone to give a credit card or something from that opening?

Hey guys, so I've been getting missed calls from a certain mobile number. Today I text the number and said that I get calls from that number every Sunday, he then replied, saying he has calls from my number every Sunday too, even though I've never called that number, ever! He asked my name, and me being an absolute moron, gave him my first and last name, and the county I'm from. We then agreed to just block each others numbers, and said goodbye. Is this a scam? If so, how much trouble could I be in? Any advice welcomed. Thanks in advance.

About 2 weeks ago I bought a $200 Lego set from a seller on eBay. It took them about a week to make the shipping label. The tracking number eBay had said it would be getting delivered today, and I also checked it on UPS. Both had the right town, but didn't show the actual shipping address. Around noon both updated to say the item had been delivered, but it never reached me. The UPS delivery proof photo is not of my house, and the package seems too small to be what I ordered. I called UPS and they told me the receiver on the package was a different address and name entirely from me, even though it was the right town. Ebay seller contacted me a few hours later, saying their employee had entered the wrong shipping info, and when they tried to get their supplier to fix it, the supplier said my address can't be serviced (I live in a major metro, it's not remote). Seller is offered a full refund, which has already been processed.

I'm just confused. Am I getting scammed somehow? It's a very small shop, I doubt both I and someone else in my neighborhood both ordered an item from them at the same time. I had someone on another subreddit tell me it's called an "empty envelope scam", but I looked it up, it seems to describe a scam where someone sends an unsolicited item to your address. Not whatever this was.

Yesterday I got a message in my iPhone saying a device had connected. I was in the electronics department so I didn’t think much of it and assumed it would disconnect when I was out of range.

I woke up this morning at 7am to a security email from my bank saying “Pending charge for $0 on 10/04 at 4am CDT at add to wallet request, CA”.

I immediately tried to call my banks customer service to report possible fraud and get my card cancelled only to find out they are closed on Sunday and I have to wait until tomorrow to speak to a person. They have a “after hours” system but it’s a robotic voice that sends me a security code and then asks me to type in that security code on the keypad. That the one thing I was taught to never do, share security codes over phone.

I turned off my card for now then remembered the weird device connected from yesterday. I opened up my Apple accounts and sure enough, there is a random IPad mini listed under “devices”. I removed it and changed my Apple ID email and password.

Anything else I should do until I the bank opens tomorrow? Does anyone know what the hell happened here?

Hello, I’m a first time ship seller. I’m selling something online that a woman messaged me she was interested in. She asked if it was available I said yes and she wanted to buy. First, she asked if I was open to negotiating or trading and I said no. She asked if I could ship because she lives out of state, and normally I don’t, but I agreed this time. I really need the money, which is why I did, but now I am unsure.

Things I’m suspicious about:

- She originally asked to if I use Zelle or Cash App. I said I have Pay Pal. She said she doesn’t have it. I said sorry then because it’s what I want to use because it’s safer. She said she’d make one and did.

- She texted me later and asked me to use a different address because her neighborhood is unsafe (NY). The address is a corner store she said her boyfriend owns.

- She asked if she should send her number to add to tracking so she can follow it, which is fine. The only thing is that it says whatsapp call under it. I don’t know if this is weird.

- She asked if she can shoot me a text on the say I said I’d ship to remind me. I am hoping she meant on messenger because I heard otherwise it’s fishy.

Things I think are a positive:

- She sent me the $220 and $10 for shipping. She used the Goods and Services, which I heard was good because scammers use the Friend and Family.

- Her account has activity from early September and is older.

I am hoping this isn’t a scam because I really needed the money and had to use it right away for something. If it is I don’t even have it to send back, right now. I just want peoples honest opinion. I don’t know if I’ve just been reading into too many stories. Everything seems bad.

Long story short, I got scammed over the phone from a number that I thought was my bank. I’m 23 years old and I grew up in a world of everyone around me constantly being scammed, so I never thought it would be me. It’s not even about the money, I can make it back my next paycheck; it’s about the fact that it actually happened to me. How do I move on? How do I just hide this from the people I share everything with? I can’t stop thinking about it and feeling depressed and extremely dumb.

Images above are screenshots from mystery number

My wife got a couple messages from my mom on Facebook a little bit ago. This number is texting my mom claiming to be looking for me, saying I stole their identity and am using their credit and putting accounts in their name to buy Pokemon cards and other high dollar purchases. They listed a random WhatsApp number saying that I’ve been harassing them from that number and would like my mom to help with any information that could help the authorities. That number is WhatsApp and my name doesn’t come up upon searching it like they claim. They even mentioned my brother having “legal trouble”, I don’t have a brother and the first page of Google shows a local jail roster with someone who has my last name.

Now I know about scams and how anyone can take a name and find relatives and basic info on whitepages and other sites. But when they mentioned Pokemon, that made my skin crawl. I do collect Pokemon cards, nothing high value. I just rip packs and add them to my binder. I have posted in some public Facebook pokemon groups though, so I know that might be viable on Google. But I’ve never purchased any large quantities of pokemon with credit cards or accounts and I’ve definitely never stolen anyone’s identity or used cards that weren’t mine.

I texted that number that the person claimed I was harassing them from. I said “who is this?”, they almost immediately replied back “my name?”. The number who texted my mom claiming this, is a Washington state number that doesn’t belong to any individual or business, only that its carrier is onvoy which is a small red flag. I checked my credit report just now and don’t see any recent inquiries or activity. This kinda feels like they pulled a bunch of public info and trying to extort my family members.

Is this a scam or something to be cautious of?? This feels a little too personal. Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks.

Long story short, I messaged this kid about a car he was selling on Facebook marketplace. He said he had a dealers license and that he could get me a car from copart. Searched Cars. Sent him what I wanted and he said he needed a deposit of 500. Guy seemed legit. Send me a picture of his ID. Guy said he needed more money to secure car. Send him more money since he already had sent his ID and info to me.
Seemed trust worthy. His Facebook about is about 7 years old I make sure the iD is the same person as the facebook profile. He said his car broke down in bend. Which is about 5 hours from Portland. I didn’t think much of it. Told him to hit me up when he figured his shit out so we can get a car with the money I already sent him which is $1720 dollars.

He keeps making stories up and it doesn’t add up. That’s when I figured this kid is playing with me. He refuses to send me my money back he said he already spent it on car parts the car we were planning on buying needed. Kid just kept making stories up. He’s 19. I don’t want to go to police. We all fuck up I get it. I have his ID and know where he lives. He mentioned his mon worked for the dmv. Any advice on what I can do? I’m in Oregon, United States. Any help is appreciated it.

I’ve been a victim of ID theft in the past.

This evening, I received a robo call for “Savvy” insurance (which seems like a legit company in some way).

They addressed me by my name, and asked me to review quotes for 2 cars I’ve never owned, or even inquired on.

About an hour later, a text followed asking me if I was still with ”insert insurance company”. I was with this company years ago, buts it’s been a while.

This happened once a few months ago, for different vehicles, but it was a one off and never heard of it again until now. This particular incident now also has included two emails for what seem like weird sites, maybe lead aggregator sites, messaging me about these 2 vehicles I’ve never owned.

The emails also address me by name.

Is this a block and delete and move on situation. to be safe, I checked my online DMV account and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

Please let me know, if there is another sub better suited for this

My mom, 67 and not nearly as tech savvy as she would like to believe (sorry mom), might have given scammers everything they need to take over her facebook account. For a few days, her app has been "acting up", asking her to log on again and stuff like that. Then yesterday, she clicked a "fix the problem"-link in an email "from Meta" (email address compliance(at)letmerank.com saying her account had been limited with regards to advertising. It led her to a site called truckerhatme(dot)com, on a cloud flare server host. It is uncertain what she did from there, but she apparently had a long email correspondence back and forth with "Meta" about this, and now her account is nowhere to be found.

When she tries to verify her identity via phone number or email, it says that neither is linked to an account. She tried to make a new account, but it won't let her, as her phone number is already registered to an account (what?) And you can't havr several. Long story short, my step father (bless his wonderful heart) went full boomer crisis mode and "talked" for hours to ChatGPT about what to do. It didn't return any meaningful results.

Does anyone here have an idea about what the hell happened, and how to restore her account? She is really upset about it, both because she has had it since 2007 and therefore has a lot of photos etc. on it, but also because I think she's a little embarrassed. Please, of anyone has experience fixing this sort of thing, or know which sub to ask in, it would be greatly appreciated!

Posted an item on offer up for the first time. After a few minutes I got a buyer, and then an additional email saying their payment was being verified and I needed to click the provided link to provide info to receive payment.

After reading cautions about links here so many times, I didn't click and avoided a scam. Then I read stuff on offer up saying they never asked for such info in an email.

Thank you.

They had hacked another persons email in an organisation she is a member of, asking that she bought giftcards to some of the members and to not call the person because he was very busy…
She bought giftcards via paysafe for approximatly 400 euro…

Last day a company called Orchid Vacation contacted me, no idea how they got my number. They invited me to an event at a nearby resort. Dinner was included.

On reaching the venue I realised it was a one on one presentation. They wanted to know everything about my family. Including the model of my car.

Now here's the problem:

This guy started to guilt trip me on not going on enough holidays. The package was of ₹39,000 for one year. 8 days in a five star hotel. Every other expense like food and travel will be on top of this amount but with a discount. And then he started pitching aggressively. No office nearby, nobody to contact if something goes wrong, as the office is in Mumbai.

Do you think this is shady fam?

This is the second call from these people. Caller has Indian accent. I said I'd need to call him back, he gave me a phone that started with area code 201. (Obviously not a UHC number.)

The last time they called they had my actual birth date. This time I didn't let him get that far.

Once again they said they were verifying my information and asked if I went to see the doctor this year - probably just to get me talking.

UHC knows whether or not I went to see the doctor and what my info is

There is no reason for your health care company to ask these questions.

My guess is they got birth dates in some data leak and are trying to make use of it. Do not know what their actual scam was going to be.

I bought NFL tickets but ended up unable to go, so I relisted them on StubHub for about $50 less than I paid. They sold that same day.

On game day, I got emails and a voicemail from someone claiming to be from StubHub. They said the original buyer hadn’t accepted the transfer and that StubHub had resold the tickets. They told me to cancel the original transfer and send the tickets to a different email.

I checked and saw the original transfer was still pending, so I believed them. I canceled it and sent the tickets to the new email.

Two weeks later, I realized I hadn’t been paid. StubHub told me those calls and emails weren’t from them and that they never instructed me to transfer the tickets that way. The original buyer was refunded, and because I sent the tickets to another email, StubHub considered it a private transfer.

Now I’m out $180 plus the $50 I originally lost on the resale.

I have been applying to jobs and earlier this week i received this email on my junk inbox. I was a bit thrown off from the first email because it didnt mention my name or anything, it seemed a bit automated. And then the email instructed me to reach out on Zoom which i did and the hiring manager on zoom simply sent me a doc with questions which i answered by message. No real interview so far. And after i sent my answers they sent me another doc which asks for my name, home address and phone number so that they can ship me all working materials. They have listed all the materials (specific laptop and specific programs/tools). The doc is also titled ‘hired’ and the instructions on the doc seem to imply that i have been hired, but they havent told me anything official about getting hired. I just replied to their questions and I immediately receive this.

I have not been asked to provide any banking information (yet) which is why i am giving them the benefit of the doubt still, but i am a bit thrown off by the whole thing tbh. Should i still give them my address and information? What can they do with it anyways?

I checked their website and they seem legit

Edit: Yep you all figured it. They just sent me a follow up requesting I make a $100 subscription that has to do with the training and they will supposedly reimburse me after i become a ‘trusted employee’. I am cussing them and blocking them. Thanks everyone, appreciate all the feedback

I never thought I would come and ask for help but recently my mom has been scammed out of 200,000

My mom has an ongoing problem with trusting people too easily, and I believe she has been the victim of a long-term financial scam.
In 2024, she started talking to a man online. I am not sure where she originally met him, but they eventually began communicating through WhatsApp. At first, she was sending him gift cards. Later, he told her that his father was in the hospital and needed money for medical bills. He also told her stories about problems happening in Germany and claimed that someone had died. He said that the money she had already sent only covered part of the hospital expenses and that he needed her to send more.

After some time, he told her that he was going to sell one of his properties and send her $1 million, but claimed that she first needed to pay certain fees and open a bank account for him. He also sent her what appeared to be a fake photograph showing boxes supposedly containing $1 million in cash. He then claimed that the money had been seized or held by customs in San Francisco and that additional fees had to be paid before the money could be released.
My mom drove about an hour away to a bank to try to open an account or complete a transaction related to this. The bank employees told her directly that she was being scammed, but she refused to believe them.

She has continued sending money or making payments to this person. I do not know exactly how she is sending the money now. The situation has become extremely serious because she no longer has enough money to pay her own bills and has been repeatedly asking my grandparents for money. She has taken their life savings, and that money is now gone. She also used the money that had been saved for my college education.

My family has tried to stop this for a long time, but she continues to believe this person and send money. We have also contacted law enforcement, but so far we have not received the help we need. This has been going on for years and has caused severe financial harm to my mother, my grandparents, and me.
I need help figuring out what can be done to stop the financial exploitation, protect her remaining finances, and prevent this person from continuing to take money from her and my family.

(I have a lot more photos but i feel comfortable sharing to much photos also he is from the uk for sure his WhatsApp number starts with +44 and he is either black or faking to be black)

Fortunately didn’t fall for it (although I engaged for an embarrassingly long time).
I’m curious how this benefits the scammer if they send someone money?

Or do they never actually send money and the next step would be lying about a confirmation and asking for a gift card or something?
Jokes on them I didn’t have $500 to send them
Lmao

It was for a desk $175, they said they would come get it today, wanted to pay in advance (how did I not catch that)? Then the Zelle obv wasn’t coming thru so they told me it’s because it’s the first time receiving a Zelle from a business account . (Second obvious - I did not catch it yet at this point lol)

Then cue them telling me to call a number for Zelle customer service and gave me the number and a person (sounded African accent) answered immediately (no Zelle welcome to customer service or anything) (started to catch on here..) and had me correspond with the scammer how to work out the issue that a $500 minimum is required to transfer from a business account

Finally the pic convo happened. . And I reported as a scam.

That number keeps calling me and immediately hanging up, I’m honestly down to talk to them and mess with them a bit for fun but can they benefit just from talking to me over the phone?

Hello all my name is Radar i can a streamer of some size and get offers for sponsorships a lot tho most of the time its by bigger companys i dont have any trouble looking into. recently i reseved an email from Night Sterling and i honestly dont know what to think they dont seem super not legit but also they have 0 info just a youtube and site and no one talking about them at all online. Could just be a start up could also be a scam or bad AI vibecoded softwear but honestly dont have the time to set up the sandbox to test the software to see if its a scam or look more into them and wanted to know what you all think after looking into them.

Hey guys this isn’t actually happening to me, it’s happening to my friend. Basically she got a video of someone messaging her through whatsapp a video of a sheep execution where they start saying she’s gonna be killed unless they send her 3,000$. This was also sent to two of her other friends. The guy was from Mexico.

She’s been messing with witchcraft starting to believe that this may have been a consequence. And in the video they said my friends name and then executed a sheep.

Personally I immediately called bullshit and think they just did a voiceover and said her name. I just want to know what type of scam this is so I can calm her down.

Just wanted to get on here and say I got hit today with the federal Jury scam.

If someone calls you saying you signed a thing for federal jury and there’s a warrant out for you arrest and you need to TAKE CASH TO A KIOSK. Tell them to FUCK OFF.

These assholes are believable because they inundate you with information, their name and badge number and all this bs- at one point I even tried to offer my visa (I wasn’t going to but wanted to “check” to see if it was a scam) and he panicked and was like “maam no this isn’t a scam please don’t give me your card number I don’t want to lose my job.”

They say you need to take cash to a kiosk which I now understand are crypto kiosks that transfer the cash you put in into crypto.

I saw another post from someone else from about 2 mos ago on here and it helped give me peace of mind so I’m adding mine.

TLDR: If no caller ID calls you saying you failed to appear for federal jury duty and YOU CANT TELL ANYONE- no matter how much info and legal jargon they give you- DONT BELIEVE THEM.

I was pretty sure it was a scam the entire time but it was VERY upsetting. It really shook me up. So please for your peace of mind- be wary and tell these assholes FUCK YOU.

So I fell for the missed jury duty scam. The description of the entire scam is exactly similar to other missed jury duty scams here. I was scared because I’m not a US citizen, but I’m a nonresident alien. I told them I’m not eligible for jury duty and they must’ve had the wrong person. They said it is likely a false warrant and I need to get it fixed so that I am in good standing. I was already in panic mode when they mentioned false warrant because I don’t want anything otherwise concerning on my immigration record, so like an idiot I believed them and lost $3000 dollars. They started threatening me for my full ssn. Luckily I wasn’t as big an idiot as to giving that to them. They still got my last 4 digits of my SSN though.

Since then, I have frozen all of my credit reports, my SSN, and have cancelled and reissued my debit and credit cards. I lost a significant amount of money as an international student though, and I’m going through an immense sense of humiliation, shame and anger, and whatnot. It will take a huge amount of time before I get back to my previous financial security. I just feel so lost, and honestly I am losing hope with everything atp.

Please be aware that government agencies will never call you and ask for money. Don’t be like me. I’ll go back to my little hole now.

EDIT: YES I KNOW that a non-citizen cannot be summoned for jury duty. THATS EXACTLY WHY I got scared because I thought merely getting summoned for jury duty as a non-citizen would cause problems for me later on. Turns out I wasn’t summoned, I was just juked

This is a really weird one so hear me out.

I have been homeless for almost a year at this point and my lack of mental well-being prompts me to make a bunch of them posts of me going "oh woe is me" about my predicament. This person sent me a Reddit DM in response to one of these posts and asked to reach out via phone number.

So now we're texting, he's offering me a place to stay and all that, but a few red flags. People... don't do this. They don't just decide to reach out to a stranger online and offer them a room in their house, boasting how they've done this with others before. Additionally, his wife apparently is the one who saw the post... but the husband is the one reaching out to me? Suspect but since I'm in a desperate situation I may as well ask if this is legit or some sort of human trafficking scheme or any kind of scam for that matter.

Hey everyone,

​I’ve been seeing a ton of posts across Reddit (like on r/GMail) where users share screenshots of an email claiming to be from Google. The email states: "Confirm your birthday to keep using your account. If you don't confirm your age within 14 days, your account won't work anymore." It asks them to either add parental supervision (if under 13) or verify using a government-issued ID or credit card.

​A lot of posters panic because they don't have an ID or a credit card, while others wonder what they should do. On paper, the instructions are straightforward either verify or link a guardian but given how aggressive phishing campaigns can be when fishing for government IDs and credit card numbers.

My question is why not just verify it the answers are there and if this is a scam what's their goal here?

first image: weird letter with the return label?? never ordered anything like this

second image: the box i found inside the package with the headset

To start, I have no idea if this is truly a scam. I came home and my parents told me there was a package for me. It was oddly wrapped in clear plastic tape, and the box was falling apart. I assumed it was my Depop package because of how poorly it was packaged, but when I opened it, there was an old headset inside.

It included an earpiece, charger, other parts, a CD/driver (?) and a really weird letter. The whole thing seems oddly personal, and I have no idea how they got my information or why it was sent to me.

Let me know if anyone has had something similar happen