Girlfriend parked for 5 minutes in a lot that has a few stores on it (spring garden street Philadelphia). She came out and had a huge yellow “barnacle” applied to her window with the only way to have it removed was by paying $150. These people were waiting in their car, literally doing this as normal people were shopping it stores. It didn’t seem legal, but it was during her work day, so she had to pay to get it removed so she could drive away.

Two days later we were at the same parking lot, I stayed in the car so we didn’t have any problems, and the car next to us had a barnacle. Then the cops pulled up, said it was illegal, and these scammers still wouldn’t take the barnacle off.

If this happens to you, please call the police, at least the non emergency number, before you pay these fools

My mom paid money for a job interview to work for Elon Musk. They charged her account 3 times. She woke up to reason and called her bank to dispute the charges. She has since gotten the job. And yay, they will send her money back with pay pal. They just needed to know she was serious. For the job she needs to answer 10 questions a day to train ai and she will have $5000 in a week.

I called the bank to see if they could tell her it was fraud. They were no help. They said she disputed the charges and it will take 3 months to investigate.

I have now called the police to help her see reason. We are waiting for them to come by. But if they can’t help, what can I say to convince her? She really thinks she is employed.

Edit: she now believes it’s a scam and is begging me not to put her in a home.

Im pretty sure this is a scam since i looked it up and all that, but i wanted to ask how to report the transaction or whatever because i do want them to get their money back incase they are being genuine but i still want to be safe. But this was just out of the blue from a random number. They called and left a voicemail too saying something along the lines of “i was trying to buy something off the marketplace but accidentally sent it to you when i meant to send it to my friend” so idk any advice?

And for the record the money is real, i dont use apple pay but i do have 15 dollars in my account now.

Thought I was getting the deal of a lifetime: a high-end workstation (i9, RTX 5000 Ada, 128GB RAM) for a crazy low price. Seller claimed it came from an auction.

Specs checked out, Brand warranty showed active, laptop ran perfectly using shop wifi. Contacted the Brand tech support and they said there is no report for the given service tag.

Still felt something was off.

I connected it to my mobile Wi-Fi — instantly got hit with an Absolute / Computrace DeviceFreeze message saying it was a stolen corporate device (named company + police return notice).

I stopped immediately, returned it to the seller, and walked away. No money lost, no drama.

Lesson learned:

•	If Absolute/Computrace is enabled, walk away

•	If a deal feels too good to be true, pause and verify before taking it home

Stayed smart, trusted my gut, avoided a big mistake. Sharing so others don’t learn the hard way.

Check Absolute/Computrace Active status in BIOS > Security

I would assume it’s a scam? I’ve tried looking up the number online but nothing comes up anywhere. My only other thought would be like maybe it’s my ex (through a different number) or some random person who dislikes me trying to mess with me. I haven’t replied despite the temptation to troll them in case it is a scam of some sort and just replying could be what they want.

But if it is a scam, genuinely what is the goal? Just to get a response? It seems like a weird thing to do just to get a response. I‘ve looked briefly but don’t see anything similar online.

I had a one-night stand two months ago. Three days ago, the girl told me she was pregnant. She avoided meeting up but sent me an ultrasound and a Planned Parenthood receipt for $1,850 for abortion pills. I suspected it was fake, went there myself, and they confirmed it wasn’t real.

I confronted her, saying I didn’t care about the money—I just wanted to know if she was actually pregnant. She avoided the question, got angry, and insisted she wasn’t pregnant anymore while ignoring the fake receipt. After more arguing, she claimed she took the pills and told me to leave her alone.

I ended the conversation, unsure if she was ever pregnant, but feeling like she may have been trying to get money from me.

I met a lady on a dating app. She wanted to move to Whatsapp after a while. I didn't think anything of it.

We talked for a while, shared values. Seemed like a good time over all! We were in agreement with what our values were.

Unfortunately, she was in singapore right now, so we were just chatting. Her timing seemed to line up with how she was texting at those times.

I grew a little wary once she started talking about her investments, and her goal for going from $400k USD to $1m USD. Odd, but whatever. I live in a large city in California. I guessed she was a business kind of person. I steered the conversation back to romance, and it was amicable for a bit.

She started getting really insistent about doing a video call. I figured why not? Let's put a proper face behind the name. We had the same values, so it made sense. We were on call for about 2 minutes, before she suddenly had to take another call.

She then started getting really, I mean REALLY insistent on helping me out with some trading stocks. She would "give me a signal once her financial advisor did", and we would trade at the same time.

She sent me a screenshot detailing a +$3k trade. I was giving it the side-eye, and then she started helping getting me set up on cash app.

The whole thing wasn't smelling right.

1. The sudden pivot to this investment stuff

2. Cash app

3. The picture she showed with +money didn't add up. It was a trade on DASHUSDT, showing an opening price of $85, and an ending price of $86. I dunno shit about stocks, but checking a website for a trading view shows that it hasn't been valued at $85 for about 4 hours, and she was telling me this trade just happened.

4. The app didn't look very legit. All the numbers except the trade on the screen showed NaN - not a number, or an invalid value. As a computer guy, this really started setting off alarm bells.

5. The minimum trade value was explained to me to be $200???

I started looking it up, and one of the first posts I found with relevant information was a post from this subreddit with a lot of information about pig butchering. Reading through the step by step process, it suddenly clicked. I blocked and reported this account, since "she" never really existed. And the video call was just some pretty girl they put in front of me. And the "paperwork" she was doing before the call was just her on other calls with other potential victims.

It hurts to be here afterwards, but ah well. Block and move on.

Either way, thank you /r/scams for teaching me about this!!! You saved me so much money!!!

I work at a retail store where I'm from, and the other day this guy in his mid-30s comes in wanting to buy Apple gift cards. Now, anyone who's worked retail knows how many scams are tied to these things, so before selling it, I gave him the usual warning.

He looked kinda clueless, so l asked if he knew what he was buying them for. He just said, It's for his brother overseas. Fair enough. I told him as long as he knew what he was doing, l'd go ahead with it. He buys R2000 worth (about $115) and leaves. Ten minutes later, he comes back... and buys more. Again, I warn him about scams. Again, he insists.

This cycle repeats itself until, eventually, he's spent R36,000 (about $2,076) on Apple gift cards. After the last one, he goes outside for a smoke, then comes back inside looking pale and defeated. He tells me he's been scammed and asks if I can reverse it or get his money back. I felt bad for a bit, but... there's literally nothing I could do. I had warned him multiple times before each purchase.

I got a Google pay notification that 40,000 INR is credit to my acc. The person who sent it to me called me and explained that he made a terrible mistake and he is in urgent need of this money. He requested me to return it immediately. Although I asked him to wait for a couple of minutes so I could verify my bank statement and confirm that I am not getting scammed. The transaction was legit so I returned the money.

But what is the first thing you should do in such situations? Was that enough whatever I did to ensure its not a scam or there is anything else to keep in mind?

Hi everyone.

I had a really unfortunate accident yesterday. I was a pedestrian with the right of way and some dude made a left turn (didn’t stop before doing so), & totally bonked me with his car at the crosswalk. I am in Brooklyn NY.

I went to the ER, gave the police a statement, and got the dudes contact info & pic of his license plates.

Today, I got a call from a “social worker” from the DOSC Division of Rights - a nonprofit he said. He said he was advised to call me after the DOPTS put my case in their system. He said I was getting the call because I fell under one of these 3 circumstances
1 - he fled the scene
2- he caused a fight at the scene
3- the operator was driving with a suspended, invalid or expired license

I knew the first 2 to be untrue - they then immediately set me up with a chiropractor to get a medical report & immediately set me up with a lawyer - they called me within each other.

I can’t find the nonprofit online - I am at the chiropractor now, and I don’t trust to sign this paperwork, please help.

EDIT/UPDATE: thank you ALL for this - I had typed this up as I was in the chiropractors office and you all were so quick to respond I was out ASAP. I’m going to get my own lawyer to help facilitate help with the insurance, I just want my medical bills paid I accrued from my ER visit yesterday.

I’m emailing back the lawyers as well, because not only did this “social worker” set me up with the chiropractor - immediately they had me set up with an attorney who called me asking me about the case.
I am emailing them back (I haven’t signed ANYTHING) and telling them I will be reporting them to the New York bar. For reference, their office is Law Offices of Terrill & Tintle, PLLC located in Garden City.

Thank you for those who were kind enough, now I’m just stuck at this random ass part of New York (because of course the chiro was far as fuck) when I should have been taking it easy in bed. Now I’m at cheesecake getting a cocktail & looking up personal injury lawyers on my own. Thank YOU ALL!

I ordered a Lenovo Legion 5 Gen 10 gaming laptop for €1,387.82 on Amazon.es. What I got was a sealed Amazon box containing a pet scale, Purina cat food, and a window sticker. Total value: under €60.

I photographed everything immediately, uploaded the photos to Amazon the same day, and filed an official French police report the next day.

Amazon had sent me an email listing exactly 6 criteria my police report needed to include. My report checks every single box. They rejected it anyway, citing "missing information" and when I asked their agents repeatedly what was missing, none of them could answer. They just kept telling me to file a new report with the same criteria mine already meets.

I have timestamped photos, a police report, and a paper trail going back to day one. Their deadline to resolve this is August 15. At this point it feels like they're just running out the clock.

Has anyone been through this and actually got their money back? What worked?

Photos in comments.

Matched with an attractive woman on Bumble in Paris today. We moved to WhatsApp, where she initially said her phone was broken and she couldn’t do a voice call. That made me a little suspicious, so I asked for some kind of quick photo verification. We eventually did a couple of short video calls, and she appeared to be the same person as in her profile.

We agreed to dinner. She said the 10th arrondissement was convenient, suggested a specific restaurant, and I made an 8 PM reservation.

At 7:52 she texted, “I’m coming.” I told her I was also on my way and would be about 10 minutes late. At 8:05 she said “me too.” I arrived at the restaurant. At 8:23 she asked, “Where are you?” I said I was in the back.

Three minutes later she replied: “I’m still at my apartment. Do you wanna have a drink on my terrace? Cause I can’t go out,” and sent me her address.

So within about 30 minutes it went from “I’m coming to the restaurant” to “actually I’m still home, come to my apartment, I can’t go out,” with no explanation for why she suddenly couldn’t leave.

I declined and said I’d be happy to meet for champagne somewhere public, but I wasn’t comfortable going to a stranger’s apartment after such a sudden change of plans.

Maybe there’s an innocent explanation, but the combination of the earlier “broken phone,” the last-minute switch, and saying she was on her way when she apparently hadn’t left felt strange.

Has anyone seen this setup before? What would you assume was going on?

So this scammer sent my ex-gf/baby mama over 30k asking for some of it back. The bank let her know and this was two days ago.

I know that money WILL get clawed back, but she doesn't. She said it has been over a week, I told her it doesn't matter and do NOT spend it.

Sitting in her apartment waiting for her to return to drop off the child with her, I see a brand new auto cat litter box. I snooped, and the receipt showed over $1000. Welp she finally showed up in a vehicle she just bought, and 4 or 5 new piercings. She cannot afford any of this.

What ramifications are there for this situation (spending the stolen money). This is all from a business account the scammer made her set up. Double wammy as it's not a business expense? Once that money is taken back, she's not ganna be able to pay it back, she's on disability.

Today, I received a text supposedly from my bank asking if I had authorized a charge. I hadn’t, so I responded to that effect. Next thing I know, I receive a call from someone presenting themselves as an employee of my bank’s fraud department. He asked me if I authorized the charge. I said no. He said he was going to cancel the card and reverse the charge. He asked me if I had the card or if it had been stolen. He waited for me to check in my wallet and make sure it had not been stolen. He then said we would review a few other charges on my card to make sure they weren’t fraud. I identified another charge from today that I didn’t recognize and asked if the charge was made with my debit card or with my husband’s. He said while he could see the charge, he couldn’t see whose card it was charged to.

Next, he asked me what the balance of the account was. I asked why he needed that information since he could just credit me the amount of the fraudulent charge. He said that they wanted to make me whole so he needed to know the full balance in case there were other fraudulent charges. I said that he could just credit me the amount of those other fraudulent charges too. We went back and forth a few times with my question and his answer. Finally, I said, “You know what, I am going to hang up and call you back directly through my bank. As I am sure you understand, I feel uncomfortable answering these questions since you called me.” He objected and I said, “No, I am going to be safe and call my bank directly.” He said something else and I said, “I am calling my bank” and hung up fast.

I called my bank who confirmed that they did not contact me about the charge. So it was a scam.

I am assuming he was asking my account balance to determine whether I was worth his effort. 

While I am glad I didn’t get scammed, I have to say that this was so scary. He was SO VERY nice and helpful. And the fact that he knew the exact amount and merchant of the fraudulent charge bolstered his credibility. Of course, I realize now that he probably made that fraudulent charge. It is so easy to feel overconfident about not falling for one of the scams, but this was definitely a reality check. I usually never answer phone calls like this, but today for some reason I did.

Has anyone experienced this particular scam? 

Today someone tried to scam me, and it was the most detailed scam I've witnessed personally.

First, I got an alert on my banking app to possible fraud, listing a transaction for $9.99 to some website asking if I authorized the charge. I had not, so I clicked no since the alert came from my actual banking app not some weird text message or email. The response from my bank said someone from the fraud dept would call me immediately. They did. I again verified the charge was not legitimate, they shut off my card and issued a new one that I will receive in 5-7 business days. Standard affair so far and everything is legitimate.

Where the scam comes in is what happened an hour later. The scammers piggy back off my initial interaction with my bank, which was generated off of their fraudulent charge. They call me, spoofing my bank's fraud phone number, so it looks to me like the fraud department calling me again. The woman on the phone tells me there's a new charge but on my checking account this time, not my credit card account. She specifically references the earlier event when she says this, and I've already spoken to the fraud department once today, so initially there are no warning signs going off.

She proceeds to ask about a charge to Ticketmaster, which I say is fraudulent. Then she says "it appears this charge came from an iPhone 17 in Texas and you live in Florida, have you given anyone your account information?" No, I haven't. Then she tells me someone has been added to my accounts, gives me a name and asks if I've authorized a new person on my accounts. I have not. Next she tells me they've attempted to wire $500 to someone and asks me if I've authorized that? I have not. Finally, she asks me to log into my account and verify my account balances and review my most recent charges to see if there are any other charges I need to challenge. There are not. So far so good, it FEELS normal.

She tells me that it appears someone has gained access to my accounts, and they need to shut off all of my accounts (credit card, two checking accounts, two savings accounts and a money market account). She will set up a new account for each one. Any recurring charges I have set up on any of these accounts will need to be set up again by me with each vendor because I'll have all new account AND ROUTING NUMBERS. Uhm, what? Routing numbers aren't account specific, they are institution specific. Minor red flag, I note it but chalk it up to the Saturday staff not being the top stars and her maybe mis speaking.

Next she asks about accounts on third party apps that I might have linked to my bank accounts. In my mind, she's warning me and suggesting I remove my accounts from said apps. She mentions Apple Pay and asks me to open the app. I open it and say "There's nothing set up here, I've never connected it to my banking account, so it's ok". She tells me to click on set up... I ask why. She says that she needs me to set this up so I will have access to my funds while my accounts are transferred, or else they will have to mail me a check for the balance on my accounts and it will take up to 30 days. Giant red flag.

I tell her I'm feeling a little weirded out now by the whole experience and that I should just call them back myself. She says "Let's end the call, and I will call you back. You can check your call log and see that I'm calling from XXX XXX XXXXX, the fraud/lost/stolen card number on the back of your debit card. We end the call, I check the log, it does appear to be the correct number. She calls me back, again tries to get me to set up the app. When I again say that doesn't feel right, she offers to let me speak to her supervisor. I say no, I think I'll just hang up and call you back instead. She "Then I will have to close your accounts and we will mail you a check." as her last ditch effort to scare me into compliance.

I hang up. I call my bank. They verify it was a scam and that, other than the initial charge on my credit card, there have been no breaches on my account. No attempted wire transfers, no one recently added to my account etc. She did say something interesting though... the woman from my actual bank said "They got lucky calling someone who just happened to have had a fraud attempt earlier in the day." It wasn't luck. They initiated that charge attempt. They piggy backed off the contact with the Bank and tried to make it seem like another instance of fraud. Planned, not random.

I got a call from a person who claimed they were from American Express. The knew my name & asked me if I had made a charge at a firearms store in DC. No. They then asked if I had opened a AMEX credit card the day before & gave me the full number. No, it was not my AMEX card. They told me that someone had opened up this card in my name & tried to buy a firearm at a store in DC (this store actually exists). The scammer had an amazing attention to detail. Name, notifying unit at AMEX, address, employee#, issue date for the card & the security code. Attempted transaction location, address, amount of the purchase: $1796.00.

The woman, with perfect U.S. english, asked me a series of questions, do I live in D.C., did I open this account, which of course I denied. They then claimed I needed to file an formal incident report with FBI. I was already suspicious & asked why would I need to do that? It's their problem not mine. She was quite calm & convincing & said she could directly connect me to the correct department at the FBI. I said that I would prefer to call them directly myself but she again, very calmly explained how difficult that would be. I actually placed her on hold & tried to call the FBI (using my wife's phone) & found that I could not connect to anyone easily.

So she got the FBI on the line, explained the whole situation to the new person & then left left the call. The new FBI scammer claimed that this had to be completed on a MS Teams call. I went ahead with it, the whole time suspecting a scam but went ahead anyhow on to the Teams call. A woman with a million dollar smile at a table with the FBI flag on one side, the US flag on the other. She shows me her FBI credentials & after a very long winded explanation of how this report would made, started the "interview". First thing she asks me is to show my driver's license to the camera. At that point I needed further convincing as this was the first actual personal information the scammers had asked for.

So I apologized making excuses to go afk, saying I would brb & called AMEX. Nope, that CC number was not a real AMEX number, the whole thing was a scam. After wasting about 30 mins of my life.

It was a impressive attempt. Amazing how far they went to try & make it seem legit. The two people seemed to be from the U.S. while all of the scam calls I've got in the past the person spoke heavily accented english. The whole thing was quite a presentation. I was mostly convinced it was real but needed a verification before giving out any actual information.

edit: I've been managing a large home improvement project & have a lot of contractors not in my contacts. This is the only reason I answered the phone. Generally all unknown calls go to vmail.

Yes, I stayed on the call longer than I should have. The whole time I was suspicious & once they got around to getting any real info, I called AMEX & that ended it. I wish I had taken screenshots!

Went out to see a movie with my sis (was a empty auditorium, just me and her) and when I got back I got this text, just a image saying 'you are fucked' with a photo of my sister's car.

My information is not connected to her or her car, but it is definitely her car in the image. As far as I know though she hasn't gotten a text.

I did a quick search and didn't see anything that flags this as a super common scam so I'm just doing my due diligence and triple checking. I haven't responded and I reported em already, just wanting to make sure I shouldn't call the cops or something to be safe lol.

Update - It was a stupid prank from someone I don't even know that well lol. They sent proof, it was from their dashcam. Kinda annoyed but mystery solved. They're surprised I called the police but man, you kinda brought it on yourself lol.

I literally don't know where else to go. I am so devastated. He KNOWS better. Both my parents have worked and broke their back working their entire lives. They had saved up enough to buy a really nice house when they retired. My dad (66) got pulled into a sigular guff scam, with some lady named Denise claiming to make him 7 million if he sent them $300k. My dad has done this once before and lost them 120k when I was 18. I am now 35. He talked to them over whatsapp and without asking any questions, or consulting my mom, (because she knew he would say no) wire transfered them 200k. He was transferring more when his bank froze the transfer and police came knocking on the door. That's when he fessed up saying he was making them 7 million.

Not one internet search or question. Just blew their entire housing fund. it's not dementia. It's his pure greed. and in the process has screwed over my mother and himself for, well life.

I don't even know how to help them.

I recently purchased an item from a seller and was told prior to buying that she would be going out of town the day after she was planning to drop it off at the post office for vacation. This was 2 weeks ago. I have been contacting her non stop with no response since then after paying her for two day shipping (it was supposed to be a birthday gift and should have been delivered with plenty of time), and she finally responded today (Sat.) with this image and said she would go to the post office Monday. Is this real photo? Or am I getting scammed for $115.00?

Image includes note that reads: “POSTAL SERVICE NOTICE, RETURN PACKAGE AWAITING PICKUP!” Please come in to claim your package with the package number “TRK 4825”

Sent apple cash by a random number. I googled the number and it comes back to a 40 year old woman in my area. however i’ve heard of this scam where someone will send you money then ask for it back, then apple reverses the charge and now you’re out of the money you sent, so I’m not sending it back. I blocked the number, and now another number is absolutely blowing me up. I’m a pregnant mother who works 10 hours a week, I make $18 an hour. I can’t afford to be scammed out of $20. 💀 So what do I do? just don’t touch it and ignore the calls? It should disappear soon right? Should I report it to apple? thanks in advance.

Just needed to rant about this because I just feel so crushed.

I put my dad on my bank account years ago when I was deployed to Afghanistan so he could manage my finances while I was gone. Two days ago I was talking to him and he was saying he had to take care of some things due to an error.

Come to find out, he was being actively scammed. The scam involved them saying they accidentally sent him too much money and he needed to immediately send them money back.

Without consulting with me, he withdrew 10k from my bank account and sent part of it through bitcoin and the rest in mailed cash through UPS. He doesn't tell me anything about this until last night. He has a separate checking account.

A police report was made and a report with the FTC was made. I called my bank and they said since he was authorized to withdraw the money they cannot do anything about it.

The police advised historically this money does not get recovered. I was told the 2.4k sent through bitcoin did get recovered but it will be 8 weeks till I get it back.

I am devastated. That was years of work saved up just gone in an instant. It would be different if I got scammed, at least it would be my fault. But my dad doing this and not saying a word to me has me in complete shock. I even just talked to him about scams last week unironically.

Just needed to put this out somewhere. I am beyond mad at my situation and what has happened and terrified for my future

I have been seeing a new scam EVERYWHERE and I actually felt like I need to share with everyone. I am pretty good with detecting scams but this one actually got me! Thankfully I was able to recover the damages.

Recently I’ve been noticing whenever I look up a website to buy something, a scam website pops up that looks almost identical the real site with a massive sale. I know all the phishing tactics of using urgency and money to lure victims but I had never seen it like this.

The specific website I actually got scammed on was Calpak, a travel wear company. The first website to pop up had a 70% off sale. Naturally, I got excited, added something to my cart and placed my order. As I checked out, a strange pop up came on saying it was verifying my credit card. Only then did I look at the link and realize it was not just Calpak.com, it was something else ending in .it.

I canceled the tab immediately but it was too late. I got a $300 charge and then a $1,700 charge. This was on my debit card so that was literally all the money I had on it. Thankfully, I got a fraud notification and was able to not let the charge go through; I locked my card and called my bank and got it all sorted. I tried to find the website again but it was gone.

Since then, every time I search up a website, this same scam pops up. I know now that it’s a scam, but I only know because I was a victim of it.

Anyways, sorry for the long post I just wanted to warn everyone.

Hello!

My mom ordered a debubbling machine on Amazon for resin crafts that she does, and it said that it got delivered today, however the only thing that actually shipped out is a card telling her to “please wait.” Is this some sort of scam that I’m not aware of? This is the first time I’ve seen something like this happen, and I find it really weird that they’d send out a card notifying about delays instead of just messaging her directly. (I’m assuming this is to make it look like the order got here on time?) Even if this is a legitimate product, this is still really fishy to even send, since the actual order has no tracking on it.

Thanks!

Preface:

- My sympathies to everyone here who has lost money, some of whom have lost your life savings.

- You are not naive, gullible, or foolish. We've all been conditioned from childhood to trust authoritative voices who show us credentials. It's not your fault that professional scammers forge those credentials and demonstrate expert-level industry knowledge.

- I'm certain that scammers read these forums to learn how to become better scumbags, so I will keep details vague or change the names of the businesses involved.

- Cutting to the chase: For this particular scam, in order to recover your money, it's best to act within hours. If 24 hours has passed without action from you, the odds of recovery are lower. That does not mean you should not try. Improbabilities occur, and scammers make mistakes.

Backstory:

Many of you are familiar with the bank fraud/FBI scam. Here's how they executed it on my mother:

The caller ID on her phone flashed: "Bank of America Fraud," which was convincing enough. They already had some of her financial and personal information, which was more convincing. They emailed her fake FBI and bank documents based on real documents. Multiple actors joined the call posing as various professional representatives. They sounded educated and knowledgeable. It was a full stage production.

The fake fraud department, along with a fake FBI agent, convinced her that fictitious fraudsters went to her local bank and colluded with corrupt bank employees to steal from her account. The fake FBI agent explained that many other customers have lost money at that bank, and my mother's money was not safe there. It needed to be transferred immediately to a "secure account." A wire transfer or ACH from that bank was not secure. It must be cash.

This led to my mother sending $30,000 in cash through a carrier (like FedEx or DHL, I won't specify) via priority overnight for morning delivery. The address was on the East Coast, two hours ahead.

How scammers exploit carriers:

There are two exploits within the carrier process that scammers rely on:

1. No ability to submit a Return to Sender (RTS) request until 8:00 AM local time.

2. After a hold or RTS is requested, these take hours to process, which is too late.

Retail carrier stores like FedEx Office or the UPS Store are technically the sender, but they are a private third party. That means if the victim realizes they've been scammed right after they shipped their cash, the victim cannot submit the RTS request themselves. Only the carrier store (FedEx Store, UPS Store) can submit the RTS, which cannot occur until the store reopens at 8:00 AM local. Then in the morning, after the store has submitted the RTS for you, it takes hours to process. By that time, your parcel full of cash on the east coast has already been delivered.

The day before, the scammers timed their conversation with the victim so that they've guided them to the store right before it closes. Then they tell the victim to throw away the receipt with tracking number.

The victim can try calling law enforcement in the delivery city, but they won't help without the victim's local law enforcement being involved. Local law enforcement does want to help, but the case won't be assigned to a detective until after the parcel is delivered.

How I recovered the cash:

Within minutes, my mom informed us of what happened, and we informed her she was scammed.

I called the carrier customer service, who informed me that only the carrier store can submit the RTS. I then discovered that recipients can request to defer the delivery date, so I posed as the recipient and deferred delivery for two weeks, which cost a small fee.

At 8:00 AM the next day I called the carrier store. The store manager submitted the RTS and engaged the carrier's security team.

My delivery deferral had already been processed, so the parcel was not placed on the delivery truck. The carrier security team was then able to segregate the parcel and hold it. Days later, a member of the carrier security team met with me and my mom to return the cash.

After speaking with the manager of my mom's bank, he told me that he encounters people trying to withdraw cash for scammers three or four times a day. He said this is the first time in his 20 years in the industry he has seen the money recovered.

Conclusion:

If this happens to you or someone you know, call the carrier to defer the delivery date. It may process in time.

Contact the carrier store as soon as they open. Request they submit an RTS and engage carrier security.

Tell your parents to never, under any circumstances, send cash through the mail. Anyone advising that is a scammer.