I have experience with this (but didn't fall for the scam).
The scammer, whom I met on social media, was extremely convincing. She claimed to be wealthy. She has pictures with celebrities, pictures with her Lamborghini, and so on. She said her stepfather is an executive in the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which gives him access to information that other people cannot have. This information allows her to make currency pair trades that bring guaranteed profits. (This would be insider trading, technically.) She showed me screenshots of trades where she made $250,000 USD to $500,000 USD in a matter of 30 minutes (buys and sells in 30 minutes; timing is based on instructions from her stepfather). Then she encouraged me to make trades with my own money as well.
She asked me to install the Coinbase Wallet app. She asked me to press the Browse button in this app, then type seemingly random characters into the box. (Part of the scam here is that victims may not realize they are actually typing a website URL). The website then displays inside the Coinbase Wallet app, and its function appears to be part of Coinbase Wallet.
She had me create a demo account, and guided me through the steps of making a demo transaction and showed me that I could make a significant profit. Then she asked me to make a real account. By this point I was suspecting a scam so I did not go through.
All this happened over a period of 3 weeks, so the scammer takes her time to "groom" victims. An Asian lady who speaks Mandarin and speaks good English with the help of translation apps. I never met the lady in person (she claimed to be on the other coast of the USA), but I did have a video call with her. She claimed to have been using the website for two years (but in fact, internet records show this site was only created weeks before). I discovered that her phone numbers are Twilio and Google Voice VOIP numbers, and her IP address is Azure, which probably means she is logged in to an Azure VM from another country.
Warning signs: They are always far enough away that you can't meet in person, but promises she will be moving to your city soon. (Or they are from your city, but currently away on business). Wants to switch to WhatsApp or Telegram. They always do video call to show that they are a real person. Shows off their wealth, mansion-like houses, fancy cars, dining at expensive restaurants. Casually mentions investing in crypto as their source of wealth. Then wants to show you how to invest in crypto yourself.
Edit: Here are some pictures the scammer shared with me. She is with celebs (Asian celebs, I don't recognize them), in her new Lamborghini at the dealership and so on:
It's much much worse than that. There no "the woman", there was "a woman" who was hired to play the part. The rest of the operation is call center sweat shop/boiler room. Often the people involved are being held against their will.
The podcast "Search Engine" recently had an episode about this [1]. One aspect that came to light is that while some targets will sometimes waste these callers time by playing along just to mess with them, they can actually be putting these people in harms way.
Before pig butchering, Reply All (Search Engine's direct forerunner co-hosted by PJ Vogt) investigated tech support scams. It's all organized crime too, but this was before they realized they can use slaves instead of hired operators.
A stranger (out of the goodness of their heart) lets you in on their secret technique for making £MILLIONS, and you didn't immediately tell them to bugger off?
They are only a stranger on the first day, right? After weeks of chatting, you feel like you know them. They take their time, and only into the second or third week do they offer to share their wealth making technique.
>And you reply "new phone who dis" and they apologize and chat about unrelated things for weeks becoming your friend.
Or maybe, just maybe, you should rethink how much you actually KNOW someone who you've merely been texting with for a few weeks.
I wouldn't trust my closest friend giving me advice about making money, because his advice was an MLM. I sure as fuck am not taking financial advice from someone I have never met face to face. Even if they are legitimately letting me in on a way to make free money, it's probably unethical at best.
Yea that’s what I don’t get. I almost can see falling for the “Microsoft tech support” and “I am the IRS” and “Your nephew needs bail money” scams, as they all sound like emergencies and I can see people setting aside common sense to handle an emergency. At least until the iTunes Gift Cards take the stage. LOL.
But “hello Internet Stranger I know how you can invest and make $millions?” LOL how does that make any sense? Put yourself in the scammer’s shoes: you found a way to double your money. Are you really going to tell random people on the internet how to do it? Obviously not.
You're right of course but the thing is - it's not "Hello, how would you like to make millions" - It's "Hello, how are you?" followed by a period of building the person's trust. And then it's an incidental "Oh btw, did I mention I'm involved in this great investment club". At this point a gullible person is seeing this other person as their friend (or more, a lot of people are lonely). Wouldn't you share your investment strategy with your friend?
Yea I think that also needs to be part of The Talk with your elderly relatives, too: Random online people are not looking to make friends with you, no matter how friendly they seem, they are taking advantage of your loneliness. I can see how the conversation could be unpleasant and you need to be delicate and respectful when telling it.
> At least until the iTunes Gift Cards take the stage. LOL.
Yes, I'm amused by those too. In my experience, the IRS has always wanted US dollars. But maybe Apple gift cards became legal tender without us noticing?
Scammers target people who will fall for it; immigrants are already used to using gift cards for various things and reasons, so they are not as likely to immediately recognize it as a scam.
Which is why all gift card racks now have the "IRS IS NOT ASKING YOU FOR THIS GIFT CARD" signs on them; still not good enough.
I guess another, more controversial regulatory path we could go down is:
Does the world really need gift cards? Do their few, anachronistic legit use cases outweigh the scam use cases? I personally believe gift cards are an overall net negative, even just considering the amount of plastic and packaging wasted on them, but add on the scam aspect, and we have to ask: should gift cards even be a thing?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gift-card-scam-get-your-money-b... says that gift card fraud was c. $200M in 2022, and that people have about $20 billion in unspent gift cards. Flow vs stock, but it seems like the majority of usage is legit. (Though maybe not for particular businesses).
> Do their few, anachronistic legit use cases outweigh the scam use cases?
Anachronistic? I still give these as small gifts all the time, and every grocery or department store I go in seems to have a rack of them at the checkout stand.
Often, they won't call them gift cards. They'll use things like "verification card." Newly arrived immigrants are often hopelessly confused already. They'll fall for fake job offers. These "jobs" will eventually require them to get gift cards. It can escalate into blackmail. The victim will have handed over all sorts of private information as part of the job application/interview.
Yup, too long ago for this scam, but the dating scam. Woman from Russia, a number of nice email conversations, then she wants to come to meet me. I suggest we meet in the EU, splitting expenses, and of course that will not work. Push it a few more times (absolutely not picking up the option she's pushing to "send money to help with my airfare to the US"), and surprise, I got ghosted. This scammer/scam-team at least seemed to fairly quickly pick up the signs of a non-cooperative target.
Curious - what tipped you off to this being a scam? And when you were still believing, why did you think she wanted to share her "inside knowledge" with you?
I was the wrong demographic for this scam. I am successful in the stock market so I would never have fallen for questionable investment schemes, especially one involving trading on insider knowledge.
Was it? I can understand making friends with people you bump into randomly throughout the day, but someone just sending you a message isn't exactly bumping into you, it seems like the person was explicitly seeking you out.
In the late 90s early 00s I got the feeling there was alot of (and I myself self made some) random encounter pen pals. Like in "Hi whats up where are you from?". The real people to scammer ratio seemed way different back then.
But ye, if someone texts me on some chat service nowadays and it is a stranger I assume it is a scam.
The scammer, whom I met on social media, was extremely convincing. She claimed to be wealthy. She has pictures with celebrities, pictures with her Lamborghini, and so on. She said her stepfather is an executive in the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which gives him access to information that other people cannot have. This information allows her to make currency pair trades that bring guaranteed profits. (This would be insider trading, technically.) She showed me screenshots of trades where she made $250,000 USD to $500,000 USD in a matter of 30 minutes (buys and sells in 30 minutes; timing is based on instructions from her stepfather). Then she encouraged me to make trades with my own money as well.
She asked me to install the Coinbase Wallet app. She asked me to press the Browse button in this app, then type seemingly random characters into the box. (Part of the scam here is that victims may not realize they are actually typing a website URL). The website then displays inside the Coinbase Wallet app, and its function appears to be part of Coinbase Wallet.
She had me create a demo account, and guided me through the steps of making a demo transaction and showed me that I could make a significant profit. Then she asked me to make a real account. By this point I was suspecting a scam so I did not go through.
All this happened over a period of 3 weeks, so the scammer takes her time to "groom" victims. An Asian lady who speaks Mandarin and speaks good English with the help of translation apps. I never met the lady in person (she claimed to be on the other coast of the USA), but I did have a video call with her. She claimed to have been using the website for two years (but in fact, internet records show this site was only created weeks before). I discovered that her phone numbers are Twilio and Google Voice VOIP numbers, and her IP address is Azure, which probably means she is logged in to an Azure VM from another country.
Warning signs: They are always far enough away that you can't meet in person, but promises she will be moving to your city soon. (Or they are from your city, but currently away on business). Wants to switch to WhatsApp or Telegram. They always do video call to show that they are a real person. Shows off their wealth, mansion-like houses, fancy cars, dining at expensive restaurants. Casually mentions investing in crypto as their source of wealth. Then wants to show you how to invest in crypto yourself.
Edit: Here are some pictures the scammer shared with me. She is with celebs (Asian celebs, I don't recognize them), in her new Lamborghini at the dealership and so on:
https://imgur.com/a/uRKaE8g
https://imgur.com/a/HV7v1XF
https://imgur.com/a/vDvifL2
https://imgur.com/a/sI01Upb