Don't believe that for a second! I just did a quick search for "Russian Bride" and found these lovelies are available and eager to wed American guys...
Good on Fox8 for highlighting these scams. Too many people are completely unaware of them, and the government doesn’t bother to inform anyone.
Anyway, the United States has the technology to put a man on the Moon. But evidently we are not able to cyber-attack these scammers in India, Pakistan, etc. So the scammers are free to steal from vulnerable citizens, over and over again.
At work years ago someone cold called my direct office line. Few had that number that would ring directly to my desk without going through the switchboard. She was talking about some crime I supposedly committed. It was comical. She was a terribly bad scammer. I could hear her TV set in the background. She was sniffling like she was on cocaine or heroin or something. She said there was “a police car” down the street and if I didn’t pay the “fine” right then and there with my credit card she would radio the car to come arrest me. It was laughable. I should have mocked her but instead I just said “ok, send the cops” and hung up.
Maybe the newer scams are more sophisticated.
My baseline assumption anymore is that everything is a scam.
Every phone call
Every text message
Every email
Every advertisement
Everything
Romance has always been a consumer scam. Oldest trick in the book.
I keep getting these calls representing my bank. They do, what I think is an identity check, by asking the last four numbers of my Social Security and the month and year of my birthday. Only, I give false numbers and that connects me with a Philippine scammer. I ask him his name and with that, he tell me his name. I tell him his name is invalid. He goes crazy. I tell him he has contacted me, who is the human resources officer for the central California region. On my computer I have access to all the employees for our bank. When I tell him he is engaged in bank fraud and I am reporting him, he freaks and hangs up.
#1 red flag IMHO, the email does not use your name, only something like “client”. If your name is not addressed it is a scam.
Don't believe that for a second! I just did a quick search for "Russian Bride" and found these lovelies are available and eager to wed American guys...
I got an email today from my sister with the subject line: “I wanted you to see this site”
That was a HUGE red flag. I texted her that her email account was hacked and she needed to contact everybody and tell them mails like that were not from her.
I later opened the email and found it was a legit mail. She had found an article she thought I’d like and forwarded it from her phone. The text app apparently put that horrible, spammy / scammy subject on her email. So the anxiety was for no reason.
I then did a test and sent the article via email from my browser on my computer. The Apple “Mail” program put the title of the article as the subject line — much better.
Even false alarms like this a a huge PITA.
Wow! Double tease! These 10 scams AND the red flags!
Shanell calling???
I don’t know any groids!
Those scams pale to these two much bigger scams:
US Dollar (it’s not money)
FED/IRS/1040-taxes (the IRS is a collection agency, what it collects is NOT used for government programs - Grace Commission)
Good security software for your computer, prescreen calls before you answer and hang up on anyone with a foreign accent.
The most simple answer is don’t be stupid.
Rule 1: If the person has an Indian accent its a scam
“Trust your gut if the offer sounds too good to be true”
My instincts tell me that it’s not so much the “Nigerian prince” anymore as much as it is today’s college university crowd, grads and undergrads, and even tech savvy younger Americans who are behind some of these sophisticated scam operations. Young and daring, they’ll take to paths of least resistance as shortcuts to “success” because they can, and off the beaten path they go. It’s likely that the majority of scammers like these have political agendas as well- Woke-ist, LGBTQ+, foreign nationals, communist, progressive, By Any Means Necessary anti-American subversives, etc. Plus, we have these migrant criminals who, whether they belong to or owe something to drug cartels or not, may be looking to set up shop where they can go about their “business”. They are more convincing when they make themselves appear to be naive and benign but don’t let the smooth taste fool you. Someday it could really be your own grandkid in AI form trying to bilk you out of a small fortune because they can’t wait for their inheritance or to have it go to somebody else first.
the difficulty with krapcoins is that it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between the fraudulent krapcoin scams and the “legitimate” drapcoin scams ...
A Nigerian Princess just sent me an email wanting to marry me and offer me a job as CEO of IBM, but first i had to buy one bazillion NigerianKoins, blacktop my driveway, wire her a hundred thousand dollars in earnest money, give her access to my computer to fix it because she knows it’s eaten up by a gaggle of viruses, and sell me ten brand new luxurious timeshare condos in Haiti ...
Could anyone here tell me if this a scam?
It’s amazing how dumb people can be sometimes. I had a secretary one time give the “Alabama State Troopers’ Association” her checking account number over the phone for a fundraiser. Fortunately for her they only got her for $100 or so instead of the $20 she thought she was giving them.
These scams will always be a way of life. Like herpes, taxes and the rest. The majority of population is devoid of even a shred of critical thinking. On any subject….
Yesterday, I read a local story where a Wal-mart clerk prevented an elderly man from being scammed out of $5,000 via a call stating a warrant was out for his arrest for missing jury duty. Luckily she questioned him and recognized the scam.
I just searched and found the story has now gone national.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/10662001/walmart-worker-stops-gift-card-scam/
It’s good to be cynical about most things these days.