This person friended me from an online game I played asking if I wanted to be paid to be a penpal. I’m familiar with a lot of phishing scams and other sorts of scams but I’ve never seen a scam like this one. What exactly is this person trying to get from me, are they hoping to infect my device with something sinister or are they trying to phish information from me without me knowing it? They seem to put a lotta emphasis on me VIEWING this photo they’re gonna send me and it makes me think that whatever they’re gonna send me must be infected with some sort of trojan. Can someone explain to me what’s going on here?
Report them
They are trying to get you to deposit a counterfeit check. It most likely wouldn’t clear your bank, but if it did, you end up on the hook for the entire amount of the check with no money, and they get the amount that you sent “back” to them.
scam. every photo you take with wny device has metadata. dont send them anything. block them immediately. dont even say bye.
I used to deal with these types of scams all the time on Craigslist. These guys aren’t even pretending to be legit anymore it seems.
I’m genuinely surprised that any business still accepts cheques.
DON’T DO IT. Just say you did. Lie to them for as long as possible. If they ask for proof you can’t give them, pretend to be dumb af and not understand their instructions.
If a clanker calls you, keep feeding them bogus instructions until they enter an inifite loop to waste their tokens. Kitboga has a YouTube video showing how to do it easily.
might be after your account and routing numbers on the checks
Yes, it’s a scam. Doesn’t really matter what’s going on other than it’s a scam.
Do they even play the game?
Not even sure, they were a low level player and dont seem to play all that much anyways. The fact they wanted to add me on discord to chat there was sus enough for me. But I just wanted to lead em on cus i was curious where it would go
Yea I think even if you’re unfamiliar with this particular scam, the pushiness for this particular method of payment is a big red flag.
You would have to be an idiot to entertain this. Block, move on, and ignore in the future. It’s unlikely you’re even talking to a real person.
This is the first stages of a very textbook fake check scam. They will provide a (unbacked) check, you can cash it and see the funds appear in your account. Something will happen, maybe they’ll realize they overpaid you by a few hundred dollars and ask you to refund that amount. The original check funds will be pulled after a few days when the financial institutions realize they were fraudulent and you’ll be out whatever amount of real funds you sent.
Now that you know this is a scam, even accepting the fake check is a felony.
I wasn’t planning on accepting a check from some rando online. That much common sense I do have. I will admit I am a bit of an idiot for entertaining them because I deadass CANNOT help myself.
I lowkey-highkey just wanna fuck with em in some way or waste his time. I used to troll fake VRchat model artists with zip bombs, but I’ve never really encountered a check scam before, so I was curious about it, hence why I asked.
I already know it’s a scam, but I was curious on the specifics of the scam. I like learnin about shit and was curious
It’s a bot. You’re not trolling anyone but yourself
Get them to send you the check.
Say you deposited it.
See what happens.Offer steam gift cards as the payment for the inevitable “I sent too much” part of the scam. Steam is no longer selling physical gift cards.
So you can waste some time pretending to go to a shop, unable to find them, trying other shops etc.Kitboga is a master at wasting scammers time if you want some YT vids to watch.
The check will bounce/charge back at some point IIRC
Whatever you do, don’t send any money back if they say they sent too much.
Definitely an SCP trying to disseminate a cognitohazard. I’d avoid at all costs.
I believe you, but I have no idea what any of that means.
heres the Wikipedia page. That will give you the details. I highly recommend heading to the wiki and reading a few if you’re at all a fan of creative fiction and sci-fi/horror.
If you’re more of an audio type, I cannot recommend The Exploring Series enough. He’s not only got the dry and clinical tone that the format lives on, but he has some well timed jokes and he also elaborates both on the entry and any entries referenced.
Its too late. THEY’RE IN MY WALLS.
100% a scam - I fell for it from a Fiverr account, scalpers will find any prior relationship and use it to get bitcoin.
Report and move on.
You are right to be skeptical. They’ll probably send an image link to an infected site, or send an image file extension but its actually something else
They’re going to “overpay” you, then ask you to send them the money back (or sometimes but something for them). But eventually their check bounces, while you’re out whatever money/items you sent them.
You also need to start being more careful, because the scammers sell and trade lists of people who have fallen victim, or almost fallen victim, to their scam. Because if you’ve (almost) fallen for one scam, you’re more likely to fall for a second one.
Aw damn. So I can’t even just take the money and run huh?
Any way I could maybe mess with them before I block em? I feel a tad bit devious, especially after sorta leading em on like this ùwú
Play dumb to an extreme level. Always insist the things don’t work.
If he asks you to share a screen so he can help, say you don’t know how. Every time he gives you a new instruction, make sure to misinterpret it just enough to make it seem like you are trying to listen, but completely failing to understand.
Ask him to send you $50 via PayPal, but refuse to give him your PayPal account. Tell him nobody else has ever asked you for that when they have sent you money
I’m not saying all of this is a good idea, but they are examples of how you can mess with somebody like that.
Yes it’s a scam, they probably want you to buy something right? They’re going to try and send you a fake check, in which they will ask you to digitally cash it in so it doesn’t go through a teller. The check doesn’t actually get checked by anyone due a couple days so you would have effectively stolen money. Then once they convince you to buy something for yourself and/or for themselves they basically fuck off then the bank would be like hey that check wasn’t real, instead of reporting you/done this is the first time we’ll just charge your account for the check.
If your still adamant on them being real, take the check to a teller at the bank. Make sure the check is physical. Make sure the sender it matches their name and the bank is actually real (by the routing numbers not the logo on it)
Wait, checks are still not automatically cryptographically verified in seconds? How is anyone still using this?
This would require the bank industry to invest in technology, and that would cost money. Banks are for making money, not spending it. Charge just enough to the consumers to cover whatever losses are brought about by the archaic system and you successfully pass on all losses to the account holders.
Idk, there’s just quick checks, ig banks just trust ya 🤷♀️
Until they check manually in a labor-intensive process and you are punished again for having been scammed. It’s inefficient and the wrong people pay the price.
