Do games count? I got scammed on runescape out of a 50mil item which was a lot at the time (this was sometime around 2003-2005). 50-100 hours of time for me to get it at an estimate. It was a stupid mistake that I thought I was smart enough to avoid, with what I now recognise as classic signs of a scam (slightly too good to be true, moving goal posts, slightly odd but not entirely unreasonable requests). But I can tell you I’m glad I got scammed young on a game, because it was a good lesson with very low actual harm (only time lost realistically) and made me WAY more wary of things.

Once I was at the train station as a young college freshman (maybe 1000$ to my name) there was this old guy looked like a grandpa and he told me that he didn’t have any money he lost his wallet and he needs to get some money to take the train and then take a cab back home. He looked so genuine and he really looked like he needed help. But of course the amount he needed was a bit much for me, he asked for 50$. He said that he will pay me back so I gave him my information for a transfer and he promised that he’ll pay me back and he was so thankful and I gave him cash. And of course he never paid me back and later I realized that it’s like a common scam in train stations that some people say they really need money to get somewhere but it’s just a scam.

A few days later at the same train station some lady told me that she had no money and she needed to Take a train to go see her children and this time I was smarter and I told her “no problem Come with me, and I’ll buy you a ticket” and then she was like “no no I need money I need money” so I told her I can’t help her. And then I saw her again the next day and a few more times and apparently she’s like a very common scammer in that area.

50$ for an important life lesson is a good bargain I think.

I once locked myself out of my apartment. It was not locked-locked, just the key was inside. In full panic mode (because my dog was inside and it was late at night) I googled for a locksmith. You can already see the mistakes I made here. I called them, a guy came over with a lot of tools. He showed me the upcoming cost, I had to agree with it on the spot, but it was what he said on the phone. Then he started his work and, unable to open the bolt with sandpaper (why sandpaper I don’t know), began loudly rattling on the door to loosen it somehow. My neighbors were probably really annoyed by this and my dog scared. This went on for 15-20 minutes and it finally worked (don’t remember if it was only from the rattling or something else). It turns out this was unnecessary, more on that later.

We sat down to do the payment and this is the scam part: it suddenly cost 4-5 times the amount he told me on the phone! I was confused but made my next mistake: I paid it because I suddenly had the feeling this is a criminal organization and I would be in trouble with them.

Next day I checked valid prices and it was way overpaid. I tried to ask my bank to get my money back but it was a kind of payment that wouldn’t allow this. I even called the guy back and asked for my money, he laughed at me. I went to the local consumer protection agency, they could not help me. The „invoice“ he gave me was not valid, it had no real company, no sales tax ID. Nothing I could do here. He did actually help me get inside my apartment but it was way too expensive and the guy was not even good at what he was doing.

Multiple mistakes:

• I panicked
• I did not check if I might be able to do it on my own
• I googled
• I did not check if the invoice is valid (I’m no lawyer but it looked sketchy)

Later I learned how to easily break into my apartment in a similar situation using a simple wire. I don’t know why this asshole made it so complicated and loud.

I have since been very paranoid about forgetting my keys.

Pro tip: When you move into a new place, take some time to check for locksmiths and other services in your local area that are legit and save those in your phone book. If something happens you know where to go and don’t have to ask Google.

This was years ago, but I was driving around listening to music with my windows down and a couple guys in a van pulled up next to me and asked if I wanted a deal on stereo equipment. Being the naive idiot I was I followed them into a parking lot.

They claimed to be home stereo installers and had accidentally received two premium stereos for a customer order instead of one. They wanted to get rid of the second one for beer money and asked for like $200. They had a magazine that showed the stereo was worth several thousand and I thought I might make a quick buck by reselling it to a pawn shop or online.

I didn’t have $200 but I had overdraft protection so I thought I would pull that money out anyway and pay it back once I had sold the stereo. The guy at the pawnshop was the one who told me I got scammed and I have never felt more embarrassed.

I needed a place to live and applied for a place. Guy called me up and wanted to sign a lease without seeing the place and send me a virus link to click. I kept asking to meet him there and he kept telling me to click the virus link.

I didn’t, but unfortunately I had sent him the info you would apply for a lease for. No financial info fortunately. Had to lock my credit report. I get 10,000 scam calls a day.

I was homeless at the time and I took this really hard.

My best friend used to work at a local fast food chain, and there was one week when we were both on vacation with our other friends. He was a Lead and the manager was also away during this timeframe.

We find out that some employee ended up falling for a phone scam, someone called the restaurant stating that they were the manager and needed money to cover some business costs. So this scammer tells the employee to buy gift cards and read out the numbers on the phone and such.

This dumbass ACTUALLY does this, while using the restaurant funds. He goes to Walmart with cash from the drawers, buys the gift cards worth like 5000 bucks, and gives them all to the scammer on the phone.

It wasn’t until after the full transaction completed that the dumbass employee decided to call my friend asking if what he did was okay, and my friend was like “FUCK NO, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT, ARE YOU INSANE?”

And yeah, pretty sure that dude was fired and they just had to deal with being short 5000 dollars.

I used to work with a bloke who got scammed in the car park for a house sound system.

He’s a smart bloke runs a company of his own now too but he was at the shop on the weekend buying whatever.

Two guys approached him in a truck and said our boss ordered one sound system but got two and we got told to get rid of it but have to get to the job for install in 15 minutes. If you’re interested its yours for 500 dollars or whatever.

My mate jumped at it bought it all and went on his way.

Turns out the speakers were just speaker boxes no actual stuff inside no cables doe the stereo etc.

As he told us the story we couldn’t believe he fell for it, but there’s a sucker every minute as they say.

Sister wanted to get a job doing art and ended up getting an offer to work as an illustrator for a publishing company. One of her parents was all in in this. The other parent asked me to look out over to see if it was real or not. Turns out it was a scam I found out from 5 minutes of web searching. I had to be the one to break the news and the parent who was all in on the idea didn’t seem fazed that this was likely a scam since “there was a chance it was real”.

Nothing was signed, but I had to take the hit of standing in the way of the sister’s success.

When I was very young (probably too much to be on the internet) I got onw of those viruses that lock your pc and ask for a payment because the pc is seized by the authority or some shit. Of course I believed it so I mustered the courage to tell my parent. Was very relieved when they told me it was a scam and 3 seconds of googling tols me how to remove the virus (it was just an autostart program).

When I changed electricity operator I got called telling from the operator I switched to and gave my bank coordinates to change the contract. Took a while to figure out maybe it was not them. How they found out I just switched to that particular operator they were impersonating is outiside of my understanding.

My grandma got a call saying it was “one of her child” she made the mistake to tell them the name of her child so they pretended to be one. She might have been old, but she was smart enough to hung up and call my uncle and of course he had no accident, but coincidentallt it was the only day in the week he was not with her. Did they know? Who knows

Was travelling with some friends in Istanbul. They were pretty inexperienced abroad, so I figured out public transit there, told them what tickets to buy, and we all walked to the ticket machine. There was a big line/crowd, and a guy up front was taking cash and giving people tickets, which he got by scanning a card at the machine. I went first hoping to show my friends what to do - bought my ticket for like €5 or so and ignored the scammer. They all gave the scammer guy like €20 for him to scan his pass and buy them a €5 ticket. Their reasons were “he seemed official” and “I knew it was a scam, but I figured it was just easier to go along with it”.

A believed a guy who said he just got out of jail and needed $10 for a bus ride home. I was 17. Found an ATM, gave him the cash, saw him walking around the mall with his girlfriend 20 minutes later.

One I fell for: last minute, I needed to take a cat on a flight. I was googling what I needed to do for the airline and ended up with a scam number. The issue was I didn’t even have to click through to the site, I’d like to think I’d have caught on. But the number was bolded in the suggested results without having to click through toanywhere. I was in a panic getting ready for the flight, so I wasn’t on my game.

Immediately after I gave the person my credit card info over the phone, like literally the minute I hung up, I realized that it was so obviously a scam. Called my credit card company and had them block the charge and change the card number. Definitely not the pain in the ass I needed right before a trip, but it made me more cautious for the future and luckily I didn’t lose any money.

My sister fell for one I couldn’t believe. A kid was washing windows on the side of the road, she said she didn’t have any cash and he said, “That’s okay I have cash app, I’ll type in my name.” She handed her phone over and he cash apped himself $2000. No recourse since cash app isn’t a real bank transfer. Expensive lesson to learn.

My older neighbor got a call from a guy who called her “mom” and said he’d been in a car accident, and there was a problem with his insurance, so he was in real trouble if he couldn’t pay cash for the damage, the other guy was gonna call the cops, and he needed $2,000 to give to the other guy for the damage.

She said “Tim?” and the guy said "yeah mom its Tim and kept repeating he was gonna go to jail for not having insurance cause it lapsed just this week and he needed to run to the store and he was in an accident.

She withdrew 2k from the bank and some guy came and said he was Tim’s friend and he needed to go right then the cops were gonna arrest Tim.

Apparently, he snatched the money out of her hand and ran to his car and left. She felt very foolish.

Had a contractor working on my basement who fell for a pig butchering scam. Took him for 50k

My cousin has been blackmailed for dick pics twice in his fucken life. Makes me wheeze just thinking about it lmao