Scams You've Encountered

A well-dressed woman approached my kid at a hotel in Miami. She claimed to be there from some country on a pre-paid trip to attend a conference, but the hotel would not let her check into her room without a US credit card which she did not have (you know, those incidentals). So she asked if my kid would be nice enough to let her have her CC on file. It all sounded very believable but kid said no.

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@silverlady :
“a woman came up to him and asked him to rent a car for her. She would give him cash to pay for it. Of course, he said no!! Can you imagine anyone falling for that? I never heard of anything so strange. “

LOL you haven’t met my BIL. Only he doesn’t provide any cash :roll_eyes:

Smart kid.

Smart BIL.

Not a scam but my husband almost lost one of our small bags in Barcelona yesterday. He was watching all our stuff while I located the Airbnb. He took his eyes off everything for a second to take a photo. In that instant, a guy grabbed the bag. A waitress in the adjacent outdoor cafe saw him and grabbed the bag back (and scolded DH)! All that was in the bag was paperback books but it was a wake up call. And DH KNEW to be careful.

We just arrived at a beach resort and he can’t find his credit card. I’m sure he just misplaced it. Ugh. I’m glad his account number is different from mine so we can use my card. I guess we’ll cancel his if he doesn’t find it tonight.

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Ugh I’m sorry! If you have an app, you might be able to lock/freeze the card now until you find it. And then cancel if you don’t.

Barcelona was where we saw the most pick pockets. While on a night time tour, the operator talked to us about them and how people will try to slide into the group and pretend they are part of it, and then will steal something. It happened to us, but was easy to tell because my (large) family was the whole group!

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:smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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My son was robbed in Barcelona. (In fact, there’s a whole Facebook group with that name.) He had a large backpack and a small backpack. Someone threw ketchup on his clothes and he put his stuff down so he could wipe it off. And off they went with the small (and more important) backpack. Lost his money, his passport, his Eurail pass. I had to wire him more $$$ so he could eat. The passport, luckily, he had a copy of in the other backpack so he got it replaced fairly quickly.

They also stole his journal and all of his pictures.

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That’s terrible! :angry:

On the plus side, @DadofJerseyGirl, he learned that the world is not as safe as he thought. And he now takes a hell of a lot more care.

As a friend of mine said at the time, “The world is the best teacher.”

But Yeah, it sucked at the time.

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Oh my gosh!!! I’m kind of glad we’re out of Barcelona now. We’re at a beautiful beach resort about an hour and a half south. We will be here for six nights. It’s beautiful and much cooler. We had an amazing dinner for 64 euros and that included an automatic 10% tip. We had alcohol, two appetizers, entrees, dessert and coffee!

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DH found his credit card. He had hidden a bunch of stuff under the bottom shelf of a cupboard. The card fell back into a corner. It took him awhile to fish it out. I’m glad he kept looking!

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July 21, email from “Tax IRS Update”

An IRS “Third Round of Economic Impact Payments Status Available”
Click below, upload document to recieve $976 refund…

Well, this is good news:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/tech/fcc-robocall-scam-biggest-fine/index.html

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Gee…and I looked forward to my daily car warranty call!:rofl::rofl:

I got one of those emails today that said my account had been auto-renewed for $545. Lifelock. If they use only my email user name, I ignore the notice. But these people knew my full name. So I called, and they tried to get me to let them onto my computer to “remove the key.” Uh, no, just give me my money back. They said unless they key was removed, that was impossible. I replied that CapitalOne would have no issue reversing the charge and hung up.

At that point, it dawned on me to look at the senders’ email address (it annoys me that it doesn’t show up on my phone easily, and I have to look at my desktop). Sure enough, the email address was an Indian name @ gmail.com. Shoot, I hate wasting my time like that. It’s worrisome that they know my name. :frowning: I also checked my CapitalOne account, and there is no pending charge, although I will keep an eye on things just to be safe.

Uggh. :angry:

Do you have an iPhone? You can see the email address but you have to click through twice on the “From” name.

They almost surely got this from a data breach. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

Your credit card company may have a phishing reporting email address to which you can forward the email. Check with them.

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These don’t really fall into scam territory, I think… but I’ve had a lot of odd things happen over the last couple of months.

I just got a call asking for someone with my last name and a male first name that rhymes with mine. Years ago, I am pretty sure my bank robbing neighbor (now obviously in prison) opened up at least one credit card in this name, but their address. Sometimes the mailmen would deliver the mail to our house since it’s our last name. This happened over 15 years ago and for the most part they stopped coming. I once tried to call the credit card company and tell them it was a fraudulent account, but that didn’t go well… But I wonder if someone’s trying to collect it again?

I’ve been getting mail in the name of the former owners. This in itself isn’t weird, but we’ve lived here for over 17 years. I haven’t seen anything come through in their name in the last decade. What changed? It never seems to be anything important - junk mail, credit card offers, etc.

I’ve been getting Enfamil promos - my last name and a completely different female first name. At first it was just coupons. But then they sent me formula samples! Ack! This uterus has been out of commission for a LONG time, and it plans to stay that way! I’d love to know how this one happened?!

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I’m shocked formula makers have to do any marketing at all! :slight_smile: The shortages still persist as far I know! Some store shelves get cleared out frequently. And I’d be tossing any baby formula samples that came into my house even if I had a baby… too much risk of this being sometimes that it is not!

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