The WTF? Thread

[elguapo4]

A member of the Irish police fraud squad was amongst hundreds of people caught in a scam a couple of years ago.

A few years ago a friend of mine called me about how to use Western Union. "Why?" I asked him ,my Spidey sense already tingling. Turns out he wanting to buy a Flat screen TV from Hong Kong, and they wanted WU payment. I persuaded him to turn off the computer and walk away.

This guy, who has an important management position in work, also once lost all his money for a festival weekend betting on Find The Lady within 10 minutes of getting off the train.

[Balderdasha]

Yeah, this is why bank cashiers/tellers are trained to ask questions like that for unusually large cash withdrawals, but policies are not always consistently followed, and different cashiers/tellers can be more or less suspicious, conscientious or diligent.

[San Bernardhinault]

I know one person who is normally perfectly intelligent - if a little older - who was persuaded that she needed to pay an IRS bill of over $10k with actual cash, and hand it over in a parking lot. Fortunately, the bank teller asked why she was withdrawing so much, and realised it was a scam. I have to concede that people who are otherwise perfectly competent can have moments where they fall for this stuff,

[Balderdasha]

Sometimes there's absolutely nothing you can do to avoid scams. When another friend was trying to buy a house it nearly fell through because their entire deposit went missing between banks for over 24 hours. Neither bank knew where it was and presumed it had been intercepted and stolen. They'd have got their money back eventually but in the meantime their mortgage wouldn't have been released and they wouldn't have been able to buy the house. Fortunately the money reappeared as mysteriously as it had disappeared, but only after a very unpleasant amount of stress and worry.

[Balderdasha]

Same with me. And like the woman in that story, I googled the phone number and it really was the official HSBC number, just cloned. I was still suspicious but it would be easy for that to reassure you. I told them that I was going to hang up and ring the official HSBC number myself, which somewhat thwarted them.

[Balderdasha]

I can see how that could happen, but why would she answer an unknown number under those circumstances?

One of the most common reactions here to the New York story focuses on just that. I honestly can't recall the last time I got a call from an unknown number that wasn't spam or a scam (or in Chinese).

Because it wasn't an unknown number. It flashed up as an official HSBC number.

[ursus arctos]

My friend who nearly fell victim to this is extremely intelligent, high-functioning and not gullible (she's a quite senior lawyer). But the scammers deliberately targeted her at her most vulnerable. She was solo parenting, she'd just picked up her two young children who were squabbling at her while she was trying to cook dinner, etc.

I can see how that could happen, but why would she answer an unknown number under those circumstances?

One of the most common reactions here to the New York story focuses on just that. I honestly can't recall the last time I got a call from an unknown number that wasn't spam or a scam (or in Chinese).

[Balderdasha]

NB, they also transferred some money to her nanny and the nanny did attempt to transfer it "back" to the scammers but fortunately her bank blocked the transaction because she didn't usually transfer such large sums.

[Balderdasha]

I don't know who these people are, but we learned not to fall for this kind of thing in primary school.

They're busy, they're stressed, they're being emotionally manipulated using quite sophisticated techniques. They're not stupid and thinking that you'd be immune to it isn't wise.

My friend who nearly fell victim to this is extremely intelligent, high-functioning and not gullible (she's a quite senior lawyer). But the scammers deliberately targeted her at her most vulnerable. She was solo parenting, she'd just picked up her two young children who were squabbling at her while she was trying to cook dinner, etc.

She was extremely embarrassed when she realised what had nearly happened.

[ursus arctos]

The scam story has become a major topic of conversation among the comfortable here, just as New York intended when commissioning it.

The victim is particularly relatable to a certain demographic, having taken advantage of her considerable inherited wealth (she is a Roosevelt) to buy a multi-million dollar brownstone in Brooklyn and take on a "creative career". She has also become a target for all the reasons one would expect.

This was the paragraph that stunned me, though

When I did tell friends what had happened, it seemed like everyone had a horror story. One friend’s dad, a criminal-defense attorney, had been scammed out of $1.2 million. Another person I know, a real-estate developer, was duped into wiring $450,000 to someone posing as one of his contractors. Someone else knew a Wall Street executive who had been conned into draining her 401(k) by some guy she met at a bar.

I don't know who these people are, but we learned not to fall for this kind of thing in primary school.

[RaggedTrousered]

A few years ago I was nearly caught up in a scam, with psychological features that sound very familiar to that one. Hackers managed to scam my friend and transfer her entire life savings to my account. They then tried to persuade me that I needed to transfer all the money back (but to a different account, which would have gone to the scammers). The bit that was so convincing was that my friend rang me up in floods of tears telling me to do what the person on the phone told me to because they were from HSBC.

The only reasons that I didn't fall for it were that:
1) I used to be a bank cashier so had extensive training in money-laundering, scams, etc, and I knew that if I didn't personally transfer any money anywhere then I wasn't liable for anything.
2) I have such a good relationship with my friend that I could just reassure her that, it's ok, if the money is in my account it's safe and you will get it back, there's no hurry.
3) The most important factor was that my husband was at home and got wind of the conversation and he followed me round the house just repeating "don't transfer any money anywhere" continuously while I kept trying to waft him away because I was trying to concentrate on the phone conversation.

The interrogation techniques were very similar. It was very, very convincing. And quite scary when we realised afterwards how close my friend came to losing everything.

This is brilliant. Not the scam of course but your reaction, thwarting the scammers and saving your friend's money.

[Balderdasha]

A few years ago I was nearly caught up in a scam, with psychological features that sound very familiar to that one. Hackers managed to scam my friend and transfer her entire life savings to my account. They then tried to persuade me that I needed to transfer all the money back (but to a different account, which would have gone to the scammers). The bit that was so convincing was that my friend rang me up in floods of tears telling me to do what the person on the phone told me to because they were from HSBC.

The only reasons that I didn't fall for it were that:
1) I used to be a bank cashier so had extensive training in money-laundering, scams, etc, and I knew that if I didn't personally transfer any money anywhere then I wasn't liable for anything.
2) I have such a good relationship with my friend that I could just reassure her that, it's ok, if the money is in my account it's safe and you will get it back, there's no hurry.
3) The most important factor was that my husband was at home and got wind of the conversation and he followed me round the house just repeating "don't transfer any money anywhere" continuously while I kept trying to waft him away because I was trying to concentrate on the phone conversation.

The interrogation techniques were very similar. It was very, very convincing. And quite scary when we realised afterwards how close my friend came to losing everything.

[Patrick Thistle]

God that's awful. I had to stop reading.

[Sam]

Forgive me if this is being discussed on another thread, but in case anyone's unaware of it still, this story about a financial advice columnist who was scammed into putting her life savings into a shoebox and then putting the shoebox with her life savings in it into the back of a stranger's car is, even compared with a lot of the things on this thread, really quite something. I feel simultaneously awful for her and just flabbergasted that someone whose job it is to give out financial advice (did I mention she's a financial advice columnist? She's a financial advice columnist) fell for this.

It's very hard to pick out a favourite line, but I think mine is, 'As a journalist, it’s my instinct to research and talk to experts'. I mean, that's just clearly not true, is it? If it were your instinct you'd have done it. It's something you're professionally trained to do when you're on the job – and when this happened you weren't on the job, so you didn't think to engage your brain for a couple of seconds. It would be like me saying 'as a proofreader, it's my instinct to check all the running headers and page numbers are present and correct and in the exact same place on every page whenever I pick up a book.' At least I can admit to myself that I only do that particular thing when someone's paying me to do so.

[pebblethefish]

I have always held Toby’s take. Even if nominally it’s become a generic meaningless Hallmark day, the origin of it being romantic means that I find it incredibly disconcerting and queasy making when I see Valentines from mothers to sons and so on. Ick!

Until a few years ago I worked for an online floristry company. If I wasn't cynical about Valentines already then I was after that. Although how could anyone fail to warm to the customer who paid £45 for a pink bouquet and accompanied it with a card saying "I want to fart on your tits"?

[ad hoc]

I see he is now an associate maths professor at the Eastern Mediterranean University, which I'd never heard of, but is located in Northern Cyprus. I'm very glad to see by the way that Northern Cyprus has an apparently thriving university despite the efforts of Greece to get other countries to marginalise and isolate the territory.

I have worked at EMU (or DAÜ as the acronym is in Turkish) a few times and have some good friends there. I've also done some work at a couple of other universities in the (whatever Northern Cyprus is - territory?). I think EMU is the only state university and the others are all private. But what exactly does state mean in the context of a state that's not really a state? The sector there is struggling though and one of the biggest and best universities there, a satellite of METU (Middle East Technical University, based in Ankara) has just closed I believe.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Northern Cyprus universities mentioned on previous page: I did an online one-day thing during Covid on film and history at the invite of a former Masters student of ours - their students were very good.

[Plodder]

Erm, it's "only" 28 A-levels, guys.

Yeah, way off 38, the dosser.

[Plodder]

You literally couldn't pay me enough to join Mensa

I would be willing to accept payment on the offchance that I meet the criteria.

Assuming there are no meetings, of course.

[San Bernardhinault]

I have always held Toby’s take. Even if nominally it’s become a generic meaningless Hallmark day, the origin of it being romantic means that I find it incredibly disconcerting and queasy making when I see Valentines from mothers to sons and so on. Ick!

[ursus arctos]

No, it is not, but I have that suggested by some who took it.

In German, the term Abitur has roots in the archaic word Abiturium, which in turn was derived from the Latin abiturus(future active participle of abire, thus "someone who is going to leave").

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah, well, that's just weird.

No offence, like.

As that article explains.

More and more school districts are doing away with the celebration all together. Schools in Minnesota and Florida are among those to have banned in-school celebrations of the holiday. Others, such as one school in Oregon, are looking for ways to make celebrations more inclusive and somehow educational. What began as a marketing grab for kids money has become an institution to be argued over — and if that isn’t America, what is? But considering how much of my time in school was wasted learning things like how to use a card catalog or the rhythm method, maybe a candy potluck isn’t such a bad tradition.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Yeah, well, that's just weird.

No offence, like.

[Hot Pepsi]

TLMG saw this on her travels. I mean. Wut?

In the US, it's not uncommon for Valentine's Day to just be an all-purpose card-giving occasion. It's not just romantic.

It goes sideways a lot.


https://theoutline.com/post/3363/val...hool-tradition

[Toby Gymshorts]

TLMG saw this on her travels. I mean. Wut?