I wrote the other day about the intricate-ish social media scams I had been subjected to. Today is Saturday, I wrote the blog on Thursday. Since then, I have been subject to yet another attempted scam and been made aware of two more. One that was, in my opinion, utterly horrific.
What was the horrific one? Well, someone I know lost her husband recently. It was a sudden death coming very soon after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and understandably she was shocked and devastated. She’d not had time I suspect to recover from the news of the diagnosis before she was shoved into widowhood. Rather than tell those of us who are not close friends or relatives individually that he had passed, she wrote a post on Facebook. I can completely relate, it’s something I think I would choose to do also rather than go over and over it with people. In addition, many of the people she knows are spread around the UK and overseas, so it was a simple and expedient measure. Earlier this week, I had a friend request with her husband’s photo attached for the live stream of his funeral. I didn’t accept the request as I wasn’t sure I would be able to make it. Now, his widow has had to go back onto Facebook to tell everyone that this is, in fact, a scam. That she would follow-up with details about the funeral in due course. I mean…what is WRONG with people? I know those who carry out these actions are criminals but can’t they have at least a modicum of decency? Leave a grieving family alone? Not use the image of a man who has recently passed? Not try to scam people who want to show their support to the family by attending the funeral in whatever way they can? I mean…really?
The other scam I have heard about was from my hairdresser today who was telling me that she was scammed out of £100. She wanted to buy a washing machine, looked online, it all seemed perfectly above board (i.e. not too good to be true) and she paid the £100 as a deposit. And lost it because the scammers disappeared with her money which was an insufficient amount for anyone to bother investigating or refunding. Now, when you don’t have much money £100 is a lot of money. It is the difference between putting food on the table for your family, and not.
My recent attempt was on Tik Tok where the so-called Administrator of the Small Business Association in the US tried to tell me that I could apply for funding even though I am based in the UK. That it is a global fund. Two things tripped them up here – 1) I used to work in grant funding for small businesses, and those are never global funds; and, 2) a cursory search of the SBA shows that this is not a global fund. The pressure was on in the correspondence for me to fill out the forms quickly to secure the funding. Utter and complete nonsense, all clearly designed to get access to my details so they could either empty my bank account and/or clone accounts etc. They are persistent I will give them that much – I have had more messages today from the Tik Tok and X scammers. They need to listen to the silence!
The thing about all of these scams, as I said in my previous post, is that there is an element of the elaborate about them. The false profiles on social media which are good enough to pass on a quick glance when they put you under pressure though don’t stand up to scrutiny when you really look at them. But they are pretty good. The detailed information they put in these posts that make them look as though they are really engaged with (until you check the X ones and it’s pretty much just constant re-tweeting rather than anything original). The thought that goes into such scams is really rather intricate and could be put to some really good use in a positive way. But what lies behind them are clearly significant criminal gangs and, maybe, even terrorist groups all hellbent on scamming money and/or personal details out of as many people as possible. Of course they won’t get a 100% strike rate, but they often target so many people that even a 10% one is sufficient to make a decent amount for less than a day’s work.
We hear very often about the romance scams perpetrated via online dating sites, where the vulnerable are preyed upon. I would equally say that the scams I have been subjected to are by people who are preying to some extent on the vulnerable – the first one, for example, that promised a salary for some freelance work was preying on my vulnerability because I needed the money and I didn’t do my due diligence as a consequence. I was blinded by the thought of earning money doing something I loved – writing. The second scam against the right person would, again, be preying on the vulnerable – someone who wanted to reach the success of the ‘author’ who introduced others to their ‘marketing resource’ but who didn’t have much money for book marketing. The offer was relatively reasonable (US$500-1,000) but of course, there would be no book marketing. For my part, I wasn’t ever going to go through with it I was just interested in learning more to pass on to the legitimate author and marketing people who I happened to know through a friend of my husband. But the bottom line is that those who are vulnerable are more likely to be scammed which makes this practice all the more abhorrent to me. I remember my old boss telling me about his father who was scammed out of a considerable amount of money because he had fallen for a ruse which had preyed on his early onset dementia. He had ended up so deep into the problem that he hadn’t known how to get out of it until Power of Attorney was suggested due to his illness and he admitted everything with a massive dose of shame but also some relief that it might just be over. These criminals are just beyond despicable.
The victim, not only potentially out of pocket for the original amount but then possibly cloned and further scammed, ends up feeling completely stupid. I know I did after the freelance scam. I had told people that this work was coming, and then I had to admit I had fallen victim to a scam. I felt ridiculous. People end up feeling stupid for falling for what are very elaborate schemes. They are meant to look authentic. And often they aren’t ‘too good to be true’ schemes. They look as though they are legitimate. As my hairdresser said to me ‘I felt such a fool…how could I have fallen for it?’. For some people, it’s a problem too far and there can be incredibly serious consequences including suicide. Depression can often set in because the money they have lost is money they really can’t afford to lose like my ex-boss’s father. But no one can afford to lose money to criminals, regardless of how much or how little it is. Theft is theft no matter how the crime is committed.
The perpetrators of these crimes are very clever. Cunning, conniving, clever criminals. Once you’ve fallen for one, it makes trusting again very difficult. Which is good for you with other scams, but you could be missing out on opportunities because I do believe that there are still genuine people out there. Maybe that’s a naïve view, but I refuse to believe that the majority of people in the world aren’t good.
I would truly be interested to hear your experiences of scams. Let’s highlight them, let’s not hide in embarrassment that we maybe fell for one but be open and honest. Shine a light on them. Because the more people are aware how intricate these things are, how very deceptive they are, perhaps the less they will unwittingly engage with them. Which will, in turn, deprive the scammers of their business.
Louisa Simpson 