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This turned out ok, but this kind of text looks a lot like the "pig butchering scam" that's getting coverage recently
Pig-Butchering starts with a seemingly innocent text message, and once the scammers catch a victim, they convince them to start investing in crypto. They have the victim set up an account on a fake crypto exchange, and over the course of months, they steal more and more of the victim's money.
they convince them to start investing in crypto.
The first time someone mentions crypto to me and they seriously consider it an investment I automatically judge them as foolhardy with their money. This doubles if they try to convince me to put money in crypto. My internal thoughtis "that's nice honey. After you finish your milk and cookie, you can go play with your friends."
A co-worker of mine is super into crypto and tries to have conversations with me about it. I just smile and nod.
You can't even trust random strangers texting the wrong number anymore
I have WeChat, the Chinese messaging app and I don't really speak Chinese. It's very basic but I have friends on there. I'll get a message from a girl every now and again "mistakenly" asking if I'm a tour guide or a friend of a friend.
My Chinese sucks so I usually message back and forth until they ask for money. I think some lady kept it going for three months before she told me her uncle was earning lots of money. I ignored that and she was like: "I don't know if your Chinese is enough, but did you hear what I said about money?"
I should just flat out ignore them instead.
There's gotta be some crazy scam that will work on me that I've never heard of. Every time a new one comes around its always something that throws a ton of red flags out the whole way. They have to be just catching people with particular blind spots
Every time a new one comes around its always something that throws a ton of red flags out the whole way.
That's on purpose. If people like you easily avoid scams, it helps self-select your idiots. Easier to scam.
Think about it, would you rather spend a ton of effort scamming a small amount of money from a smart person, or very little effort scamming a ton of money from a dumb person?
It's surprisingly easy to obtain lists of MAGA Republicans. Their address and phone numbers.
These people get "letters from Trump" saying he needs donations with instructions on how to donate. And they do donate! Millions and millions. Except how many of these letters are legitimate? Do they even know how to verify?
All the pieces for pulling off the easiest scam ever are in place. I mean, the man himself is a con artist and classic swindler but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if a huge number of "donations" end up in the pockets of completely different scammers.
If I had the technical know how, I would 100% do this. Set myself up for early retirement.
I don’t want to say I’m immune to scams buuuut, I’m immune man.
They’re pros too for sure. Like, even when I try to play along they hang up on me or stop talking to me.
It's impossible to be scammed out of money if you don't have any.
Bingo!
It's a numbers game (pun not intended but, hey, if it works I'm alright with it) - use an automated method to send a no-cost/ultra-cheap message to millions of people, swindle the small fraction of those who fall for it.
Now that sending this kind of text message is as cheap as sending e-mails, we see this same principle applied in these as we saw with scam emails.
catching people with particular blind spots
They do, yeah. It's part of their strategy, actually. Henry Gullible doesn't ask too many questions.
A close friend of mine was a victim of one of those last year. It broke her heart, because she met the scammer on a dating site and she thought they were a long distance couple. She took his advice to invest in crypto because she saw it as a form of bonding between the two of them, and a show of trust. She never told me how much money she lost but I imagine it was significant.
Very similar situation with my wife's coworker. The coworker met some dude on a dating site and they connected pretty quickly. She even traveled to meet up with him in another city a few hours away by plane. Surprisingly he never showed up and claimed some lame excuse. In the end she "invested" 200k with him in crypto and POOF he was gone like Keyser Soze. So sad.
I'm betting this actually was a scam but the initial replies tipped off the scammer that it wasn't gonna work. So the scammer played along as well. At least that's my theory.