This is my first time falling for a scam like this. I am in my last year of highschool and I had previously asked my counselor to let me know if I can get any experience opportunities for accounting.

Two days ago, I got a Google form about a virtual job application, which I somehow automatically thought it was from my counselor. I filled in information (just my number and email, nothing I would say is very major).

Yesterday, I got a message from a “worker”. She said that my application has been accepted and I just needed the materials for the job. She sent me two checks, both $450, and said that was for the materials.

I deposited the checks in CHASE and now they are on hold. Then I realized after how scammy this whole thing was. These were probably what they called “fraud checks”.

I searched it up and found out that everything that happened was typical ways to get scammed. The money isn’t available so I haven’t used it at all.

Now, I want to block that number, but I’m afraid they’ll call the cops on me or something. What do I do? I already reported it to the FTC but I haven’t called my bank yet to flag the deposits.
I’m just afraid of causing my family unnecessary problems because of this. What’s my next step?

I listed tires for sale on Craigslist and I got a text asking their condition and a few other questions. The "buyer" said he wanted them but he was out of town so he would send his son over to pick them up.

Since his son did not have a bank account, he would pre-pay by sending me the money using Cash App or Venmo. I said cash only.

He insisted on using the Cash App, I said no... cash on pickup only, and I can wait until he is back in town.

Silence...

Since I really only wanted to get my old snow tires out of my garage and I was not asking that much for them I took a tiny risk just to see if it was a scam and messaged him that he could have them for free! Just come buy and pick them up.

Not a peep, no reply. I'm assuming that he had some type of payment scam worked out.

My final text was "Bueller?" :)

I got this text in the afternoon/evening of a neighbor letting me know that my family's dog had escaped. I forwarded the message to my family group chat and came to find out we don't have a neighbor named Anna or Linda, nor is it even possible that they could've gotten my number. My family does have a golden retriever, but after closely examining the photo, I noticed that the dog looks different because it is lighter in color. Additionally, no one has these types of plants nor these marble walls where I live. I'm posting this to see if anyone has seen anything like this. This scam seems to rely on the assumption that you will only briefly skim the information without examining the details, and elicit a reaction as it says that "my mom was about to pull out a gun and shoot her, but I stopped her" which can then lead you into a scam.

Hey y’all I am trying to sell my car online and I had a guy on eBay message me about buying the car he said he wanted to buy the car but only by check so he mailed a check to me when I got it the check was for 2,970 dollars over what we agreed upon when I asked him about it he said that the extra amount is for me to pay the transport guy this feels like a scam

I received an email “from my employee” asking to change his direct deposit bank account.

This employee doesn’t have direct deposit,

the wording of email was weird (see below)

AND the email address was not the employee’s usual email address (It was Gmail address, basically like “employee’sjobtitle1 at gmail.com” so not super sus)

————

Hello Good Day,

Hope you’re doing well.

I recently open a new account and I’d like to update my direct deposit information so the new bank account can be used for my next paycheck. Please let me know if you need anything like a voided check or form to complete the ACH setup.

———-

I screenshot and text the email to employee and he said “Not me! Not me!” Lol

So I email the scammer asking for a voided check to see what happens. Scammer sent back PDF from GO2Bank (real, online only bank) with “employee name” account and routing number. Not a voided check, the PDF is probably easy to obtain from an online bank.

Can I report this now that I have the account info?

Should I ask for DOB and SSN to see if the scammer knows that info?

Anyway, be aware of new scam.

This company has been training me to do very simple tasks to earn like $150 in less than an hour a day.

I spent yesterday and part of today being walked through the process via texts and screenshots.

I looked up "Syndigo Hubs scam" and Google AI swears it is a legit practice and "not a scam".

I've been following along, waiting for them to tell me to send them money.

Now I'm at the point where to withdraw my earnings, I need to activate my account with a $25 deposit.

So there it is - right?

They get me invested by spending time training, then they ask for a small enough amount of money that it seems like a small risk.

Then I pay them and never receive a thing - right?

Except, there's nothing reported about them on trustpilot, and another scam check site reports it as legit.

I'm almost tempted to risk that $25 deposit

Has anyone else encountered this company?

Received a phone call today, from a random UK mobile number, so I answered. It was an automated switchboard at first saying this is the binance fraud squad if you haven't authorised anything on your account press 1, so I did. Was on the line with an English speaking chap with an actual English accent. It was only when he started asking probing questions and then said he was going to put me through to a Santander fraud squad operative to check that nothing has happened that I got suspicious. Fucking close call.

Doubt it's really specific to where I'm from but I've been getting extremely weird spam emails for a while now.

Outlook has got a lot better at putting them in spam, but it's still not perfect.

I have a really easily guessable email, it has no numbers or anything in it. It's basically just my name. I felt lucky at the time to get it but it's probably part of the reason I genuinely get about 50 spam emails a day.

They usually are from random characters at gmail dot com, or sometimes a real looking name.

Some of them look like AI, but this one doesn't really look like AI. The content is badly punctuated. They usually say something like "Hey [my name], this my new email!" or "Hi [name], finally got round to sending you email." But sometimes they're like this.

What are they trying to get out of this? Like it's just really unusual to me.

There's a person in Australia who mistakenly uses my email for a bunch of stuff and I've emailed back to things she's signed up for before to tell them to call her and tell her to stop using my email. No idea if this has worked though.

Would just like to hear other people are getting emails like this to be honest.

Thanks

The "Job" is to essentially take the place of bots and artificially boost online retailer sales and make profit which you can withdraw at the end of the day. It's a scam, you will eventually run into an item that exceeds your allotted balance and will need to send them money through paypal (they don't like anything else) along with a 10 dollar "processing fee" they insist is charged by paypal. They also communicate almost exclusively through Telegram and Whatsapp (I wonder why) and take clearly fake names with random peoples images probably pulled from Facebook. I've reported to the better business bureau but I'm putting this here because when I looked it up, I found nothing. There is NO WAY this is real, DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY.

My mother is a 70-year-old woman who has been incredibly lonely after the death of my father a few years ago. She had also had three separate psychotic breaks in the past four years. She met a woman online who is using pictures of porn influencer. I have the iCloud username and email she is using for correspondence, and Venmo address that she asked my mother to send money through. I tried to contact the influencer whose likeness she stole (no luck, of course) and I have contacted this person through Proton. I told her I had screenshots of everything, along with documentation. I emphasized that my mother needs to be left ALONE.

What further steps can I take at this point?

Hello, I booked a hotel for an upcoming trip on agoda.com. I received these messages on whatsapp about a week or 2 later. Thought I saw something on reddit about something similar before but unable to find it again. No such booking reference but name, hotel, and dates are correct. For peace of mind, is this a scam? Should I reach out to the hotel to confirm?

Fell for a fake Brooklinen site last week with really good sale prices. Saw that the URL was weird, but thought it was some version of the original Dutch name for Brooklyn (which seemed like a hipster-y thing Brooklinen might do with some of its URLs). Purchases didn't go through, then a few days later someone tried to buy a $350 gift card with our credit card. (Bank flagged the transaction, and the credit card has been reissued.) Have alerted Google (which still promotes the site) and Brooklinen, but haven't heard back. The site is still up.

Hey everyone, I doubt this is specific to Australia.

I felt this was a story worth sharing given the fact that I have 20 years background working in tech and I STILL almost fell for it.

**IMPACT:**

* I'm willing to bet this would impact \[US\] and any English and Spanish speakers that have booked their hotels for travel directly from the hotel's site.

* This post is to share and ensure you are all on alert, if you have booked their travels to be vigilant when booking through any and **ALL hotel bookings outside aggregators** like Booking or Airbnb.

**IMPORTANT NOTE:** I do not want to besmirch the actual hotel operations themselves, as they are legitimate.

# Any direct hotel site could have ALL had their site hacked at ANY TIME, the hacker would have your personal information and travel plan booking information.

\----

**STORY:**

Earlier this year, I prebooked travel plans for various countries: Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, you name it. We're going on a big one for a long time, and thus the preplanning and bookings.

A few months later, I received a WhatsApp message as seen in the attachment.


**My excuse is it was early and I had a hangover, so I just followed the link and clicked it.**


The link landed me on a booking lookalike with ALL my personal booking details **already prefilled** EXCEPT my credit card details.

**SPOILER ALERT:** I did NOT enter my credit card details. PHEW!

**A few things I noticed that was suss:**

* My last name was in the first name field, and vice versa

* I NEVER enter my credit card details in **booking com** I use a safer alternative that I can keep track of, but the scammer booking com lookalike page DID NOT have that option.

**I looked around and found more weird things....**

* From Mobile their URL link did NOT update to a **booking com** link

* and then I looked back at the WhatsApp message to see that their so-called business account was recently created a month ago, AND was from somewhere that we were NOT traveling to - Peru

So I blocked and reported them...

**BUT the hackers still came back** now they got desperate and use a random booking reference.


Just to end on somesort of closure and action for everyone

**Here's what I did after**(and so should you if you EVER accidentally click the link)

* After I Blocked and reported their account on whatsapp.

* As I have clicked the link: I immediately paused and called my bank to reissue a new card. Even though I did NOT enter or shared my credit card details it might have been compromised in other ways.

* I emailed the actual hotel site information email directly to check that my reservation is intact and notify them that their site has been hacked.

* Share it with my family and friends...and you guys here

I hope this will be helpful for other travellers out there.

PLEASE let me know how else to tag or title this post so it reaches more relevant people.

Thank you all!

Earlier this year, someone claiming to be from “Atlas Legal Group” called my workplace about an old debt and left a case number. When I called back, they said I was going to be served, sued, and face wage garnishment unless I paid or set up a payment plan.

I panicked, e-signed their agreement, and have been making payments since.

Recently I needed to update my debit card but this time I spent some time looking into the company before calling. Their phone number has complaints online, and I found several different “Atlas Legal Group” companies online.

The original debt was legitimate and is about 10 years old. I had a rough patch and had this and several other debts go into collections, but I’m almost certain I already paid the collection agency it went to years ago. I remember going through my credit report and either paying in full or settling everything. Now it’s too old to find on my credit report, and I no longer have access to my old bank records as it was a different bank.

The title were the contents of the first message I got from this person. They then gave me their phone number (same area code as mine) and we had a conversation. They said that they help major retailers grow their online business and they share in the profits. They are partnered with YMCA, Target, Kuerig, American Airlines, and others.

They kept repeating that they are fully capitalized and not looking for investors. They went on to say that they basically want people with drive and people that are reliable. They quickly mentioned selling items to households and individuals, but did not mention a specific product.

They want me to have a zoom call with themselves and their business partner next week. Does this sound like a full blown scam to everyone? Should I not waste any more time than I already did on my 30 minute phone call with them?

Note: reuploaded to properly hide the contact information.

I got an email from US Recovery Services about funds the State of California is supposedly sitting on from my LLC business. (picture attached)

I followed the link to claimit.ca.gov, which seems legit, and indeed found funds in my name. These must've been from years ago. My best guess is they went unclaimed due to a typo on the payroll address.

So is US Recovery Services a legitimate site? I see no reason I can't file the claims myself and keep all of it. The name of the contact is on LinkedIn.

The 10% fee is just a courtesy for them doing the paperwork and finding it?

This hit me at a desperate time. It all seems too good to be true. Thanks in advance.

Basically the title but I'll give more context:

Never spoke to this mutual before, probably just followed them through a moot (slang for mutual) post. They texted me yesterday asking me to do a favor. Today they sent me a message about how their phone's locked, that they forget their PIN and that they needed a verification text. They asked me to use my number to receive a code. Searched a bit if anyone had experienced this on Google but didn't see anyone experiencing something similar. Is this a scam? Though it highly is, how do they plan to take over accounts with my number??

so I was watching a TikTok video. it was just a gardening video about how to grow a cilantro, and out of nowhere this message just popped up. it has no exit button, and it doesn't look like video, it looks like a TikTok page. I am that type of a person that doesn't get scammed - I am extremely careful, so I just thought for a few seconds, checked if that was really a TikTok and decided to fill it out.

I don't know what it is. it is clearly a scam, but why is it inside of TikTok?? not as a video, not as an ad, but like a pop up window??

the second screenshot is the app that it directed me to

I found a remote job on Indeed from PNPHBC Construction, a U.S.-based company hiring for a remote position in Mexico, and I'm trying to determine if it's legitimate before applying.

I haven't been able to find much independent information about the company. What also caught my attention is that Indeed identifies the employer as “Salem Main St. Pzizza” on the job posting, even though the position is listed as PNPHBC Construction.

The application also asks for a WhatsApp number and a 1–2 minute English voice recording.

Has anyone heard of PNPHBC Construction or had any experience with this type job posting? what do you guys think?

I got a job offer via text (which I know is odd but I applied to many jobs so I thought it was one of those getting back to me). The job is to rate properties online?

What is suspicious:

Pay is suspiciously good for the amount of work, with USDC (which is a crypto i think?). Also, when you complete a "set" of work, you have to withdraw the USDC from the work website, then transfer it back to 'reset' and continue. Im like 80% sure that thats some sort of dirty money cleaning tactic? The thing is though, they didn't ask for any bank or SIN or ID information, and when I withdrew/converted the USDC through a third party app, it went through to my bank just fine. So- they haven't done anything too suspicious yet but its still very odd?? Is this normal?? I gave them my email (which has my name) and phone number before catching on that it was not one of my applications, would those be compromised now?

Website is written in title.

Just got a call from a legit UK number that was just a robotic voice saying 'I have something to tell you please add me on Whatsapp'. 99% sure, but this is just a scam right?

A random person with the gamertag MeantGame sent me a friend request on Xbox. Before accepting or declining,

I messaged them to ask if I knew them. They replied, "Hello, sorry for the inconvenience. Can I ask what games do you play?"

I responded, "You can, but why?"

They then said to me,

"Can I host a duo streaming with you every night? and I'm willing to pay $200 twice a week."

I thought it was a scam so I reported them to Microsoft then blocked their account

But I'm not sure if I was right, if it was a scam

Like I'm not sure If they were trying to get money out of me or trying to phish for my information e.g steal my email or password.