Cash on the street or via the internet? What is your embarrassment? :)
I have a story but I’m not ready to tell it.
Oh come on that’s no fun. :-) I’ve never been successfully scammed for money. I’ve been scammed for my time, emotional support, and many other things. But I’ve never been scammed for money straight up. You can look at one marriage as a long-term con for my money, but I think it fits more in the previous category.
Well I’m watching Iron Chef and drinking. And waiting for dinner. It will happen. :) It’s a fucked up story from my youth. And very embarrassing.
$800 for a 3070 man. I still sob sometimes.
Via an engagement with an undiagnosed malignant narcissist. It was more complicated than that and not all about money, but that was a big part of her plan, right up to the end of the relationship and a little bit beyond. And then right before I cut off communication altogether, she made a last ditch attempt to obtain blackmail material on me (and not for the first time, but more obviously and carelessly) presumably so that I wouldn’t talk about any of it.
Does getting ripped off when copping drugs count? Then, yes. Many times,
I gave a few bucks to a guy for “gas” who I later ran into as he browsed the jewelry department of a store. So after that nobody gets money.
Yes! I was having a garage sale and a guy gave me a fake $50 bill and I gave him change for the stuff he bought. I didn’t notice till we were counting up at the end of the day. I was embarrassed, it wasn’t even a good copy, wrong size wrong color.
But honestly what kind of scammer works the 7am garage sale scene!
On a sorta lighter note, just a few weeks ago I ran into a super weird attempted scam situation. A Zoom meeting I’d RSVP’d to was cancelled at the last minute, so I went to the facilitator’s website but was unable to use his webform (it was locked). I left him a voice message, asking if he was planning to reschedule any time soon, and he texted me back almost immediately and asked me if I could assist him with a financial transaction. I politely declined and, giving him the benefit of the doubt, tried to treat it as a potential mental health crisis, but he quickly disengaged.
Yes for a ps5. And my instincts were all throwing up warnings… but Demon’s Souls.
I went to Paris after graduating from uni (so maybe 23 years old?) and I was walking down some random street and this dude pulls up in his car. He sees my Canada cap and starts talking about this relative of his in Quebec. Anyways he tells me he’s just finished some kind of a fashion show and is heading back to Italy but didn’t have enough money for gas and he was selling his stock. He showed me what he had (jackets, the brand escapes me now but it started with a V) I ended up buying this suede looking jacket for about 80 Euro which fortunately was probably all I had on me at the time). Of course it was fake which I guess I eventually clued in to. I never really actually wore it because I found it didn’t actually look that good on me!
Same for me in Houston! I fell for it the first time; the next 12 times that someone used the exact same line on me I was like “wait a second…”
I never actually carry cash anymore so I’m not likely to be scammed that way unless these gas guys do tap to pay.
Till tapped twice when I was a Burger King cashier.
No, never. I’m very careful.
Some guy at a gas station scammed me out of 20 bucks. He said he and his wife tried to get some auto part/coolant etc at the nearby parts store, but didn’t have their wallet/cash. It was lost and they were from out of town.
So, I 100% new this was a scam, and the guy gave me his number and said he would mail me a check.
It was about to heavily thunderstorm, I was in a hurry to get home and away from the gas station. So I just gave him the only cash I had and tried to get the conversation over as quickly as I could.
I did the calculation of, if he is telling the truth, it would be a super shitty situation to be in. I knew that it was a scam, likely, but also if 20 bucks was going to save the day, it would be worth it.
I even put the number he gave me as “gas station scammer”.
I texted him my work address to send the check to. I even called once and left a message.
Eh.
I was once in a very similar situation; someone came up to me and asked for money because of an extremely terrible circumstance and they had nothing on them. I knew it was a 99% chance they were playing upon my sympathies, but on the same token I wasn’t going to be devastated by “losing” a little money and did the same math as you, so I just passed it over to them. They said they’d get me back, but I told them to keep it and pass it along when they’re able; I honestly wasn’t interested in the disappointment which I knew would otherwise come.
A couple years later, I was going to a movie with my kid and out of nowhere a person walks up to me offering their hand; they thanked me for saving their life that night with tears in their eyes. I honestly didn’t recognize them or remember the moment until they started telling the tale to my kid about how nobody would help except me. They offered to buy our tickets, but I waived it off and tried to play it cool. I asked how they were doing, and they told me a little bit about their lives since that fateful evening. I told them it sounded like they were doing a great job paying it forward.
I have to say I never, ever saw a moment like that coming in my lifetime but it felt worth all my long years of gullibility, lol. Not saying this is likely to EVER happen to anyone else, but every once in a long while we get that reminder that humanity isn’t all terrible.
As for the OP - yeah, more than once. I remember one time I lost money once back when I was in college on a scam fund-raising magazine subscription drive. And yes, I’m old enough that magazines were really a thing when I was in college, lol. My rule of thumb anytime I think money is at risk for whatever reason but I feel foolhardy enough to do it is to only use cash on hand; nobody gets my card and account numbers, tyvm.
My wife was passed counterfeit bills. By a bank ATM. The bank refused to believe that this had happened and would not replace the money. She left the fake bills with them.
Man, that’s a good idea. If I’m ever desperate for money, taking a bunch of garage sale guppies sounds like a great scam!
I can’t think of any time I’ve ever really been scammed for more than spare change. I’m sure most of that goes straight to a bottle. When I was 18 or so, I lost $10, I think, to a three-card monte scammer in Berkeley. That’s about all I can think of.
I’ve been approached by white van speaker or meat-sellers several times, though. As soon as you want to see these “speakers” they’re selling, they tend to be less interested in doing business with you.
Holy shit. I completely forgot about that happening to me about 25 years ago. Now I want to remind my much younger self that trusting people who come to the door is probably a bad idea, and that no one only takes cash for magazine subscriptions.