u/WitchDoctorHN

I wanted to see if anyone else has ran into this scam and let others know about it.

I was scammed today in IAH airport in Houston, while sitting on a bench between terminals since there was some quiet spots and I was waiting for my flight to start boarding. This was PAST security, in the departures terminal.

I was approached by a 18-25 year old Asian male who sat next to me on the bench with some space between us. He set his phone down facing me so I could read it with a long text in notes explaining something about how he arrived here thinking his girlfriend would pick him up, but she ghosted him on arrival. Now he needs to pay for a flight back home and is down on money. While I was reading this he had set out his Washington State drivers license and his boarding pass for me to see. I was assuming he didn’t speak English or was super socially awkward and the text helped him ask.

I sympathized and asked if Venmo was ok. He said he preferred PayPal. I told him I only have Venmo and he said that would work.

I Venmo‘d him $20, he said thank you and walked away.

When I looked at the Venmo account, its a very different name than his, and has several weeks of activity of people saying things like “ticket home” or “train ticket” or ”plane fare”.

Honestly it being a scam didnt cross my mind until he walked away. I was caught up in trying to understand how he was past security and needed money for a flight, and wondering why he wasn’t really speaking to me. Him laying out his ID and boarding pass pacified my skeptical mind, too. It really wasn’t until I saw the Venmo name being different that I realized I was duped.

Also, when he typed in his Venmo account in my phone he also typed in the reason for payment as “name” which was his actual name, not the Venmo name. The account has several instances of this, making me think it’s a shared Venmo account that multiple scammers/beggars are depositing into.

Anyway. I know there’s nothing to do about it, I’m just out $20 for trying to be a decent guy, if a bit naive. Just figured I’d see if anyone else has run into this?

I’m planning to start my first channel (first time at any content creation actually) and my idea is “Adventures in (where I live)”.

I live in a unique place that whose name already adds intrigue to any title it’s added to, from what I’ve seen. My passion is outdoor adventuring with my friends, I’m pretty mediocre at all the things I do, but they’re all relatively not-common things. Things like rock climbing, scuba diving, long distance trail running, hunting (huge asterisk here as Ive heard YouTube isn’t super friendly to this), fishing, mountaineering, pack rafting, kayaking.

I love doing all these things and would love to fit them all in a single channel under the niche of “Adventures”, but is this too broad of a niche to work out? I don’t want to become a “climbing YouTuber” or “hiking YouTuber”. Part of it is I’m pretty ADHD so have difficulty staying committed to any one thing. As a result, I’m not good enough at any one of these things to make videos from the perspective of an expert.

Thoughts? Thanks all!