Today I pulled up my checking account and saw a 500 Zelle deposit from someone I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting money. The memo says it’s a violsphere payment, Google finds nothing about that. Being a scam reddit reader, I immediately recognized this as a potential scam. Someone sends you money, contacts you and says it was a mistake and asks for it to be sent back. I send it, then I’m out the 500 I sent them once the bank realizes the original payment was fraud. I called my bank.

I get directed to fraud, I explain the situation. After speaking to a supervisor, the agent advises me to send it back to them myself. I explained to him that this is exactly what not to do in a payment reversal scam. He goes back to his supervisor and says this happened a couple days ago too, they advised the customer to send it back, and if I don’t it would be considered fraud on my end. The banks fraud agent told me this.

To be clear, I’m not trying to keep the money. I want the bank to handle this through the appropriate channels on their end. I’m not initiating a separate potentially irreversible payment to someone I don’t know.

Am I missing something here? Is there any legitimate reason a banks fraud department would insist I send the money back on my own instead of handling it themselves? This is a very common scam. I think I need a new bank after this exchange.

I’m an undergraduate geology student visiting Denver for a conference. You’d think I be smarter than this.

I was walking back to my hotel across the street when a man in a tuxedo approaches me and gives a sob-story about being out of gas and needing to see his daughter in Colorado Springs. He claimed that he had just came from the conference but lost his badge. He even pointed to a grey vehicle which he claimed was his.

He showed me a business card for a company related to environmental science. The man on the business card looked loosely similar to him, so I believed it.

In that moment I believed him. I thought he was a geologist like me needing help getting home. He claimed he needed $20 for gas, then somewhere in the conversation changed it to $40.

I don’t know how I fell for this. I’m under more stress than I’ve ever been in my entire life and scatterbrained to hell so I’m not thinking clearly apparently. I normally wouldn’t fall for something this obvious but I did.

For some reason I thought that the hotel that I was staying in was the one we entered, so I stupidly spent 15-25 minutes trying to use the elevator to get to my room only to realize I was in the wrong hotel.

That’s when I headed downstairs only to find him telling another person the same sob-story. This person also gave him money. I feel like I’m getting stupider by the day. I don’t know why I fell for this. I honestly deserved it because of how fucking obvious it was. I am an utter fool.

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?

In 2021, I was the victim of a PayPal scam.

Firstly, I know my naïveté was stupid. I was 18, and I didn't understand how these operations worked. I'm not looking for ways to get out of this, but I need advice on how to at least approach this in a way that hurts me the least.

In brief, I sold a Macbook to someone on Facebook marketplace. I now understand the account to be an obvious burner that this person was using to facilitate fraud. I assume the premise was to commit credit card fraud over PayPal when purchasing expensive electronics to eventually re-sell them to launder the money.

They convinced me to request the money from a specific burner PayPal account. I'm still not sure if they made the account to use a credit card they had stolen or if they had stolen the account itself. Anyway, the money cleared my bank, and I thought I was safe, until the charge was rescinded (because it was a request), and my PayPal account was thus responsible for it.

At the time, I did not have the mental fortitude to process what had happened any better than simply deleting the account and pretending nothing happened. Now, I know better, and a collection agency has been reaching me in order to recuperate the debt.

I have a few options.

On one hand, I can just pay the money to the agency and forget about it. It's not an absurd amount of money, but it's also not something I can just fork out on a whim.

On the other, I can just do a payment plan with the collection agency, and pay a small amount towards it over a year.

I tried to dispute the debt, anyway. I am not hopeful that I am going to be able to get out of paying it. I assume they'll take me to court in attempt to garnish my wages after a year until the debt is paid.

I'm trying to be vague in the interest of privacy, but if anyone has advice here for potential avenues of which I am not aware, that would be great. Again, I'm not looking to be shamed for this. I know I made a mistake, and I'm not unwilling to just own it and pay it off, but I thought posting here would be worth a shot, anyway.

It was on Groupme. Was not aware of that scam trending because it had been a while since I encountered a scam. But what caught me off guard is that they were on a private group page. But I got really suspicious and luckily found out about that scam. Close call.

So it's still trending, I guess. I initially thought it was someone in my group that I just wasn't as familiar with because I hadn't been to a few of the planned events in our private group me. But once they started mentioning international client, along with mailing a check, my radar started going off. Luckily, it only took a simple Google search to figure out what was going on.

I immediately reported and blocked the profile on groupme making sure to include the details of it being that muse scam.

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hello everyone.

I got a Mail from admin@uber com yesterday which appears to be in Dutch. So a person probably from the Netherlands tried to register a account on my Mail? I didn’t bother and just deleted it.

but tonighe I got a another Mail with a verification code from Uber but this time I’m German (I‘m from Germany).

I created a account now and contacted support. I’m confused on what this could be. Why is someone trying to register a Uber Account on my Mail?

I didn‘t had Uber before so I’m kinda confused that this could be.

Would be grateful for anyone‘s help.

thank you everyone

Long story short, I got scammed over the phone from a number that I thought was my bank. I’m 23 years old and I grew up in a world of everyone around me constantly being scammed, so I never thought it would be me. It’s not even about the money, I can make it back my next paycheck; it’s about the fact that it actually happened to me. How do I move on? How do I just hide this from the people I share everything with? I can’t stop thinking about it and feeling depressed and extremely dumb.

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Hello, I’m a first time ship seller. I’m selling something online that a woman messaged me she was interested in. She asked if it was available I said yes and she wanted to buy. First, she asked if I was open to negotiating or trading and I said no. She asked if I could ship because she lives out of state, and normally I don’t, but I agreed this time. I really need the money, which is why I did, but now I am unsure.

Things I’m suspicious about:

- She originally asked to if I use Zelle or Cash App. I said I have Pay Pal. She said she doesn’t have it. I said sorry then because it’s what I want to use because it’s safer. She said she’d make one and did.

- She texted me later and asked me to use a different address because her neighborhood is unsafe (NY). The address is a corner store she said her boyfriend owns.

- She asked if she should send her number to add to tracking so she can follow it, which is fine. The only thing is that it says whatsapp call under it. I don’t know if this is weird.

- She asked if she can shoot me a text on the say I said I’d ship to remind me. I am hoping she meant on messenger because I heard otherwise it’s fishy.

Things I think are a positive:

- She sent me the $220 and $10 for shipping. She used the Goods and Services, which I heard was good because scammers use the Friend and Family.

- Her account has activity from early September and is older.

I am hoping this isn’t a scam because I really needed the money and had to use it right away for something. If it is I don’t even have it to send back, right now. I just want peoples honest opinion. I don’t know if I’ve just been reading into too many stories. Everything seems bad.

This is the second call from these people. Caller has Indian accent. I said I'd need to call him back, he gave me a phone that started with area code 201. (Obviously not a UHC number.)

The last time they called they had my actual birth date. This time I didn't let him get that far.

Once again they said they were verifying my information and asked if I went to see the doctor this year - probably just to get me talking.

UHC knows whether or not I went to see the doctor and what my info is

There is no reason for your health care company to ask these questions.

My guess is they got birth dates in some data leak and are trying to make use of it. Do not know what their actual scam was going to be.

About 2 weeks ago I bought a $200 Lego set from a seller on eBay. It took them about a week to make the shipping label. The tracking number eBay had said it would be getting delivered today, and I also checked it on UPS. Both had the right town, but didn't show the actual shipping address. Around noon both updated to say the item had been delivered, but it never reached me. The UPS delivery proof photo is not of my house, and the package seems too small to be what I ordered. I called UPS and they told me the receiver on the package was a different address and name entirely from me, even though it was the right town. Ebay seller contacted me a few hours later, saying their employee had entered the wrong shipping info, and when they tried to get their supplier to fix it, the supplier said my address can't be serviced (I live in a major metro, it's not remote). Seller is offered a full refund, which has already been processed.

I'm just confused. Am I getting scammed somehow? It's a very small shop, I doubt both I and someone else in my neighborhood both ordered an item from them at the same time. I had someone on another subreddit tell me it's called an "empty envelope scam", but I looked it up, it seems to describe a scam where someone sends an unsolicited item to your address. Not whatever this was.

Posted an item on offer up for the first time. After a few minutes I got a buyer, and then an additional email saying their payment was being verified and I needed to click the provided link to provide info to receive payment.

After reading cautions about links here so many times, I didn't click and avoided a scam. Then I read stuff on offer up saying they never asked for such info in an email.

Thank you.

[Scammer?] Hi, I'm making pasta and meatballs today. Would you like to have dinner with me?

[Me] I assume this is a wrong number, and not some bizarre scam, catfishing or sex thing. Also, I can't eat tomato sauce.

[Scammer?] When did you and I start talking like this? I'm jus tryint ot understand why your talking to me this way. Don't you have my work number saved on your phone? Hmmm.

I get that this is a scam and that I was "talking" to an AI. I just got a somewhat similar text from a different number. But I don't know exactly how the scam would have worked. How the heck do they get anyone to give a credit card or something from that opening?

Yesterday I got a message in my iPhone saying a device had connected. I was in the electronics department so I didn’t think much of it and assumed it would disconnect when I was out of range.

I woke up this morning at 7am to a security email from my bank saying “Pending charge for $0 on 10/04 at 4am CDT at add to wallet request, CA”.

I immediately tried to call my banks customer service to report possible fraud and get my card cancelled only to find out they are closed on Sunday and I have to wait until tomorrow to speak to a person. They have a “after hours” system but it’s a robotic voice that sends me a security code and then asks me to type in that security code on the keypad. That the one thing I was taught to never do, share security codes over phone.

I turned off my card for now then remembered the weird device connected from yesterday. I opened up my Apple accounts and sure enough, there is a random IPad mini listed under “devices”. I removed it and changed my Apple ID email and password.

Anything else I should do until I the bank opens tomorrow? Does anyone know what the hell happened here?

Hey guys, so I've been getting missed calls from a certain mobile number. Today I text the number and said that I get calls from that number every Sunday, he then replied, saying he has calls from my number every Sunday too, even though I've never called that number, ever! He asked my name, and me being an absolute moron, gave him my first and last name, and the county I'm from. We then agreed to just block each others numbers, and said goodbye. Is this a scam? If so, how much trouble could I be in? Any advice welcomed. Thanks in advance.