Have you ever been scammed?

Yes, in one of the most painful ways possible.

My husband and I were trying to adopt, and we got taken by an emotional scam artist who was so good that she fooled adoption agency professionals at more than one agency. She never asked for money- it was just phone calls and the hope that we would have a baby at last. We found out she was a scam when she disappeared from contact hours before we boarded the plane to Denver to meet her.

She is still out there scamming people, but because it’s all talk and no goods are exchanged, we’ve been told that she isn’t committing a prosecutable crime. I can’t think of many more heinous crimes, myself, than preying on the emotions of people who desperately want a child. This is one sick and twisted individual.

I once bought a blank CD that was supposedly a “demo.”

Needless to say, I quickly learned to tell whether or not a disk has been burned.

Yes, once. I also thought it might be a scam at the time but I was trying to impress my then girlfriend with my generosity. I actually took a small cash advance on my credit card to give the man enough money for a bus trip back home to Oregon (I live in California) and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was for no such thing but I did it anyway. I was 19 and wanted to feel that I was helping people.

Yes, I have—when I was in Kenya I was scammed by a street worker.

@Benny
Is a “street worker” what I think it is? :>O

@crisw That’s so horrible, I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I saw a special on TV about that sort of thing – it sickens me to think that there are people out there getting away with stuff like that.

@Michale I’m from NY and have seen that same situation play out so much. I often see the same people asking for money for a ticket “home,” yet they always somehow end up back at the same spot, asking the same things all the time.

@bobbyb_ Most of the time they are scamming for “money for the pregnancy,” though. This was different because this woman was looking only for emotional attention. She was so good that she had a “daughter” who played along with the scheme, answering her phone and taking messages. She had proof of pregnancy paperwork so genuine that it fooled the professionals. She described a job perfectly that it turned out she never had.

It still amazes me that someone can put so much time and effor into something so hurtful.

I’ve had my identity stolen. A very unpleasant experience. That is something that I wouldn’t wish to happen on anyone.

@crisw Yeah, the scammers on the show were the ones who kept asking for money, then the week of the pregnancy, they take off. But for someone to play games with you for the sole purpose of attention like that… wow, just truly sickens me. I really am so sorry you had to go through that, I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through.

Yes, twice. Once from a paralegal and again by a church-based service who claimed they could help with out immigration paperwork. Over ten thousand dollars overall.

Yes. I bought magazine subscriptions for door-to-door kids one year and they were to be forwarded to different people as gifts but it never materialized. Not a huge loss but an embarrassment to learn the “gifts” never arrived as I intended.

@Sr_Q Holy crap dude, 10k? That’s horrible dude.

a black dude stole our blunt once. we were pissed. snatched it right out of my friends hand. thats scandalous!

I did an icon set for a guy in France late last year who would up disappearing after he got what he wanted. At first I just him sort of low-res versions but after a while – and this guy nitpicked absolutely everything – I sent him some copies of the source files so he could be sure he was getting what he needed.

Worst part is, I was all accommodating and went far outside the scope of what we initially agreed on, without ever asking for more money. But, live and learn. I’m going to have a good laugh if I ever see those things surface on the internet.

@Sr_Q was the church service that of scientologists? They scam people all the time.

@RandomMrdan No. They were Evangelical Christians. It’s been about 5 years since this happened, the authorities pay little attention to these kind of cases. There are millions of others being scammed the same way with promises to get them legal status in the country.

I was living a sweet 2 bedroom condo on the Upper West Side for an obscenely low sum of money. I got it through a nice lady I knew from the local church. But when he realized how much more money he could get for the place, instead of giving me thirty days notice, he had his mother-in-law call at 2 AM one night and threaten me with a cop rousting me out of the flat if I wasn’t gone in three days.

Since I had no lease, I thought I’d better do what she said. I was lucky I had somewhere I could crash until I found a new place. What I didn’t know was that because I’d already lived at the condo for 2 years, I had every right to get a proper eviction notice. The last I heard, dude’s wife left him and he can’t get stable tenants. They’ll say they can pay what he wants and then renege. And he lost his house in Queens. So now he can’t get as much rent as he wanted anyway, because he has to live at the co-op. That’s what you get for trying to scam me out of my rights! OK, that other stuff probably would’ve happened to him anyway, but seriously. Siccing the bat-in-law on me? That’s low.

Ha-ha! I live in a better neighborhood now! Cheaper too!

When looking for a place together, my husband and I really liked this one house. I gave her a deposit for it, in cash..like an idiot. But, got it in writing that I had given her the money. After one day, we decided it was too dangerous of a neighborhood, and asked for our money back. She flipped.
She refused to give us any money, lots of fighting, cops called…it sucked.
We took it to court, and won. So, she owed us $1,000 plus court fees. We won back in 2007 and still haven’t seen a dime. We got a lien against her, and we’re working on doing a sheriff’s sale against her..which entails them selling her belongings to get our money back.
Apparently she has done this to A LOT of people, they knew her at the county courthouse! She did it to someone my father works with, who happened to have a friend who is a cop, they got the money quite easily.
She owes us close to $1500 now, because she has to pay back all our court fees. It really sucks because we really need that money. :(

Yes, once. But it was only fifteen bucks and I was pretty sure I was being scammed right from the start. I just wanted to check and make sure, because it would’ve been pretty sweet if it turned out to be legit.

Yep