Self-Destructing Scams (Scambaiting) - Also FAQ: "Why don't you just...?"

13:50 I absolutely love the idea that this scammer is trying to lure people in with the promise of $8.50

This was so ridiculously OK the only thing delaying me RIGHT NOW from liking the video RIGHT NOW is that I can't stop laughing RIGHT NOW be rest assured I binge these videos once a month OK so please make more of them when you have the time OK seeing a new one pop up in my feed RIGHT NOW is like winning 8.10$ million united state dollar OK

“Can you understand it for me” “It’s self explanatory” “That’s what I mean can you explain it to yourself please” This is comedy gold here

It's impressive that they said "Right now" almost as many times as "OK"

As a cancer patient myself, any time a scam mentions cancer my outrage meter rises to 100%

This last guy's writing style is one of the most infuriating things I have ever experienced

I like that these scammers so regularly end their sentences with "okay". I understand that it's supposed to be a question, like they're instructing you to do a thing, okay? But the lack of punctuation just makes them sound like dysfunctional telegraph messages.

Their use of the word "ok" after every message is killing me. It reminds me of people reading telegrams and saying STOP at the end of each line lmao

“Taxi cub”, “holding up the potato” and “broken radish” had me howling.

“Without the steam gift card, I can’t show you where I am.” I like the idea that he is crouched over, hiding behind airport chairs, responding to emails.

I really enjoyed that final ending, cause it leaves the impression that the scammer succeeded at the hard part, separating their mark from their money, but failed at the only part they actually care about, receiving the money.

I loved the comment that the old supplier "was dead." I would have asked "so the supplier came back to life?" or something absurd like that, just to hold their attention.

I love how their default when you go even slightly off-track is to just be like "Okay, I guess you don't want the big number... Sad..."

i love the idea of a scammer you've talked to using the phrase 'you're holding up the potato' in future correspondence with someone else

Only in the alternative universe of a scammer would a taxi driver insist on being paid entirely upfront.

These are always a treat! I especially like when you get them to give you a specific deadline and you break it. Despite the broken deadline, they have to keep going because the temptation of scamming you is just too great.

I love your Scambaits, the righteous indignation is always hilarious, and you have a voice for story telling. Thank you for always brightening our day.

The real plot twist would've been if the scammer sent an authentic picture of an empty starbucks and asked where you were

This comment is a bit long, but I wanted to leave this comment as a thank you for helping me to potentially avoid being scammed 2 days ago, and as a reminder to anyone who might doubt that they could become the victim of a scam that this is something that can happen to anyone in the wrong scenario. It's mentioned a few times on these videos that people will be more likely to fall for scams if the details of the scam just happen to line up with something that has actually happened in the potential victim's life, or in a situation where someone might be tired or mentally fatigued and not able to think clearly in the moment, and that's what nearly happened to me. During the last couple of weeks, I've been taking care of a family member with Covid while also working more than usual (no physical contact with the family member, mostly just grocery and medicine deliveries and taking their dog out for walks, plus I'm vaccinated, and have been wearing a mask, sanitizing regularly, and got tested just in case.) Near the end of last week, another family member who isn't very tech-savvy asked me to check into some weird charges on their card, and it turned out that I had accidentally been using their card when ordering food for myself. I had originally set up an account for a food delivery app for this family member a few years ago, so I had set it up using their card. We shared the account for a while, though I only used it occasionally with their permission, and they stopped using the app altogether after a while. I started using the app again over the last couple of weeks since I was too tired to cook by the time I got home. I thought I had switched it to my card about a year ago when my family member stopped using it, but apparently I hadn't. We got that cleared up, I paid them back, and I switched the account to my card. A couple days ago, maybe an hour or so after I used the app to order some food, I got a call/voicemail from my bank about a potentially fraudulent charge on my card. Nothing in the message was overtly asking for my information, just a (paraphrased) notice that a potential fraudulent charge had been caught and that I should call back when I had the chance. I logged onto my online bank account and didn't see any unusual charges, but did see that the last few purchases I had made, including the food order, were all listed as "pending" and hadn't gone through as quickly as they normally do. I figured that my food order had gotten flagged somehow by the bank's system since it was the first time I had used my card with the delivery app, and that my account might have been locked, so I decided to look into it more and call back later in the day. I ended up getting a second call a few hours later from the same number with the same message. I've never had any spoofed messages from my bank before, so the odds of getting two just a few hours apart in a plausible scenario where the bank might have mistakenly flagged a purchase made it seem more legitimate. I've had both text messages and calls from my bank before, but never an automated voicemail, but figured that if it had been flagged by an automated system, maybe the message I had received was also part of the same automated system. I was tired and enough unrelated events lined up that I mostly believed that it was legitimate. I thought back to these videos though and how it's been mentioned before that happenstance can make a scam seem more legitimate, so I decided to be cautious about it and look up what my bank's procedures are for this sort of thing. It turns out that they do sometimes leave voicemails, but the phone number it would have come from was different from the number that had called me. I called my bank using the number I found on my bank's website and the person I talked to was honestly kind of unprofessional, in my opinion, asking me to verify my identity with my full name, account number, and SSN after I had told her that I was worried that someone was attempting to impersonate the bank to steal my information. Really all she had to do was ask for the number that called me and either confirm or deny it was a number associated with the bank, but she didn't do that and insisted that she was just trying to verify my identity. I'm pretty sure that this was someone actually working for my bank since I got the number from their website, but the situation made me uncomfortable and I decided to just go in person to talk with someone face-to-face. I went in, everything was fine with my account, they verified that they do leave voicemails sometimes but never automated like the ones I had received, and I gave them the fake number that had called me. So to summarize, I almost fell for the scam because: 1. The scammers used the name of my actual bank, which was unusual since it's only a small, local bank. 2. I had never previously had any phishing or spoofing attempts from someone claiming to be my bank, (though I have had a few from larger banks that I don't have accounts with,) but my actual bank has called and texted me before, so there was already some degree of trust there. 3. The scammers more-or-less followed the actual procedures that my bank uses, only falling short on the phone number and the voicemail being automated. My bank's website also didn't mention that they don't use automated voicemails, I only learned this after talking to someone in person. 4. These calls just happened to come right after I made a purchase that could realistically have been accidentally flagged as fraudulent. 5. At the same time I got these calls about a potentially fraudulent purchase, my actual recent purchases were taking longer than usual to clear, leading me to believe my account had been locked. 6. I was really tired after two weeks of being overworked and initially wasn't thinking as clearly as I ideally could have been. It wasn't until a few hours after the first call that I started to have my doubts and fortunately I hadn't had the chance to return the call yet by that point. Please, everyone, stay vigilant. Don't immediately jump to solve a potential issue that's brought to your attention by a stranger on the internet or over the phone, or even through the mail in some cases. Take some time to think things through, and even if something seems legitimate, ALWAYS double check.

As a hockey fan, I died when the first scammer tried to fool you using Doug Wilson's autograph to pass himself off as "Paul M. Wilson"😂😂🤣 Great video! Keep up the good work, sir