Scamming The Scammer
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OK just took a call from yet another scammer trying to sell me bogus health insurance. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to pretend to be French (this only works if the caller doesn't know French). He finally grew frustrated and asked me to be patient and said he was trying to find someone who knew "my" language (I dunno French either - I was just gleefully babbling away). At this point I asked him how it felt to have someone waste his time with a bunch of phony BS the way he was wasting mine. His response, while not fit to post here, was epic. I am definitely gonna do this again. :-D
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
If I have time, I keep them on the line as long as possible, acting like I'm interested. I play really dumb and ask them to go over the same things many times. I try to get them to the point where they are asking for payment info and then tell them I don't have a credit card or email.
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OK just took a call from yet another scammer trying to sell me bogus health insurance. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to pretend to be French (this only works if the caller doesn't know French). He finally grew frustrated and asked me to be patient and said he was trying to find someone who knew "my" language (I dunno French either - I was just gleefully babbling away). At this point I asked him how it felt to have someone waste his time with a bunch of phony BS the way he was wasting mine. His response, while not fit to post here, was epic. I am definitely gonna do this again. :-D
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
Always love to hear a success story. I will have to try this on head hunters that started calling me on a daily basis a couple of week's ago. I'm 69 and have no intention of going back to work.
Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film. Steven Wright
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It got to the point that I put "SCAM LINE1", "SCAM LINE2", and so on into the phone so I knew who was ringing me. If I had the time, I'd wind 'em up - but if not it was easy to get rid of them: "Do you tell your mother you're a scammer?" when you answer normally gets a burst of swearing and a disconnect. On of my favorite time-taking ways to wind 'em up is to do exactly what they say. But on an Android tablet, instead of a PC. Pity - they don't seem to want to talk to me anymore, and I'm sure that my "Windows Router" is raising problems with Microsoft again.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Got a call yesterday about the soon-to-expire extended warranty on my 2014 Jeep Cherokee. Weird, since I do in fact own a Cherokee but it's way older. I'm guessing that since Cherokees are so popular they're playing the odds. I just hung up. Probably could have had some fun with that one, too.
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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OK just took a call from yet another scammer trying to sell me bogus health insurance. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to pretend to be French (this only works if the caller doesn't know French). He finally grew frustrated and asked me to be patient and said he was trying to find someone who knew "my" language (I dunno French either - I was just gleefully babbling away). At this point I asked him how it felt to have someone waste his time with a bunch of phony BS the way he was wasting mine. His response, while not fit to post here, was epic. I am definitely gonna do this again. :-D
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
We're having provincial elections here next week in Ontario, and reps from all parties have been calling rather frequently to make their pitch. During the last call I received, I immediately interrupted the (I'm sure otherwise very nice) lady to point out that they'd been calling every single day for the past week (which is absolutely true), and that by now they had already got their point across...and requested they permanently take my name/number (which they obviously have, since they asked for me by name) off their phone list - else the party they represent was automatically losing my vote. The scam here is that even though there's a do-not-call registry here in Canada, political parties are exempt[*] from it. It sure is nice when you get to make the rules. [*] And newspapers trying to sell subscriptions. Why? Because the papers in Canada are owned by people with affiliations to a certain political party. Which? Here's a hint: The one that was running the country when the law was made.
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OK just took a call from yet another scammer trying to sell me bogus health insurance. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to pretend to be French (this only works if the caller doesn't know French). He finally grew frustrated and asked me to be patient and said he was trying to find someone who knew "my" language (I dunno French either - I was just gleefully babbling away). At this point I asked him how it felt to have someone waste his time with a bunch of phony BS the way he was wasting mine. His response, while not fit to post here, was epic. I am definitely gonna do this again. :-D
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
I once played along with a scammer that said I had won some money in Vegas that I had left unclaimed. The kind of money that you had to pay taxes on first before it would be sent to you. It went on for several phone calls over several days until I finally got him to admit that he was a scammer. We actually had an interesting conversation after that -- like apparently a lot people fall for his scam. He even asked me how I thought he could improve his scam to make it more believable. But then he had the audacity to ask if I could give him a list of names and numbers he could try his scam on. Well, I told him that I could send him a list of 100 people, all he had to do was first send me a valid $100 Walmart gift card. :-D
-NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user
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OK just took a call from yet another scammer trying to sell me bogus health insurance. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to pretend to be French (this only works if the caller doesn't know French). He finally grew frustrated and asked me to be patient and said he was trying to find someone who knew "my" language (I dunno French either - I was just gleefully babbling away). At this point I asked him how it felt to have someone waste his time with a bunch of phony BS the way he was wasting mine. His response, while not fit to post here, was epic. I am definitely gonna do this again. :-D
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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We're having provincial elections here next week in Ontario, and reps from all parties have been calling rather frequently to make their pitch. During the last call I received, I immediately interrupted the (I'm sure otherwise very nice) lady to point out that they'd been calling every single day for the past week (which is absolutely true), and that by now they had already got their point across...and requested they permanently take my name/number (which they obviously have, since they asked for me by name) off their phone list - else the party they represent was automatically losing my vote. The scam here is that even though there's a do-not-call registry here in Canada, political parties are exempt[*] from it. It sure is nice when you get to make the rules. [*] And newspapers trying to sell subscriptions. Why? Because the papers in Canada are owned by people with affiliations to a certain political party. Which? Here's a hint: The one that was running the country when the law was made.
dandy72 wrote:
even though there's a do-not-call registry here in Canada
Same here. Pretty much anyone with an affiliation to government is exempt from our Do-Not-Call- Registry. And of course the scammers don't care. Most of them are outside the country.
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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I once played along with a scammer that said I had won some money in Vegas that I had left unclaimed. The kind of money that you had to pay taxes on first before it would be sent to you. It went on for several phone calls over several days until I finally got him to admit that he was a scammer. We actually had an interesting conversation after that -- like apparently a lot people fall for his scam. He even asked me how I thought he could improve his scam to make it more believable. But then he had the audacity to ask if I could give him a list of names and numbers he could try his scam on. Well, I told him that I could send him a list of 100 people, all he had to do was first send me a valid $100 Walmart gift card. :-D
-NP Never underestimate the creativity of the end-user
:thumbsup:
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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Ravi Bhavnani wrote:
Have you used Lenny
No, but I just might! :-D You made me think of one of my favorite old phone pranksters: Willie P. Richardson[^]. This guy was hysterically funny.
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
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If I have time, I keep them on the line as long as possible, acting like I'm interested. I play really dumb and ask them to go over the same things many times. I try to get them to the point where they are asking for payment info and then tell them I don't have a credit card or email.
RandyBuchholz wrote:
o go over the same things many times
I get enough of that in meetings in the office, I'm not sure I could do it to someone else... oh wait it is a scammer we are talking about.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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OK just took a call from yet another scammer trying to sell me bogus health insurance. For reasons I cannot explain, I decided to pretend to be French (this only works if the caller doesn't know French). He finally grew frustrated and asked me to be patient and said he was trying to find someone who knew "my" language (I dunno French either - I was just gleefully babbling away). At this point I asked him how it felt to have someone waste his time with a bunch of phony BS the way he was wasting mine. His response, while not fit to post here, was epic. I am definitely gonna do this again. :-D
Sometimes the true reward for completing a task is not the money, but instead the satisfaction of a job well done. But it's usually the money.
