Plan B Forum

And when he knows the jig is up, the scammer threatens terrorism:



Apparently this Ashton Bingham has made a cottage industry of taking up scammers' time and calling them out - there's a lot more examples of his work on YouTube.

The day the IRS (Infernal Ripoff Service) starts outsourcing their calls to a call center in some 4th-world country where the phone jockey is some dude for whom English is his second language (after Hindi, Pakistani, Tagalog, or bullshit) is the day I stop filing a tax return altogether. I'll still let them withhold from my paychecks, but if they — with all their computers, accountants, clerks, bookkeepers, and various other professionals — who work with numbers on a regular, daily basis can't get the tax calculation right the first time, then why should I, an unpaid, untrained amateur, do their work for them?

If they made a mistake and short-charged me, let THEM 'fess up, show their work, apologize for their error, and politely ask me to make up the difference.

-"BB"-

I'm not sure but I think that wasn't really the IRS...

I'm thinking Bill may have lost the plot here...

Scooter wrote:I'm thinking Bill may have lost the plot here...

No, Scooter, I didn't lose the plot.  I'm just saying that the IRS doesn't deliver news like this by telephone call; and even if they did, the person calling would NOT be someone who sounds like he had been begging for baksheesh on a New Delhi street corner the week before.  And anyone who would believe otherwise and falls for a con like this is a living, breathing example of the "fool and his money" proverb.

-"BB"-

He didn’t lose it he didn’t have it to begin with.

I actually had fun with one of them once; when he called threatening me with arrest and saying I could pay right away to avoid it, I told him I was calling the police so he could have them arrest meand conferenced in a friend who played he was a cop (I thought he would hang up before then but he didn't). He kept to his script and we kept asking his name and if he wanted to file a complaint; I also told him to give me a little time so I could change into a good suit that would look good in the papers when I was arrested. Finally we started threatening him with arrest and bodily harm (and inquired as to the marital state of his parents) and told him we were tracing the call through the police system and he hung up. It was fun for a while, but these sort of scams are not funny because, sadly, many people (especially the elderly and undocumented immigrants) are taken in by them and lose thousands.

Since this just happened, and it's kind of related, I thought I would post it here...

From time to time I get robo scam calls claiming to be from Microsoft, either saying that all my licenses have expired, and nothing on my computer will work anymore, or that they've identified some attempt to "hijack" my computer...

I just got one of the latter:

Hello This call is from Microsoft Health Center we encounter a serious issue coming out of your computer it seems to be someone is trying to hijack your computer and try to steal your personal information if it's not fixed right away then your computer will become obsolete and all of your credential information may got compromised if you are the 1 who is using Microsoft Windows in your computer then please call 561-763-8566 or press 1 now to speak with security team now please ignore if we called you by mistake things.

https://www.nomorobo.com/lookup/561-763 ... gle.com%2F

What was different this time, (or at least I've never noticed it before) on the Caller ID, the caller was identified as "Illegal Scam"...

I get this "MS Warning" probably once a week. Sadly, it's well done and sounds legit and I can understand how old farts fall for it. Me? I'm a natural born cynic and question everything. Very little ever gets past me.

As a rule I immediately dump my browser and, before restarting, I run CCleaner just to get rid of any cookies that may have been loaded.

I wish an IRS scammer would call me but I haven't filed my taxes in years. There's very little personal info out there on me. Damn! I haven't had much phone fun since using the lines, "is your refrigerator running?" or "do you have Prince Albert in a can?" Oh, those were the days.

I get this "MS Warning" probably once a week.

Yeah, you're talking about the one that pops up on the computer, (as opposed to the phone call scam I was talking about.)

I get that one fairly regularly too; it's an annoyance, but a restart usually fixes the problem for me...

Bicycle Bill wrote:

Scooter wrote:I'm thinking Bill may have lost the plot here...

No, Scooter, I didn't lose the plot.  I'm just saying that the IRS doesn't deliver news like this by telephone call; and even if they did, the person calling would NOT be someone who sounds like he had been begging for baksheesh on a New Delhi street corner the week before.  And anyone who would believe otherwise and falls for a con like this is a living, breathing example of the "fool and his money" proverb.

-"BB"-

I'm not sure that all folks who fall for such scams are fools - some of them might be pathological, or mentally ill.

I recently stumbled on the Matt Damon movie The Informant, a true story about a very smart biochemist who was a top executive at ADM and was the informer to the FBI who helped the US government prosecute the largest ever international case of price fixing. He got immunity for that, but ended up going to prison for several years for embezzling several million dollars from ADM in a separate action - and allegedly one of the primary reasons for his embezzling was linked to his having fallen for one of the Nigerian scams that require the scammed to pay fees up front to facilitate a major money transfer.

Anyway, the guy was really smart and not terribly foolish either - but he was suffering from a really bad case of bipolar disorder.

A friend's mother who was slipping toward senility gave away tens of thousands to scammers, and was fighting tooth and nail to give more as her daughter took control of her funds to protect what the mom had left. So, yes, none of us are the type to fall for this, like 99% of the rest of society, but they only need that 1% or 1/10 of 1% or 1/100 of 1% to make all the phishing worthwhile. Basically, the scammers are scum who prey on the weakest and most vulnerable in our society.