INSTAGRAM GIVEAWAY SCAM
Nov. 1st, 2023 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omaewokorosu*sigh* Soooo I got scammed.
Before you ask, no, it wasn't a lot of money, yes I am incredibly embarrassed as someone who is aware of scams like this thanks to Kitboga and other scambaiters, no I have no idea what the fuck happened...
It was almost $200 which for me isn't exactly chump change but I'm not gonna be homeless so if anything it's just a(n expensive) lesson learned.
So I'm gonna explain the scam using screen caps so y'all know how the scam goes.
It all started when someone by the name of Dave Johnson began following my account and making conversation in my DMs. Dave Johnson is an actual person who did actually win the lottery, I found articles about it myself (not thru the scammer) and for whatever fucking reason I thought this guy was the real deal. Maybe it was the Instagram profile looking legit and well put together. I don't know. Regardless... It was one of those "The first [insert number here] people to follow my account will get entered in a giveaway for $xx,xxx! and I have participated in these types of things before, not for money but other prizes, and they've worked out okay (from actual raffle websites influencers and the like use). So I thought this was something like that. So I followed back because this guy followed me for whatever reason and had a whole bunch of people following him including people I know IRL.
And maybe that's what helped sell it to me. I don't know.
"What is a Flea Headquarters?" I don't know. If you read the later messages you can deduce that the scammer I'm gonna call "David" because why not probably meant "FedEx Headquarters". Scammers aren't smart and they sure as fuck don't proofread.
What's your name and where are you from?
Might as well just go a/s/l like it's fucking 1999 so I could be like 18/f/CA like everyone else when I was like 8 in AOL chatrooms I had no business being in lmao
Just the scammer trying to get information. I redacted my legal name because eww as well as any other personal information (that will eventually not be correct anyway).
The scam is supposed to involve actual straps of bank notes in a fucking bubble mailer and yet this putz is asking if I want it as a check (which would turn into a check cashing scam I'm sure where the check is accidentally made out for "too much" and I'm supposed to deposit it and transfer over the difference...and then the check would bounce and I'd be on the hook for more money than I've ever had in my fucking life) or cash.
Keep in mind it is illegal to send actual fucking cash through the post (regardless of it being USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc) like a tenner or something for your birthday is nbd but fucking $30k or whatever???
So I actually did send a text to that number, which is definitely not a FedEx number but someone's (more than likely VoIP) number unaffiliated with FedEx but I was hooked at this point and the Logic Centre hadn't switched on yet at this point. So we leave Instagram for now and switch over to SMS.
So you can see that sweet and awesome and totally legit "FedEx" image.
Seems totally legit. Let's just ignore the misspellings (couriour), bad grammar ("...and ready to be ship out", the run-on sentence, the bad English...) Not to mention the shit photoshop job (that approved "stamp" is so artifacted... As is that signature...)
Let me make this abundantly clear:
Red flag #2: exorbitant shipping fees. A voice in the back of my head went, "This doesn't sound right..." and my dumb ass went, "Well, it's something really big and heavy, so it would make sense for the shipping fees to be kind of high."
NO ONE WOULD LEGITIMATELY SEND FUCKING 15 STRAPS OF 20 DOLLAR BILLS IN A FUCKING BUBBLE MAILER WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ME???
The first shot of our shipping label. This is a plastic bag type of bubble mailer. Keep this (and the shipping label) in mind, there's gonna be about two different mailers plus a cardboard box and just as many shipping labels.
Notice how now my name is Linda, not Karu, not even my legal name. Linda.
More alarm bells now.
The thing is, some part of me genuinely believed that this was legit. I don't even know why, considering even Aleks was questioning everything and I kept telling him, "No no, this is for real."
He was not convinced.
I was sent this. In order to get this shipped out, I have to pay another ridiculous fee ($520???) to "activate the tracking for the package" which is when my brain went *record scratch*.
You don't pay for tracking for packages.
You don't pay to "activate" tracking.
If someone tells you to do that, it's a scam.
It's a scam.
IT'S A FUCKING SCAM.
And I ignored it in the hopes that maybe this was a mistake.
No. It was not. The other scammer asked if I got the picture. I said no because I thought it was a mistake, the crossing of wires. They sent the same picture. This is a scam.
Like I said, there is no "activation fee" involved. It's free. This is the scam. They lure you in with a shipping fee (which I'd stupidly paid) and then they try to get you to pay an activation fee. Then something will go wrong and you'll have to pay more money. And more money. Maybe some gift cards too. They will drain all your fucking money doing this.
By this time I knew it was a scam and stopped going along with things.
This is the last text message I sent. I never got a response and after an hour or so I blocked it so that they knew I knew they were a scam. Which they realized because I got this from David:
You can tell your "manager" to take that $520 and shove it up your asshole.
To illustrate how easy it is to fake SMS messages (since they tried to use texts from "fellow lucky winners" to convince me shit was real), let me use the one app I use to make fake texts for my fics:
(The app is called iFAKE but there are plenty out there!)
And also I did a reverse image search for a lot of the images "FedEX" used and found them on other pages:
(This stock image is used on FedEx's website and I guess is popular with a few scammers!)
A really poor editing job here...
I then went on David's Instagram account (which has since been suspended after I reported it a million and five times for like three months straight) and reverse image searched everything on there. They were stock images or images from other Instagram accounts that were completely unrelated to lottery winnings and had nothing to do with "Dave Johnson". Funny how that works. I also found the unedited video footage that was used!
Haven't heard anything from him since.
Before you ask, no, it wasn't a lot of money, yes I am incredibly embarrassed as someone who is aware of scams like this thanks to Kitboga and other scambaiters, no I have no idea what the fuck happened...
It was almost $200 which for me isn't exactly chump change but I'm not gonna be homeless so if anything it's just a(n expensive) lesson learned.
So I'm gonna explain the scam using screen caps so y'all know how the scam goes.
It all started when someone by the name of Dave Johnson began following my account and making conversation in my DMs. Dave Johnson is an actual person who did actually win the lottery, I found articles about it myself (not thru the scammer) and for whatever fucking reason I thought this guy was the real deal. Maybe it was the Instagram profile looking legit and well put together. I don't know. Regardless... It was one of those "The first [insert number here] people to follow my account will get entered in a giveaway for $xx,xxx! and I have participated in these types of things before, not for money but other prizes, and they've worked out okay (from actual raffle websites influencers and the like use). So I thought this was something like that. So I followed back because this guy followed me for whatever reason and had a whole bunch of people following him including people I know IRL.
And maybe that's what helped sell it to me. I don't know.
"What is a Flea Headquarters?" I don't know. If you read the later messages you can deduce that the scammer I'm gonna call "David" because why not probably meant "FedEx Headquarters". Scammers aren't smart and they sure as fuck don't proofread.
What's your name and where are you from?
Might as well just go a/s/l like it's fucking 1999 so I could be like 18/f/CA like everyone else when I was like 8 in AOL chatrooms I had no business being in lmao
Just the scammer trying to get information. I redacted my legal name because eww as well as any other personal information (that will eventually not be correct anyway).
The scam is supposed to involve actual straps of bank notes in a fucking bubble mailer and yet this putz is asking if I want it as a check (which would turn into a check cashing scam I'm sure where the check is accidentally made out for "too much" and I'm supposed to deposit it and transfer over the difference...and then the check would bounce and I'd be on the hook for more money than I've ever had in my fucking life) or cash.
Keep in mind it is illegal to send actual fucking cash through the post (regardless of it being USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc) like a tenner or something for your birthday is nbd but fucking $30k or whatever???
So I actually did send a text to that number, which is definitely not a FedEx number but someone's (more than likely VoIP) number unaffiliated with FedEx but I was hooked at this point and the Logic Centre hadn't switched on yet at this point. So we leave Instagram for now and switch over to SMS.
So you can see that sweet and awesome and totally legit "FedEx" image.
Seems totally legit. Let's just ignore the misspellings (couriour), bad grammar ("...and ready to be ship out", the run-on sentence, the bad English...) Not to mention the shit photoshop job (that approved "stamp" is so artifacted... As is that signature...)
Let me make this abundantly clear:
YOU NEVER HAVE TO PAY TO ACTIVATE A TRACKING NUMBER. It is there on the shipping label automatically. It's included! For free! If anyone tells you you need to pay for ANY tracking, they are scamming you.
Red flag #2: exorbitant shipping fees. A voice in the back of my head went, "This doesn't sound right..." and my dumb ass went, "Well, it's something really big and heavy, so it would make sense for the shipping fees to be kind of high."
NO ONE WOULD LEGITIMATELY SEND FUCKING 15 STRAPS OF 20 DOLLAR BILLS IN A FUCKING BUBBLE MAILER WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ME???
The first shot of our shipping label. This is a plastic bag type of bubble mailer. Keep this (and the shipping label) in mind, there's gonna be about two different mailers plus a cardboard box and just as many shipping labels.
Notice how now my name is Linda, not Karu, not even my legal name. Linda.
More alarm bells now.
The thing is, some part of me genuinely believed that this was legit. I don't even know why, considering even Aleks was questioning everything and I kept telling him, "No no, this is for real."
He was not convinced.
I was sent this. In order to get this shipped out, I have to pay another ridiculous fee ($520???) to "activate the tracking for the package" which is when my brain went *record scratch*.
You don't pay for tracking for packages.
You don't pay to "activate" tracking.
If someone tells you to do that, it's a scam.
It's a scam.
IT'S A FUCKING SCAM.
And I ignored it in the hopes that maybe this was a mistake.
No. It was not. The other scammer asked if I got the picture. I said no because I thought it was a mistake, the crossing of wires. They sent the same picture. This is a scam.
Like I said, there is no "activation fee" involved. It's free. This is the scam. They lure you in with a shipping fee (which I'd stupidly paid) and then they try to get you to pay an activation fee. Then something will go wrong and you'll have to pay more money. And more money. Maybe some gift cards too. They will drain all your fucking money doing this.
By this time I knew it was a scam and stopped going along with things.
This is the last text message I sent. I never got a response and after an hour or so I blocked it so that they knew I knew they were a scam. Which they realized because I got this from David:
You can tell your "manager" to take that $520 and shove it up your asshole.
To illustrate how easy it is to fake SMS messages (since they tried to use texts from "fellow lucky winners" to convince me shit was real), let me use the one app I use to make fake texts for my fics:
(The app is called iFAKE but there are plenty out there!)
And also I did a reverse image search for a lot of the images "FedEX" used and found them on other pages:
(This stock image is used on FedEx's website and I guess is popular with a few scammers!)
A really poor editing job here...
I then went on David's Instagram account (which has since been suspended after I reported it a million and five times for like three months straight) and reverse image searched everything on there. They were stock images or images from other Instagram accounts that were completely unrelated to lottery winnings and had nothing to do with "Dave Johnson". Funny how that works. I also found the unedited video footage that was used!
Haven't heard anything from him since.
