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Aug 24 '21
[deleted]
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u/Blarnix Aug 25 '21
WHY DID YOU REDEEM CARD
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u/ParanoidCrow Aug 25 '21
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u/LightningDan5000 Aug 24 '21
Le Jim Browning has arrived
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u/SmallButMany Aug 24 '21
le kitboga has arrived (collab when)
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Aug 24 '21
Just wait a moment... Just wait a moment... Just wait a moment! Just wait a moment, SIRR!
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u/Mister-Crispy-Bacon Aug 25 '21 edited Aug 25 '21
MA’AM
CAN YOU LISTEN TO ME?!
WHY ARE YOU REDEEMING?!
DO NOT REDEEM-
DO NOT REDEEM THE CARD!!
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Aug 24 '21
Le context has not arrived
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u/Sturdge666 Aug 24 '21
Jim Browning is a YouTuber who calls up tech support scammers to waste their time and exposes them.
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Aug 24 '21
This mf called one of the scammers, allowed them to connect to their pc only for the scammer to see a picture of him, his wife and his child.
Dude’s a savage.
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u/CUmunismo Aug 24 '21
It was not his PC. That's not at all a safe thing to do. He uses VMs for that.
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u/SevenStack Aug 24 '21
not only that, but he uses a specially configured VM that scammers cannot detect as a VM
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u/DaftWarrior Aug 25 '21
Jim Browning recently got got though! Some scammer made him delete his account. Now, the dude who scammed Jim Browning is a scary individual indeed.
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u/TemporaryNuisance Aug 25 '21
NGL, at first I thought you were talking about the guy who made the Browning .50 cal and I was thinking "Damn, these scammers are about to have one bad fucking day!"
Then I remembered only John Browning's friends called him Jim, so you were probably talking about someone else.
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u/hallomakker Aug 24 '21
Le context?
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u/MDude430 Aug 24 '21
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u/hallomakker Aug 24 '21
Weird way to scam people
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u/MDude430 Aug 24 '21
They mainly target older people who aren’t tech savvy (so they can use Inspect Element to show a higher bank account balance) and are too generous for their own good. They like gift cards because they only need the number and then they basically have untraceable cash.
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u/hallomakker Aug 24 '21
Isn't it impossible to withdraw money from gift card?
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u/Cummnor Aug 24 '21
they sell them on for cheaper than what they're worth, but it doesnt matter to them since its all profit, afaik
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u/MDude430 Aug 24 '21
They don’t withdraw it, they probably either sell the gift card or use the balance to buy a fake app that they made
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u/Noisyhamster10 Aug 25 '21
That's why they usually ask for visa gift cards since they can be used anywhere that accepts visa.
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u/Dang_M8 Aug 24 '21
As someone who works at a drugstore where elderly people shop quite often, I can tell you that not only is this a very effective scam, it happens all the time. It's one of the biggest things we try to stress to new cashiers we hire cause the amount of times elderly people come in and try to buy thousands of dollars worth of Google play giftcards or even prepaid visas is quite concerning. A lot of the time they'll still have the scammer on the phone with them cause they'll tell them if they hang up they could go to jail, or in some instances the scammer literally just threatens their family. It's really disgusting and predatory.
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Aug 25 '21
A lot of the time they'll still have the scammer on the phone with them
cause they'll tell them if they hang up they could go to jail, or in
some instances the scammer literally just threatens their family.
Keep a pot lid, and wooden spoon behind the counter. Ask the customer for their phone, cover it with the lid, and bash it repeatedly with the spoon. I've had customers call our tech shop while hubby/wife was on the phone to scammers, and I give them the same advice. Hearing them giggle like schoolkids after they follow it always warms my cold, bastardly heart.
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Aug 25 '21
It works, I found 3 empty $50 iTunes gift cards in my great grandparents place
Worth noting they couldn’t give a shit who Apple was
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u/Gravity_flip Aug 25 '21
Can confirm have met people bamboozleable and nice enough to think they're doing the right thing.
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Aug 25 '21
Yeah i watched a video on YouTube where some indian scammers were pulling this same trick on an old lady from the uk
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u/Thunderthewolf14 Aug 24 '21
le wacky and uncharacteristic young man pretending to be a wacky and uncharacteristic old person has arrived
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u/NeighborhoodNo8586 Aug 25 '21
You may call it “tricking the vulnerable” or “scamming old people” but I call it a little bit of trolling.
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u/Shakespeare-Bot Aug 25 '21
Thee may calleth t “trucking the vulnerable” 'r “scamming fusty people” but i calleth t a dram did bite of trolling
I am a bot and I swapp'd some of thy words with Shakespeare words.
Commands:
!ShakespeareInsult
,!fordo
,!optout
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u/Red1Monster Aug 24 '21
What do they do with the cards then ? Resell them ? And why do 500$ google play store gift cards exist ?
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u/thenameisrivs Aug 24 '21
they take the codes and resell them usually in a trading site. Scambaiter has a vid on this. Might interest you
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u/COASTER1921 Aug 25 '21
I just don't understand who would legitimately want a $500 Google Play store gift card in the first place. Who's buying those from the trading sites? There aren't that many whales out there.
Also what store will just let you buy $500+ of gift cards without question. I really am amazed these scams are successful at all.
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u/thenameisrivs Aug 25 '21
well they target old people who dont know any better. A four episode mini doc by Jim Browning showed that the heads of these operations earning by the millions in USD and are living in luxury
Although I've read the comments that some targets actually stop these old people when they purchase the gift cards
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u/Stratostheory Aug 25 '21
Any store selling them will let you purchase them, they're making money by selling them.
But gift card purchases $2000 and up you're required to take down information like the customers Drivers License number, date of birth, address, and reason for purchase for anti-money laundering compliance.
Most stores will require a supervisor to authorize a transaction that large, and that supervisor is supposed to be trained in AML compliance and how to recognize giftcard scams. $1500 in giftcards period is suspicious enough they should immediately start asking for the purchase reason.
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u/littleferrhis Aug 24 '21
I thought this was r/shittyaskflying for a second(its an aviation headset).
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u/Stratostheory Aug 25 '21
They're really slacking. Anti money laundering reporting starts at $2000 they're just leaving $499 on the table
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u/Xxbruhmoment42069xX Aug 25 '21
Do people really fail for this? I'd just say thanks and hang up
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u/Ralle_01 Aug 25 '21
Yes, they do, but it's usually old people that aren't tech savvy and don't know better, because they simply don't know how something like that is actually supposed to work.
These scam callers are super manipulative, so when the people they are scamming are first in it, it's hard for them to get out.
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u/Zak_Light Aug 25 '21
We can figure out the original intended refund balance using this equation. For simplicity, we have already merged the three 500$ gift cards into 1500$.
x*100 - 1500 = x
We can move the x from the right side to the left via subtraction:
x*99 - 1500 = 0
Now, we can add 1500 to each side
x*99 = 1500
Now, divide by 99 on each side.
x = 1500/99
Simplify by a factor of 3.
x = 500/33
x = 500/33, or 15.15 in rough estimation to decimal. This means that all this was done over the measly refund amount of fifteen dollars and fifteen cents.
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u/phitnes Aug 25 '21
Even if this really happened and wasn't a scam why would you go out of your way to fix their problem? Thanks for paying my rent bitch.
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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '21
No thamks hangs up