Getting Caught in a SCAM

Getting scammed is a constant threat, from paying money for products and services that never materialize through to signing up for fake investment schemes, and everything in between.

It is not uncommon to think you will be able to see when something is a scam, and we all know that more often than not, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. The problem is that scams are usually run by rather smart people, not only can they be complex, but they can also sound completely legitimate and while very good, not too good to be true.

Unfortunately it is unrealistic to simply stay away from every form of transaction that has the potential to be a scam, but doing a little research on what you are looking at doing is a good way to minimize the chance of you losing your money.

One that has just done the rounds in the last couple of months is Mirror Trading International, they have scammed people out of a little over 22,000 Bitcoin. That is about US$ 756 million at the current rate. Not only is that money they have stolen, but the value would be higher if you were to add the interest payments they had promised to their members. The scam was simple yet complex, they claimed to be trading forex based on Bitcoin instead of US Dollars and claimed this gave them a huge advantage over other forex traders as not only were they increasing the Bitcoin amount for you, but at the same time the value of the Bitcoin is increasing. This meant you were essentially earning both more Bitcoin and a higher dollar value. It does turn out that they were not actually trading forex and like any ponzi scheme were in fact using new members payments to make any payouts.

Ponzi and Pyramid schemes take on many forms, and they usually have an air of being a scheme but they work very hard at convincing a few people and then setting those people out into the world to peddle their scheme. By having your family or friends trying to convince you there is a higher chance of you joining than if you were simply to see an ad for the scheme.

Of course there are many other scams out there too, such as making purchases online and then never getting your products. Two that come to mind are, firstly an online electronics store that was selling all the popular electronics devices at a quarter of the price they should have been. Then a car sales website selling at almost half the usual price. While there are good deals to be had, so many people made the purchases and then went to these two companies when they stopped hearing from them only to find the companies did not exist and in both cases were given addresses to empty plots of land.

And to finish off this article, I can’t leave out love scams. It seems that dating websites are only a very small percentage of real people and the majority are scammers aiming to take all you have, regardless of how little that may be. The ones I have heard of are never quick scams, it appears for the most part they play out in a long time, anything from a year to a few years. They build up trust with you, tell you everything you need to hear, and then they attack.

If you are looking for love online, never, ever, ever, send the potential love of your life anything without first thinking if you would happily drive down a random road and drop it into a random mailbox and feel good about it. Would you feel good driving down a road and dropping a burger or a bottle of water into someone’s mailbox? how about thousands of dollars? If you have not met and gotten to know the potential love of your life, chances are it is a scam and should be treated as such. If it is a real person then they can meet before asking for help, and even then, would you go on a single date with a person and then hand over large amounts of money to them?

Online dating should be a way to meet someone, then it should move into real world, you meet, you go out, you hang out with friends and attend events. If it is not progressing like that. 9.9 times out of 10 it is a scam.

While we may not be able to avoid every scam out there, if you have the unfortunate displeasure of finding you have been scammed, the next best thing you can do is to be as loud about it as you possibly can. Don’t feel bad, these people spend all their time trying to scam you and others out of their money, if you have fallen victim to them, don’t blame yourself, instead try and help others not to suffer the same. Share you story, share all the contact information you have for the person, help people to see what scams are being run and hopefully avoid falling pray to the parasites that feel justified in scamming people.