10 ms·

A 'scam manual' written to help immigrants not become victims

196 points by BerislavLopac 3y ago

judith48 3y ago
[flagged]
hackburg 3y ago
[dead]
jMESSIES 3y ago
[dead]
readthenotes1 3y ago
One of the Nero Wolf novels involved conning illegal immigrants in the 1930s. Interesting read...
- screenoridesagb 3y ago
  I thought it was funny the references to scammy mail order colleges. Little has changed since the 30s.
- db48x 3y ago
  The Golden Spiders! There was a really wonderful television series based on Nero Wolfe a few years back too. Just ignore the one from the 80s.
brolumir 3y ago
Really wish this existed in the 90's when my family moved to the US from eastern europe. A non-exhaustive list of scams my parents fell for: - Investing money in a friend's company - this was the most painful as it was perpetuated by our family members who lived here for a while that we trusted - Rainbow vacuum cleaner - Aqualife water filter - Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all - A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery Unfortunately it's easy to scam new immigrants, this happened for hundred years and still happening now.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If it makes you feel better, the Rainbow and the Vector get lots of non-immigrants, too. And some people swear by the Rainbows because of the water feature.
- lifestyleguru 3y ago
  > Rainbow vacuum cleaner There was a wave of this in 90s and 00s but in Poland. In my eyes parents signed a loan for "Mercedes of vaccum cleaners" for an amount of over 2k USD. Average salary back then was something below 700 USD. Fuck this American scammers. Eat shit and bankrupt Rainbow. Rest of the above were occuring as well. People were looking at the west with hope and sympathy, while the west came over with smiling brutal extortionist rape fest.
  - vdaea 3y ago
    I don't understand this. Why did they sign up for a $2000 loan if they could barely afford it?
    - lifestyleguru 3y ago
      Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. Trained salesman visited home and used all dirty sales tricks and pitches. Until now I remember "don't say this vacuum is expensive, this is Mercedes of vacuum cleaners, everyone desires even a substitute of Mercedes", or "a salesman enters someone's home with an attitude that they own him the commission money". You grew up in Communism with an absolute shortage of everything and are unable to evaluate good value in market economy. Fuck this manipulative psychopats.
      - AussieWog93 3y ago
        >Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. You can blame the West as much as you want, but it sounds like Poles were stabbing Poles in the back too.
myself248 3y ago
I would love a better understanding of modern scams and crime in general. Like what does "money laundering" look like on the ground, how would I know if someone around me was trying to do that? I've had some random Amazon items show up addressed to me, but I didn't order them, and I think that was part of a scam, but I never fully got my head around how it works. I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there? Not just scamming the workers out of their personal money, I mean, like using the workers as the arms and legs of a larger criminal enterprise. What's that all about? I would watch a show on this, if it had better-than-mythbusters quality of explanations, think more like Connections or Newton's apple.
- c22 3y ago
  The random Amazon items are probably the "brushing" scam[0] which I guess is about using stolen payment to generate "verified purchases" for fake reviews. [0]: https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam
- lifestyleguru 3y ago
  TBH Many legit services funded from taxes, contributions, and insurances feel like scam. Many jobs fell like scam. Scammers focused on profit extraction exploit the decreased level of alertness. Unfortunately, random "friendly stranger" is almost always scammer especially if pulling out anyone's wallet is involved.
  - myself248 3y ago
    Yeah. A friend of mine just shared this: https://i.imgur.com/KDUOq2j.png https://i.imgur.com/KDUOq2j.png Great. They will look indistinguishable from scammers, and I have low hopes that anyone will actually check ID now that this notice has told them they're legit. Some scammers are gonna have a field day impersonating them.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      While I don't support abuse of 911 for things like this, they really need something like it, a known-trusted authority that people can verify with. Otherwise, you're using information in the notice to verify the notice! That's pointless!
snickerbockers 3y ago
>The chapter titled “The Con of the Matchmaker” describes how American con artists published their own newspapers, filled with ads for women looking for husbands. Anyone who answered such an ad would have their finances scrutinized and then wrested from them by a so-called marriage broker, with no actual wife at the end of the ordeal. Huh, i suppose some things never change.
sandworm101 3y ago
This wasn't for immigrants. This was for a subset of immigrants from rural areas. This manual could be equally applicable to a German farmer heading into Berlin for the first time. America had no corner on the scam market. Certainly Paris or London was home to scams over and above anything the US had to offer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cour_des_miracles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cour_des_miracles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_1814 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_... (People dressed up as French soldiers to convince everyone in London that Napoleon was dead.) And don't forget Scotland's history-altering national scam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme
- b112 3y ago
  An endeavor with legitimate intent is not a scam, not to mention how devastating that was to Scotland. But go ahead, make fun and light of a national disaster that saw people starve, die, and even an entire nation lose their independance.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Darien started as a mistake. It evolved into a scam. As for death and suffering, throughout history even the smallest scams have created suffering. That immigrant who lost his money to a card shark? His family might not eat for a month. That woman who lost money on an investment scam? She might have to take a job that will likely kill her in a few years. And a great many scams were openly violent. Darien was not unique in its resultant suffering.
    - b112 3y ago
      It was never a scam. Never. And using hindsight to call something a mistake, doesn't mean it was apparent to anyone beforehand.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3y ago
racl101 3y ago
So..... it's not a scam manual? When you put things in single quotes they tend to negate the meaning.
- emmanueloga_ 3y ago
  You’ll love the http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com
  - racl101 3y ago
    Holy crap! That's hilarious.
  - thih9 3y ago
    Looks like some people use quotes when they intend to ‘emphasize’ a word. To be fair, I wouldn’t know what would be a more appropriate way of indicating that. Other than markdown, I assume this doesn’t count.
    - Izkata 3y ago
      Emphasis has *long* been done with asterisks. That's why they create italic on here.
      - thih9 3y ago
        > Emphasis has *long* been done with asterisks. Source? Sounds interesting; but earliest continuous use I’m aware of would be Usenet. That’s not that long and quite niche (in the context of typography and its history).
rig666 3y ago
[dead]
giblfiz 3y ago
Something I'm learning from reading the comments is that the culture has moved in what it calls a "scam" In my mind, and from my background, a scam is a pretty brutal outright fraud. You buy a toaster and they send you a box of bricks. From the top comment: - Rainbow vacuum cleaner (I would say it is not a scam, just an overpriced and underwhelming product) - Aqualife water filter (Similarly I would just call this an overpriced product) - Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all. (Depending on details, this actually does sound like a scam, though a small one. The scam part is where they hired the intermediary, other than that it's just abusive sales) - A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery (not a scam, It's a crap job for sure, and MLM for sure, but they do in fact pay you for what you sell. I sold cutco and I made a little money) Some others: Trading in a car? Last-minute they discount the trade-in value due to damage and hope you won't realize that's already counted in the KBB value. (arguably a scam, but mostly I would just call that aggressive hagling) Car's making a weird noise? The mechanic wants to replace your struts for 1800$ even though the sound is just from the brakes being worn down. (Might be a scam, but it also might just be a mechanic who's not great at their job. I have blown many thousand dollars in billable hours for my clients by misdiagnosing software issues before. Sometimes the people we hire just fuck up and that's part of life. If you as the client are really out of your territory then you are more prone to hiring someone incompetent) Inherited money in a trust? The trust manager calls you to "discuss your plans" and get you to let them manage the money without you ever seeing it. (Again, conceivably a scam, but also it's a little tricky because the trust working just right would look similar. This feels a lot more the mechanic example where it's not so much a scam as you are hiring someone who isn't very good) Miss paying taxes in a state because you thought you didn't owe them anything because you didn't actually live there? I'm still getting fake letters that try to scare me into calling them even though the bill was cleared up. years ago. (Ok, this one sounds like it's pretty much a scam) And then the infamous "investing in a Friend and Family business" and never getting the money back. I have no doubt that this is sometimes a scam... but I'm an angel investor and also do quite a bit of F&F investments and I can say for sure: I don't think I have ever been scammed, and the vast majority fail burn the capital and show no positive return. That doesn't make it a scam! Running a business is hard! I think we already know this on HackerNews. Just because someone bets and looses doesn't mean they got scammed!
MichaelRo 3y ago
There's also Gipsy scams: https://budgetslowtravel.com/europe-scams/ https://budgetslowtravel.com/europe-scams/ - My Credit Cards Don’t Work Scam - Pathetic Person Scam - Women with Babies Scam - Swarming Scam - Friendship Bracelets Scam - Survey Scam - Gold Ring Scam - Baggage Scam - Subway Begging Scam - Blocking Scam
- lifestyleguru 3y ago
  People defend tolerance and fight prejudice against Gypsies, until they meet them in real life. More sophisticated one is Polish, Slovakian, and Romanian Gypsies are renting out social housing they receive in UK.
ivana111 3y ago
I JUST RECOVERED MY SCAMMED BITCOIN. It's the first time since 4 months I contacted honest people through internet, I lost money with scam crypto company, I contacted 3 recovery companies, it turned all of them are scammers, Until I contacted recoverydarek@gmail.com, I sent them all information's about the scam company and After giving them the information they needed from me, It took them only 24 to refund my 150,000 USD back to me. I wrote this review, to thank this company for their honesty and those out there in need of help.
- sidechaining 3y ago
  @dang spam bot?

196 points by BerislavLopac 3y ago

judith48 3y ago

[flagged]

hackburg 3y ago

[dead]

jMESSIES 3y ago

[dead]

readthenotes1 3y ago

One of the Nero Wolf novels involved conning illegal immigrants in the 1930s. Interesting read...

screenoridesagb 3y ago
I thought it was funny the references to scammy mail order colleges. Little has changed since the 30s.
db48x 3y ago
The Golden Spiders! There was a really wonderful television series based on Nero Wolfe a few years back too. Just ignore the one from the 80s.

brolumir 3y ago

Really wish this existed in the 90's when my family moved to the US from eastern europe. A non-exhaustive list of scams my parents fell for: - Investing money in a friend's company - this was the most painful as it was perpetuated by our family members who lived here for a while that we trusted - Rainbow vacuum cleaner - Aqualife water filter - Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all - A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery Unfortunately it's easy to scam new immigrants, this happened for hundred years and still happening now.

bombcar 3y ago
If it makes you feel better, the Rainbow and the Vector get lots of non-immigrants, too. And some people swear by the Rainbows because of the water feature.
lifestyleguru 3y ago
> Rainbow vacuum cleaner There was a wave of this in 90s and 00s but in Poland. In my eyes parents signed a loan for "Mercedes of vaccum cleaners" for an amount of over 2k USD. Average salary back then was something below 700 USD. Fuck this American scammers. Eat shit and bankrupt Rainbow. Rest of the above were occuring as well. People were looking at the west with hope and sympathy, while the west came over with smiling brutal extortionist rape fest.
- vdaea 3y ago
  I don't understand this. Why did they sign up for a $2000 loan if they could barely afford it?
  - lifestyleguru 3y ago
    Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. Trained salesman visited home and used all dirty sales tricks and pitches. Until now I remember "don't say this vacuum is expensive, this is Mercedes of vacuum cleaners, everyone desires even a substitute of Mercedes", or "a salesman enters someone's home with an attitude that they own him the commission money". You grew up in Communism with an absolute shortage of everything and are unable to evaluate good value in market economy. Fuck this manipulative psychopats.
    - AussieWog93 3y ago
      >Colleagues in workplace started buying and were receiving commission by referencing next client. You can blame the West as much as you want, but it sounds like Poles were stabbing Poles in the back too.

myself248 3y ago

I would love a better understanding of modern scams and crime in general. Like what does "money laundering" look like on the ground, how would I know if someone around me was trying to do that? I've had some random Amazon items show up addressed to me, but I didn't order them, and I think that was part of a scam, but I never fully got my head around how it works. I hear about various "work from home" jobs actually being scams, but what's going on there? Not just scamming the workers out of their personal money, I mean, like using the workers as the arms and legs of a larger criminal enterprise. What's that all about? I would watch a show on this, if it had better-than-mythbusters quality of explanations, think more like Connections or Newton's apple.

c22 3y ago
The random Amazon items are probably the "brushing" scam[0] which I guess is about using stolen payment to generate "verified purchases" for fake reviews. [0]: https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam https://www.uspis.gov/news/scam-article/brushing-scam
lifestyleguru 3y ago
TBH Many legit services funded from taxes, contributions, and insurances feel like scam. Many jobs fell like scam. Scammers focused on profit extraction exploit the decreased level of alertness. Unfortunately, random "friendly stranger" is almost always scammer especially if pulling out anyone's wallet is involved.
- myself248 3y ago
  Yeah. A friend of mine just shared this: https://i.imgur.com/KDUOq2j.png https://i.imgur.com/KDUOq2j.png Great. They will look indistinguishable from scammers, and I have low hopes that anyone will actually check ID now that this notice has told them they're legit. Some scammers are gonna have a field day impersonating them.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    While I don't support abuse of 911 for things like this, they really need something like it, a known-trusted authority that people can verify with. Otherwise, you're using information in the notice to verify the notice! That's pointless!

snickerbockers 3y ago

>The chapter titled “The Con of the Matchmaker” describes how American con artists published their own newspapers, filled with ads for women looking for husbands. Anyone who answered such an ad would have their finances scrutinized and then wrested from them by a so-called marriage broker, with no actual wife at the end of the ordeal. Huh, i suppose some things never change.

sandworm101 3y ago

This wasn't for immigrants. This was for a subset of immigrants from rural areas. This manual could be equally applicable to a German farmer heading into Berlin for the first time. America had no corner on the scam market. Certainly Paris or London was home to scams over and above anything the US had to offer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cour_des_miracles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cour_des_miracles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_1814 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stock_Exchange_Fraud_of_... (People dressed up as French soldiers to convince everyone in London that Napoleon was dead.) And don't forget Scotland's history-altering national scam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darien_scheme

b112 3y ago
An endeavor with legitimate intent is not a scam, not to mention how devastating that was to Scotland. But go ahead, make fun and light of a national disaster that saw people starve, die, and even an entire nation lose their independance.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Darien started as a mistake. It evolved into a scam. As for death and suffering, throughout history even the smallest scams have created suffering. That immigrant who lost his money to a card shark? His family might not eat for a month. That woman who lost money on an investment scam? She might have to take a job that will likely kill her in a few years. And a great many scams were openly violent. Darien was not unique in its resultant suffering.
  - b112 3y ago
    It was never a scam. Never. And using hindsight to call something a mistake, doesn't mean it was apparent to anyone beforehand.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 3y ago

racl101 3y ago

So..... it's not a scam manual? When you put things in single quotes they tend to negate the meaning.

emmanueloga_ 3y ago
You’ll love the http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com
- racl101 3y ago
  Holy crap! That's hilarious.
- thih9 3y ago
  Looks like some people use quotes when they intend to ‘emphasize’ a word. To be fair, I wouldn’t know what would be a more appropriate way of indicating that. Other than markdown, I assume this doesn’t count.
  - Izkata 3y ago
    Emphasis has *long* been done with asterisks. That's why they create italic on here.
    - thih9 3y ago
      > Emphasis has *long* been done with asterisks. Source? Sounds interesting; but earliest continuous use I’m aware of would be Usenet. That’s not that long and quite niche (in the context of typography and its history).

rig666 3y ago

[dead]

giblfiz 3y ago

Something I'm learning from reading the comments is that the culture has moved in what it calls a "scam" In my mind, and from my background, a scam is a pretty brutal outright fraud. You buy a toaster and they send you a box of bricks. From the top comment: - Rainbow vacuum cleaner (I would say it is not a scam, just an overpriced and underwhelming product) - Aqualife water filter (Similarly I would just call this an overpriced product) - Hiring someone to take us to another city to buy a car to "help get a good deal" - turned out he was working for the seller, and it was not a good deal at all. (Depending on details, this actually does sound like a scam, though a small one. The scam part is where they hired the intermediary, other than that it's just abusive sales) - A summer job for me selling Vector cutlery (not a scam, It's a crap job for sure, and MLM for sure, but they do in fact pay you for what you sell. I sold cutco and I made a little money) Some others: Trading in a car? Last-minute they discount the trade-in value due to damage and hope you won't realize that's already counted in the KBB value. (arguably a scam, but mostly I would just call that aggressive hagling) Car's making a weird noise? The mechanic wants to replace your struts for 1800$ even though the sound is just from the brakes being worn down. (Might be a scam, but it also might just be a mechanic who's not great at their job. I have blown many thousand dollars in billable hours for my clients by misdiagnosing software issues before. Sometimes the people we hire just fuck up and that's part of life. If you as the client are really out of your territory then you are more prone to hiring someone incompetent) Inherited money in a trust? The trust manager calls you to "discuss your plans" and get you to let them manage the money without you ever seeing it. (Again, conceivably a scam, but also it's a little tricky because the trust working just right would look similar. This feels a lot more the mechanic example where it's not so much a scam as you are hiring someone who isn't very good) Miss paying taxes in a state because you thought you didn't owe them anything because you didn't actually live there? I'm still getting fake letters that try to scare me into calling them even though the bill was cleared up. years ago. (Ok, this one sounds like it's pretty much a scam) And then the infamous "investing in a Friend and Family business" and never getting the money back. I have no doubt that this is sometimes a scam... but I'm an angel investor and also do quite a bit of F&F investments and I can say for sure: I don't think I have ever been scammed, and the vast majority fail burn the capital and show no positive return. That doesn't make it a scam! Running a business is hard! I think we already know this on HackerNews. Just because someone bets and looses doesn't mean they got scammed!

MichaelRo 3y ago

There's also Gipsy scams: https://budgetslowtravel.com/europe-scams/ https://budgetslowtravel.com/europe-scams/ - My Credit Cards Don’t Work Scam - Pathetic Person Scam - Women with Babies Scam - Swarming Scam - Friendship Bracelets Scam - Survey Scam - Gold Ring Scam - Baggage Scam - Subway Begging Scam - Blocking Scam

lifestyleguru 3y ago
People defend tolerance and fight prejudice against Gypsies, until they meet them in real life. More sophisticated one is Polish, Slovakian, and Romanian Gypsies are renting out social housing they receive in UK.

ivana111 3y ago

I JUST RECOVERED MY SCAMMED BITCOIN. It's the first time since 4 months I contacted honest people through internet, I lost money with scam crypto company, I contacted 3 recovery companies, it turned all of them are scammers, Until I contacted recoverydarek@gmail.com, I sent them all information's about the scam company and After giving them the information they needed from me, It took them only 24 to refund my 150,000 USD back to me. I wrote this review, to thank this company for their honesty and those out there in need of help.

sidechaining 3y ago
@dang spam bot?