Fess up. Who here has ever been scammed, taken or generally fucked by someone?

My little story:
I'm walking the streets of Manhattan and I see this bum. He's not a total mess but has obviously seen better days.

He flashes me these coins. They are encased in plastic. Written on the plastic are all kinds of notes about the coins, grades, possible value $300-450. etc. Stuff I had seen many times as a comic book collector.

He wants to sell them for $25. Now there is a 3 way battle in my head.
1.The guy is full of shit. Stay away!
2.The idiot doesn't know the value of what he's got. Go for it!
3.If by some chance they are valuable God knows how he got them. I'll try and sell them and get freakin' arrested. Stay away!

I bought 'em. They were worth crap.

$25 aint too bad. What's your story?

Steve

"[crying] blah blah, trying to get train fare back to bloomington, blah blah got robbed..."

blah blah she was still in chicago months later.

same technique, although she had the stones to accost me in front of a 7-11, i bought the story, and she immediately turned around to walk into the 7-11 to buy a 40oz. i was like, at least give me the dignity to walk around the corner first. don't rub my gullibility in my face.

at eighteen i lost $10 in a three card monty scam on a city bus.
thought i was pretty clever. turns out i wasn't.

www.freecreditreport.com

They'll hit you up for $85 a year after you sign up, as a subscription renewal on some service that really doesn't exist. You can sort 'em out and get your money back with a stern phone call, though, cause it happens all the time.

I'm much too jaded to fall for the bus $ story. I saw kids in athens on the street all the time who were like 17, 18, begging change (with attitude! like "gimme some change" and when you don't then you hear "dickhead" as you're walking away) who all had dogs, tattoos, and piercings gallore. Meanwhile I'm $20 grand in debt for my meaningless degree and working 3 jobs.

And a friend got burned on the bus $ story once. Then he saw the guy a month later and just laid into him right on the street, because the guy was still in town, sipping on a 40, and he was embarrassed that he got fooled.

Oh, there are parts of Manhattan where all you see are 3 card Monty scams going on. Usually the tourists get taken.

Um, that's not a reflection on you. You were just a youngster with an honest heart.

Yeah, but look at it this way:
Now you can say "I lost $10 in a three card monty scam on a city bus."

I sometimes stop and watch the 3 card monty guys...half the people around the table are working for the guy...

i kind of feel bad, but then again, hey they're tourists! welcome to new york!

Yup, some of them are "winners" to make it seem like it is possible to win. The others are trying to pick your pocket as you watch.

Steve

on the converse, i ran into a homeless kind of guy in chapel hill a few years ago, and we "worked" on the same block, me at my job and him at what was more or less his, so i knew him from around and we were friendly. he asked me for money saying that it was his birthday, and when i told him that i was broke as a joke he gave me a dollar. i kind of had to throw him some cash here and there after that.

awesome.

Never really been scammed. (Hey, I listen to Clark Howard and everything), but my buddy Tim got scammed by the "guy in the van driving around with the stereo speakers scam"

I put this in quotes because I've heard that it is nationwide and I know some of you will know what I am talking about....

Are the speakers broken?

I almost got suckered in on that one when I first moved to Vancouver. First impulse was "oh wow, what a great deal"; second impulse was "hang on, this ain't right." Second impulse won out.

About a decade later I met up with an old high school bud and he proudly showed me his new speakers - and it was the same scam.

Well, when I first moved to PTC (10th Grade) one of my impressions was, these kids are ripe for the pickins. So, when March Madness came around, i set up a betting pool. You know, fill out the brackets, give $5, winner take all. Then I set one of my friends up as the winner. we split like $450, which in 10th grade is a lot of money. Oh, and Santa Clara beat Zona that year, and he somehow managed to pick that game...easiest money I ever made, and I don't regret a thing about it.

They're digging you a special room under hell.

That's awesome because it was 10th grade. If you did it now, I'd probably have to loathe you.

But seriously, are the speakers broken?

No, the deal is that the guy has these speakers that, you know, fell off a truck or whatever, and they're not Polk, they're Palk, or whatever. I mean, they work, but they ain't what you think they are soundwise, by a damn stretch.

My buddy sold them to another friend and then felt gulity and gave him the money back. I laughed heartily at every turn.

I've done a few scams, but never really been scammed. My friend who was a dj used to hold trivia contests on his sports call-in show and he would call us, give us the answer, then get us through the phone system so we could answer, and we got the prizes. Got a playstation.

I tried to get ol sorry ass Bloor to do something akin to this with is recent gig as a bingo host. He has say over some free bar tabs, but when I told him he should set me up as the winner, and we could split 'em his response was "I drink for free already." Having no heart, he ain't out stealing for a living.

This is pretty embarassing:

I kinda got scammed for what could have cost me $200+ involving some fake credit card shit. In my defense, I was half asleep, and I had just ordered a real card a few weeks ago. These people called me (at this point I hadn't yet heard back from the legit credit people) and I thought they were doing some kinda credit check on the card I just ordered. Even still, considering all the information that I gave them, it was fucking retarded for me to go along with the whole thing.

Luckily I came to my senses a little while later and looked the up the "financial agency" that had called me. Turns out there were several complaints filed against them, mostly from people with bad credit who had been promised a fresh start. I've never had bad credit. I felt like an idiot. I made arrangements so that they couldn't get any money from me, but the whole thing still sucked.

Anyway, the next fucking day I got my real card in the mail. If I'd gotten that call one day later, the whole thing never would've happened.

The other version is the boxes have no speakers at all, just something to make them feel heavy enough. Or the wood cases with no actual speaker mechanism. That way they can show them to you and they look legit. Either way, the guy in the van is long gone by the time you get them home and realize it.

I've been propositioned, but never took the bait. My roommate knows all of them since he has worked in loss prevention for the past 8 years or so.

In a somewhat related note, my buddy and I got all of the girls in my 3rd grade class to give up their lunch money to have a look at my friend's prick underneath a desk.

I promoted the thing and held a flashlight on it so the girls would be sure to get a good look. Didn't want to rip them off.

Steve

[quote="DunwoodyDude
I promoted the thing and held a flashlight on it so the girls would be sure to get a good look. Didn't want to rip them off.
[/quote]

Damn Steve, You got some P.T. Barnum in you. Nice work.