Are scammers getting dumber? Or is it people they aim for are so naïve?

[DigitalFox]

Almost every day I read a topic of someone been scammed out of money. Well, this is a course of life and scams will exist as long as exists human race. What makes me laugh though is methods scammers use lately. Nothing inventive, not even an attempt to make it look legit. "Successful trader will make you 50% in an hour". "BTC refund department". "BTC doubler". And dozens of others so obvious one has to be a newborn baby to fall for. I wouldn't be surprised if  soon there will be messages from "BTC Support Department" or anything along these lines. How can anyone sane fall for this?

I received a call from my "bank support line" a while ago. Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

[Daniel91]

Almost every day I read a topic of someone been scammed out of money. Well, this is a course of life and scams will exist as long as exists human race. What makes me laugh though is methods scammers use lately. Nothing inventive, not even an attempt to make it look legit. "Successful trader will make you 50% in an hour". "BTC refund department". "BTC doubler". And dozens of others so obvious one has to be a newborn baby to fall for. I wouldn't be surprised if  soon there will be messages from "BTC Support Department" or anything along these lines. How can anyone sane fall for this?

I received a call from my "bank support line" a while ago. Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

First of all, crypto is a whole new area that people don’t know much about.
Maybe they read somewhere about the big profits that some people made in crypto and that encourages them to get involved, especially if they are in financial trouble and looking for an urgent solution.
Lack of knowledge and experience, along with haste and naivety, usually lead to disaster.
Worst of all, such warnings usually don't reach the people for whom they are intended.

[BIT-BENDER]

Almost every day I read a topic of someone been scammed out of money. Well, this is a course of life and scams will exist as long as exists human race. What makes me laugh though is methods scammers use lately. Nothing inventive, not even an attempt to make it look legit. "Successful trader will make you 50% in an hour". "BTC refund department". "BTC doubler". And dozens of others so obvious one has to be a newborn baby to fall for. I wouldn't be surprised if  soon there will be messages from "BTC Support Department" or anything along these lines. How can anyone sane fall for this?

I received a call from my "bank support line" a while ago. Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

I don't think does who falls for this scam are in sane, I really don't blame them, but the news outlets, and other real professional who claim to do so much in very small time, these scammers are just seeing what the real professionals are doing and what's on the news, then activate greed in those that are looking on there page, channel or account, the format may look cheap but these guys can really have fake proof, statements to work on those who contact them.
Sophisticated or not, scammers are everywhere and anyone can be scammed, everyone has to bundle away greed and deadly curiosity without research.

[Charles-Tim]

I received a call from my "bank support line" a while ago. Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

There is one I heard of recently, the scammer will call you, telling you about the school of your child, the scammer will be posing like a worker from the school. It will tell you there is a parents teacher (PTA) meeting going on, that it is very important. He will tell you that you will receive a code that will be sent to your mobile phone number, that you should tell him the code so that he can be able to link you to the meeting going on online. I have seen people saying this has bee used to scam them in my country.

Somw people falled for this scam just because it doesn't want to look like scam until they are scammed, even if the call is from the school, the person need to use the official school number to call the school before proceeding doing anything.

Some of the victim said they later called the school, telling them if true about the meeting, but the school will tell them there is no ongoing meeting. But because the code has bee sent, they scam is already elicited and successful, this is done in a way money is withdrawn from the victim's bank account.

Although, this is not totally crypto related, but it is worth knowing, that we should not click on any of such message, not to talk of telling the caller the code received.

[lovesmayfamilis]

You rightly pointed out that fraud will exist for as long as humanity will exist. Fraudsters are far from lazy, if they can deceive someone once, they will do it again until it ceases to bring them profit. Cryptocurrency is decentralized, it is difficult to create and prove that someone has been seriously cheated. More and more countries are accepting cryptocurrency with the condition of using it at their peril and risk. Therefore, scammers feel unpunished.
On the Internet, every user must understand that his security is completely dependent on him.
Again, people are greedy, and as long as their greed obscures their eyes, they will be deceived.

[Taskford]

Don't be surprise on those repetitive schemes since they are not target those old pals, they try to hook newbies who's been hyped on tradings for sure the scammers will show some good results in terms of return of investment and mostly thats how newbie fall. If there's good guidance about how to start righfully and how to avoid scams for sure newbie will not get scam of these useless scammers.

[hatshepsut93]

Those scams are obvious to you because you have spent a lot of time in Bitcoin community and is aware that there are so many scammers here. People who just joined it have absolutely different perspective, they send money to doublers because they believe that some millionaire whale could easily give away money to fellow crypto enthusiast. They fall for trading-related scams, because they really think that someone would share secrets with them, because they don't know what is crypto community like.

[Lucius]

The answer to your question is pretty simple, and it comes down to the following - if I can scam someone in a simple way, why would I use some complicated methods? Simple methods are sometimes very effective, and you yourself have noticed that it is true.

On the other hand, it is no lie that cryptocurrencies have allowed rather stupid people to place various simple traps by using social networks like Twitter or Telegram, literally without knowing any hacking methods or having advanced computer skills. If we turn the whole problem into just one sentence, I would say it this way - Stupid people cheat even stupider than themselves.

[Coyster]

How can anyone sane fall for this?

They'll fall for this cause they do not fully understand the theory of "being your own bank" and everything it entails, and then again, the media is not doing any good to newcomers, the whole success story thing and testimonies of people that were lucky with one coin or the other causes a rise in level of avarice amongst crypto investors, making them a liability to scammers. Everyone has been faced with one form of scam attempts or the other, what that means is that scammers must make the move, it doesn't matter the method of their operation cause people are still victims, it's only through adequate crypto knowledge that one can avoid being victims of crypto scams.

[CoolerSid]

There are always be a noobs at any kind of things, so...

[isaac_clarke22]

~
I received a call from my "bank support line" a while ago. Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

You kind of remind me of scambaiters in Youtube like Kitboga, Pierogi and Jim Browning.
Though the scammers that they're playing with are mostly refund scams which is non-crypto related, but you mentioned that they're even claiming to be "BTC Support Department"? Oh no.

Now that you mention that they're also claiming to be from "bank support" and you received SMS confirmation code?
That ain't confirmation code to confirm they're serving the right customer but that's the code to reset your bank account so they'll have full control of it. Disgusting isn't it?

Some will also claim to be from a reputated companies like Microsoft, Norton, etc that'll convince you that you subscribe to something and you have the option to refund and when you do, they'll want you to login into your bank account and would ask your input for how much was to be refunded only to be claiming that you typed extra zeroes (eg: you typed $500 and they added another zero making  it $5000), then you'll see that you have that amount in your bank account which was just HTML-edited. They'll guilt trip you that they'll lose their jobs and would like you to send them that extra money through gift cards/hiding money in a FedEx package.

This pretty much would be a bit off from crypto but people should be aware at least.

[Oceat]

Well we can't blame those new in this market since they were here for only one thing and that is to gain some money. They will always learn the hard way if no one teach them how to do their own research when dealing with investment especially in cryptocurrency. And the fact that they want crypto so bad they seem to fall to most typical scam because of their lack of knowledge.

More and more people are going to be a victim with these typical scam we've seen these days. So only if crypto is being taught at school it might be useful to some of us at least teach them to do their own research first before putting any money for investment.

[OasisDre]

Don't blame the victims because crypto is new to many and whatever offers they are giving it's easy to think the offer is legit, the mistakes that newbies always find themselves in is lack of doing their own research first which I believe can reduce the risk of falling into a deadly trap from scammers, every newbies want to make money first but none want to learn first

[DigitalFox]

Those scams are obvious to you because you have spent a lot of time in Bitcoin community and is aware that there are so many scammers here. People who just joined it have absolutely different perspective, they send money to doublers because they believe that some millionaire whale could easily give away money to fellow crypto enthusiast. They fall for trading-related scams, because they really think that someone would share secrets with them, because they don't know what is crypto community like.

Not really. Replace "BTC" with "stocks", "paypal" ot anything else and you'll realize you've seen it all before.

[TheNineClub]

From what I have seen when reporting scams on this forum and hunting for them, scammers have become lazier. Hard to say if that is a result of them being dumb but yeah, they might be targeting even more naive people because some of those scams actually do get some people. Funny and sad at the same time.

[Fortify]

Almost every day I read a topic of someone been scammed out of money. Well, this is a course of life and scams will exist as long as exists human race. What makes me laugh though is methods scammers use lately. Nothing inventive, not even an attempt to make it look legit. "Successful trader will make you 50% in an hour". "BTC refund department". "BTC doubler". And dozens of others so obvious one has to be a newborn baby to fall for. I wouldn't be surprised if  soon there will be messages from "BTC Support Department" or anything along these lines. How can anyone sane fall for this?

I received a call from my "bank support line" a while ago. Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

Scammers rely on two things to trick people: Greed and speed. They are looking for people who want to take short cuts to wealth and are either too naive or simply too ignorant to understand that they are being tricked. The suspension of logical thinking in return for belief in whatever lies the scammer will tell them is crucial. Many people will have intelligence "blind spots" to overcome or require painful learning experiences before they will be able to spot scams in future. Greed can be another big driver, because again - sometimes people can put aside any rational thought process if they have the idea of obscene riches dangled in front of them. It's worth distinguishing between dumb scams (e.g. bitcoin doublers) and more sophisticated fraudsters though, because high tech scams (e.g. targeted calls or text messages) can sometimes be very convincing and it is how you treat them that is important - by default always go directly to the URL you know or call back the company number listed on their website.

[Stalker22]

How can anyone sane fall for this?
<cut>

In recent years, as technology has made instant access to millions of consumers easier and cheaper than ever before, scam has evolved into a global criminal activity.
This is the only crime that has such a wide reach to people across all ages, races, and geographical locations. Technology has also made it much more difficult to identify and catch these criminals.

Why do so many people fall for fraud schemes so easily?
It is almost always the result of ignorance, lack of experience, and naivety. Cryptocurrencies are new to most people, and not everyone knows much about them.

The only way to protect yourself from such scams is to be sure to research who you're dealing with. Do not respond to an offer that sounds too good to be true and do not give out personal information.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Now these people were real con artists, they had all my data, used correct chat scripts etc. It all sounded so legit I almost missed the moment they asked me for SMS confirmation code, at which point I realized it's a scam. Not being sympathetic to these guys but at least they were highly professional and inventive scammers, unlike those I mentioned above.

These guys has probably access on your jan formation either captured from a malicious site or they have an insider on banks or any firms that you previously associated for example ICOs that you've joined and signed up before.

There are so many people that can do much more realistic approach just to scam and steal money. I remember a call also last 2 years ago and inquiring about crypto which I don't remember I did joined, so I said wrong number but they keep insisting that Ive changed my number for that.

[pooya87]

None of these methods are new. In fact these are some of the oldest methods to scam people on the internet dating way before bitcoin was created. They rely on people's greediness and how some people trust anything they read on the internet specially if it is promising them big returns.
You also missed on of the stupidest ways where they tell you that you've won something big but in order to receive your prize you first have to make a deposit to cover the cost of them sending you that prize!

[GreatArkansas]

For me, this is become normal, even if you research history. Even in the earliest days of the world, there are already lof of scammers and being scammed all over the time, most are the same method but different implementation.

This generation is just more prone to scams, because of the Internet of course, easy to contact every one and it could lead you to more close-on scammers. It's just sad that for those people who are in need and they are also the most victim of these scams.