This person friended me from an online game I played asking if I wanted to be paid to be a penpal. I’m familiar with a lot of phishing scams and other sorts of scams but I’ve never seen a scam like this one. What exactly is this person trying to get from me, are they hoping to infect my device with something sinister or are they trying to phish information from me without me knowing it? They seem to put a lotta emphasis on me VIEWING this photo they’re gonna send me and it makes me think that whatever they’re gonna send me must be infected with some sort of trojan. Can someone explain to me what’s going on here?
They are trying to get you to deposit a counterfeit check. It most likely wouldn’t clear your bank, but if it did, you end up on the hook for the entire amount of the check with no money, and they get the amount that you sent “back” to them.
Scam. Incredibly obvious scam, so much so that frankly I’m surprised you think you might be paranoid.
It’s because the other piece was still missing: how they actually get money from OP, which comes after the original “payment” goes through.
It’s called remote deposit cheque fraud. It’s a fake cheque. If you cash it, it will eventually get flagged as a a fake, and the bank will take the money back, even if you’ve already spent it or sent it to the scammer. And if you never send money to the scammer, they get nothing, but it also costs them nothing to make the attempt, because you’re the one depositing the cheque and wearing the risk.
Ooohhhh okay
Yes it’s a scam, they probably want you to buy something right? They’re going to try and send you a fake check, in which they will ask you to digitally cash it in so it doesn’t go through a teller. The check doesn’t actually get checked by anyone due a couple days so you would have effectively stolen money. Then once they convince you to buy something for yourself and/or for themselves they basically fuck off then the bank would be like hey that check wasn’t real, instead of reporting you/done this is the first time we’ll just charge your account for the check.
If your still adamant on them being real, take the check to a teller at the bank. Make sure the check is physical. Make sure the sender it matches their name and the bank is actually real (by the routing numbers not the logo on it)
scam. every photo you take with wny device has metadata. dont send them anything. block them immediately. dont even say bye.
You would have to be an idiot to entertain this. Block, move on, and ignore in the future. It’s unlikely you’re even talking to a real person.
This is the first stages of a very textbook fake check scam. They will provide a (unbacked) check, you can cash it and see the funds appear in your account. Something will happen, maybe they’ll realize they overpaid you by a few hundred dollars and ask you to refund that amount. The original check funds will be pulled after a few days when the financial institutions realize they were fraudulent and you’ll be out whatever amount of real funds you sent.
Now that you know this is a scam, even accepting the fake check is a felony.
I wasn’t planning on accepting a check from some rando online. That much common sense I do have. I will admit I am a bit of an idiot for entertaining them because I deadass CANNOT help myself.
I lowkey-highkey just wanna fuck with em in some way or waste his time. I used to troll fake VRchat model artists with zip bombs, but I’ve never really encountered a check scam before, so I was curious about it, hence why I asked.
I already know it’s a scam, but I was curious on the specifics of the scam. I like learnin about shit and was curious
Get them to send you the check.
Say you deposited it.
See what happens.Offer steam gift cards as the payment for the inevitable “I sent too much” part of the scam. Steam is no longer selling physical gift cards.
So you can waste some time pretending to go to a shop, unable to find them, trying other shops etc.Kitboga is a master at wasting scammers time if you want some YT vids to watch.
It’s a bot. You’re not trolling anyone but yourself
Props to you for being curious and inquisitive and having the knowledge it’s a scam. Don’t let others bring you off your digging (without endangering yourself).
There are fewer red flags in Beijing on May Day.
Yes, it’s a scam. Doesn’t really matter what’s going on other than it’s a scam.
Do they even play the game?
Yea I think even if you’re unfamiliar with this particular scam, the pushiness for this particular method of payment is a big red flag.
Not even sure, they were a low level player and dont seem to play all that much anyways. The fact they wanted to add me on discord to chat there was sus enough for me. But I just wanted to lead em on cus i was curious where it would go
The check will bounce/charge back at some point IIRC
So at this point you know what it is, you know how to avoid being scammed, and you are aware that the most optimal way to deal with these people is to just block them and move on.
With all these things known, you can waste their time by pretending to have trouble depositing the check, saying the deposit went through while doing nothing, saying it worked and then playing hard to get with their “overpayment return” (usually they play on good Samaritan/pay it forward kind of guilt, so just pretend to be an asshole), and fucking with them every step of the way.
Atomic Shrimp on YouTube has done a bunch of these, if you’d rather live vicariously rather than expose yourself.
You are right to be skeptical. They’ll probably send an image link to an infected site, or send an image file extension but its actually something else
Without a doubt, this is a scam. The check is fake and they will want you to send them money before it gets found out by the bank.
