Scams and Idiots

Scams and Idiots was Originally Posted on October 13, 2012 by lavarock

I got a text message on my phone that said my entry last month had won a $1000 Best Buy Gift Card.

I happen to know that I did not enter to win anything. However, I did my due dilligence and entered the URL (which was not Best Buys) into Google and came up with a site discussing scams and this one was listed.

What I did see was more than one person comp,laining “How did these peiople find my phone number?”. I mean how clueless are these people? There is no name associated with the ad and they sent to anyone with a cell phone. Since cell numbers are in blocks, they start with xxx-0000 and send a message, then add one to the number and send another message. They did NOT target this one person.

This reminds me of the scam where a person gets a phone call with a “stock expert” saying that he can forcast the movement of the stock market. It is possible to invest based upon which way the market goes each day. So he tells you that tomorrow the market will go up. You see the naext day that he was right. He then tells you it will go down and sure enough it does. This goes on 4 days with him getting each up and down movement correct. You send him money and never hear from him again.

As far as you are concerned, he was right every day and that was enough to convince you. Unfortunately, you didn’t see the whole picture. That first day he called 100 people. Half he told the market would go up and he tiold the other half it would go down. For the half that he got it wrong, he does not call them again and they soon forget the crazy guy. Of the 50 people that he told correctly, he will call half them again and tell them up and half he tells down.

Perhaps he stops when 12 people correctly saw him get the movement correct and they invest. It is a simple scam against those who don’t understand the big picture.

You kinda see this yourself when you get an email that says your Visa account is blocked for access. Since you don’t have a Visa account you ignore the message as spam, Yet those WITH a Visa account start worrying.