California Personal Injury Lawyers Blog
Receive an intriguing unsolicited message from an unknown sender via an app, such as Whats App, respond to it and be drawn into an interesting conversation. Before you know it, the supposed woman on the other end wants to celebrate because she invested some money in gold (or some other precious metal, commodity or cryptocurrency) and made a huge profit in a short time, with little to no risk.
The person on the other end may even send an official looking graph or statement that appears to show this huge profit. That’s right – she bought gold bullion via a trading company then sold it just 15 to 20 minutes later and made a huge profit, perhaps even over a million dollars. Sound tempting? Too good to be true? Yes of course!
Then, a few days later this incredible investment opportunity occurs again. By the third time she has lured you in so that you either request to be included or she convinces you to do it. She suggests you transfer money to start to open the new required “trading account” then her teacher/mentor/relative, who supposedly works with or used to work with a famous brokerage or company and has many special contacts or insider information, will advise when to buy and sell. They claim they will do this for you because you are now a “good” friend of the scammer.
The scam involves many written messages over several days. It also involves some attractive photos, supposedly personal photos of the person on the other end of the conversation. But these photos are NOT true photos. They obviously are not of the person on the other end.
It’s not like the phony IRS or Microsoft calls that try to trick you in one conversation to give them remote access to your computer to fix a purported bug. Its done over days, maybe weeks, depending on the particular scammers. Why? So you can become “good” trusted friends.
If you try to voice or video call the involved scammer, you will receive many creative excuses why they cannot talk and only send written messages. One reason this woman cannot speak to you via the phone is because while she is supposedly an attractive woman, the scammer is most likely a man with a foreign accent and probably using a text translation program on the app.
In one instance, the supposed victim figured out the scam right away and continued with it in his free time, both to keep the scammers busy so they could not steal money from others and also because it was entertaining. The scammer became so upset with the “victim” when the “victim” refused to transfer the funds and made it known that the “victim” knew the scam, that the angry scammer actually called the “victim” to ask why the “victim” wasted the scammer’s time! The supposedly attractive woman turned out to be an angry man with a heavy foreign accent.
If you think someone is trying to trick or scam you, give us a call or click here to contact us and let us know what is going on. We shall be happy to advise you. Although our personal injury law firm has over 45 years experience handling catastrophic injuries and wrongful death cases, we are happy to advise you to try to prevent scammers defrauding you out of money.
If you think you already are the victim of a scam, immediately contact the FBI, your local police and or your District Attorneys office for the county you reside in.
Be careful — It is still the buyer’s responsibility to check the goods before buying!
Use due diligence before concluding any transaction – sometimes easier said than done when dealing with sophisticated crooks and scammers.
Any doubt, contact an attorney you trust.
Remember – CAVEAT EMPTOR – BUYER BEWARE! BUYER BE VIGILANT!