Have You Ever Been the Victim of a Scam?

[tsevanson]

I invested in a hydro-energy company once. Turns out it was a scam on the largest scale. They would actually fly potential investors over a hydro-project which was under construction, but NOT owned by them. They had keynote speakers booked at respectable clean energy conferences. They even had agreements in place to order all of the turbines from Germany. The scam was drawn out over about 2 years. I know someone invested over $1,000,000, thankfully I only lost $15k.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I invested in a hydro-energy company once. Turns out it was a scam on the largest scale. They would actually fly potential investors over a hydro-project which was under construction, but NOT owned by them. They had keynote speakers booked at respectable clean energy conferences. They even had agreements in place to order all of the turbines from Germany. The scam was drawn out over about 2 years. I know someone invested over $1,000,000, thankfully I only lost $15k.

And that's why I've never been an investor. My money isn't earning me the best interest (dam those low interest rates!), but it is safe.
Loosing 15k would annoy me beyond belief.

 

[0388631]

I seem to recall that. ABC implemented a similar idea in the show Castle for an episode. Except their supposed plant was in Mexico.

 

[Tech198]

Not counting spam mail (unless you believed it to be true, if so ... no judgement), have you ever been the victim or near-victim of a scam?

I'll include email a 'scam' because if your fooled... A fool is a fool at the end of the day

The way my brain is trained... its never happened to me.. And if it ever did, it would be a first, and i'd blame myself because of it..

Hash on myself ? You bet...... but that's the way it is.

Only once i was ever a near-victum..buying a Windows key off eBay, which only worked for a month ,till MS blocked it.. It only happened once to learn a lesson.

Never been scammed since.

Never. I'm cautious by nature. I'll trade in my old iPhone at a walk in shop or sell to someone I work with rather than eBay even though I could get a bit more for it.

I like to think so to, but as i get older, i think that will take over gradually.

 

[ActionableMango]

I sort of fell for this one, but I didn't lose anything other than time.

There was a wholesale pricing membership scheme. Basically the 90-minute hard-sale-pitch is that you pay some huge membership free up front, then you gain access to wholesale pricing on everything from electronics to appliances, saving you money in the long run.

I actually assumed this was a scam, but I went to the 90-min pitch anyway because they promised if you stayed through the whole thing and still decided you didn't want the membership, you'd get two free round trip plane tickets to Hawaii.

Well that too was a scam. Use of the free plane tickets required that you use a travel agency to book hotels, car rentals, etc., and the travel agency simply overcharged on those to make up for the free plane tickets. So I lost 90 minutes of my time for useless tickets.