Best scam you ever heard of?

nathan99 · 25-11-2012 11:18PM

coolhull wrote: »

Psychic Readings Live.. TV3 nightly

Yeh it is a scam, i went to prank call her just last weekend and while i was waiting on the line to be on tv they stole my money!

round tower huntsman · 25-11-2012 11:19PM

oh we've had a few here in ireland........................probably been said already but just in case

the usc charge
the proerty tax
and the oncoming water tax
are top class scams imo.

Reloc8 · 25-11-2012 11:34PM

mayotom wrote: »

A regular one down here is when a car is advertised for sale at an unusually low price, so that they get a lot of interest, I know a guy who got tricked a few weeks ago.

He called the number and arranged for the owners of the car to come and meet with him for a test drive. The buyer saw the car and agreed to the €900 price and cash was handed over, all of the documentation was signed at the local bar and keys handed over, then the new owner agreed to having a beer with the seller and they chatted and got on quiet well, then the Seller lets it be known that he has 4 almost new tyres at home that would suit the car and he would never use them because his new 4X4 has bigger wheels, He says he will go back home and get them the buyer agrees, but holds onto the paperwork and one key. The seller gets back into the car with the €900 and is never seen again. It turns out the car had false plates to match the false documentation that the buyer now has.

Police have been aware of the Scam for a while and suspect the group are based about 2 hours drive away, and have been doing this in cities all around the region

You'd want to be some thicko would you not ? I go to buy a car, and the cash leaves in the seller's pocket, who is driving the car ? :pac:

In Exile · 26-11-2012 03:29AM

joydivision wrote: »

True story .

Mate of mine fancied himself as a bit of a del boy .
A traveller he kind off knew pulls up in a car .
Hes driving around all day trying to find a fella that was gonna buy this bag of phones off him . He proceeds to show me mate the phones after a bit of chitchat . Mate asked how much they were . Yer man gave a real knockdown price . Me mate freaked he didnt see him before the other fella thats giving the traveller the run around . Traveller says he agreed to sell to the other fella but if he cant find him by tonight he will sell them to my mate .
Me mates runs around all my friends . Everyone threw a few quid in thinking they were getting cheap phones .
Traveller turns up later but this time with a couple of other intimidating looking travellers .
Traveller hands over the bag and my mate delightedly hands over the money after thinking they were going to mug him .
He comes back to one of friends
houses pulls out the bag opens it up and its full of rocks .
The best part was as he opened it he said to one of the lads look what Im after getting for xxx amount of money .
Other lad looks in the bag and says " what rocks ?"
Was about 15 years ago I still laugh at it .

Not all travellers are bad . I used traveller alot there but it was just so youd remember who who was .

Traveller I knew from working in a Bank told me this story before.

They got a job to lay tarmac in a new industrial estate in Spain. Only person around was the owner of the lot who hired them and the traveller convinced him they were using this new high tech tarmac that had really bad fumes so it would be best if your man left them at it and come back later that evening.

Anyway, guy arrives back that evening and there is a perfectly flat surface as far as he can see. Traveller tells him not to let anybody on to it for at least 12 hours until it sets properly and not to drive on it for at least 24.

Travellers arrive back the following day for payment and it is hard enough to walk on so the owner pays up and they take off.

Sun comes out that afternoon and the "tarmac" sinks. Turns out when the owner left, they covered the whole place in wood chippings and then covered it all in black gloss paint. Looked really good but once the sun came out, it heated up the paint and it sunk

MadsL · 26-11-2012 04:31AM

Best trick the Devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist.

This. Probably the most common scam running.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyhUvACnXkQ

Sunnyisland · 26-11-2012 06:36AM

http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=man%20rents%20apatments%20to%20more%20than%20one%20person%20scam%20in%20dublin&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rte.ie%2Fnews%2F2009%2F1009%2Foconnorj.html&ei=ew2zUPvbBpGwhAfLwYCQCg&usg=AFQjCNGWalEeHorS30SahRwhKZWFtEAq8A

A man who defrauded people out of more than €27,000 in an 'apartment scam' in Dublin has been jailed for two years.
48-year-old Joseph O'Connor of Decies Road, Ballyfermot, was given a three-year sentence, with one year suspended, after he pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to inducing people to pay him money for the lease of an apartment in April 2006.
Over the course of four days in April 2006, O'Connor showed prospective tenants around an apartment in Ballsbridge.
He wanted €1,150 per month in rent payable in advance, and a similar amount upfront as a deposit.
He gave keys to prospective tenants, a lease, and codes for the security gates.
However, the apartment was not Joseph O'Connor's - he was involved in a scam whereby false documents and a false identity had been used to obtain the lease on the apartment from a Dublin auctioneer.
O'Connor was arrested almost a year later and today was jailed for two years after admitting the fraud.
The court heard that O'Connor has no money and none of those who were duped have been reimbursed.

AngryHippie · 26-11-2012 07:09AM

Can we get a photo of this fcuker.
Same thing happened someone I know back in 04 or so.
Was fit to strangle the thievin fcuk

mikemac1 · 26-11-2012 07:50AM

THE Supreme Court yesterday overturned an ?84,000 award which had been made by the High Court to a woman who fell down a cliff while admiring the sun set. The court said a person must be prepared for "oddities" in cliff structure when sitting near the edge.

Geraldine Weir-Rodgers (36), Ranamona, Annagry, Co Donegal, had taken a legal action against SF Trust Ltd, a company which, a judge said, appeared to be formed by the Franciscan Order and was owner of the unused land. The High Court decision was appealed to the Supreme Court.

Ms Weir-Rodgers had claimed that after a social evening on April 11, 1997 a group decided to go for a walk towards the beach at Coolmore, Rossnowlagh, to watch the sunset.

There was an isolated section of fencing on a road to the beach , a piece of which had fallen down. She was sitting with friends close to the edge of a cliff. When she stood up she slipped, lost her footing and fell down the cliff which turned out to be much more sheer than she would have expected.

Because of loose materials she was unable to stop and ended up in the water. She was rescued by a friend. She suffered fractures to her left shoulder, left elbow, left hip and pelvis along with injuries to her ankle and foot and other injuries.

The High Court had assessed damages at ?113,000 but the trial judge found Ms Weir-Rodgers to be guilty of 25pc contributory negligence and made an award for ?84,666.

Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan, in yesterday's judgment, said a person sitting down near a cliff must be prepared for oddities in the cliff's structure or in the structure of the ground adjacent to the cliff and he or she assumed the inherent associated risks.

There could, of course, be something quite exceptionally unusual and dangerous in the state of a particular piece of ground which would impose a duty on the occupier, the effect of which would be that if he did not put up a warning notice he would be treated as having reckless disregard.

But this was certainly not such a case. While obviously sympathetic to Ms Weir-Rodgers in her serious injuries he was satisfied there was no liability on the part of the appellant. He set aside the judgment of the High Court and dismissed the action.

The Chief Justice, Mr Justice John Murray, and Ms Justice Susan Denham agreed. On the application of Harry Whelehan SC, the company was granted costs in the case.

tl:dr, walker falls off a cliff and sues the land owner
It's not a scam but it was a ridiculous award of compensation to begin with :rolleyes:

Trespass is a criminal offence these days and it took a lot of lobbying to get that changed.

Before that you could find travellers on your land, gardaí can't do much and so you pay lawyers to get a high court injunction.
Several thousand to lawyers or a few thousand cash, gotta be cash boss to the boyos to move them on, which do you choose?

The UK have the laws we used to have, 10 years to get Dale Farm cleared.

Crooked Jack · 26-11-2012 09:01AM

When the smoking ban first came in two lads went around near every pub in Dundalk over the course of the weekend handing out on-the-spot €50 fines. Told people they could pay now or face court later and apparently most people handed it over.

When the Euro first came in a load of businesses were caught out by people using "Euro" notes that were just photocopies of notes. the scammers seemed to be counting on people not knowing what the notes looked or felt like.

I remember a story on the radio a while ago where a spate of these scams happened. Someone goes into a shop, orders a €50 top up. When it's printed out the say "****, left my wallet in the car." Then they drive off. While the shopkeeper was printing it out they took a picture of the receipt with their phone capturing the top up code.

And the best of all...

...When my granda was a young fella there used to be a well off farmer would pay for buckets of picked berries by weight. Apparently granda and his friends used to come up with all sorts of ingenious ways of attaching weights to the bucket without yer man noticing. Cute hoors.

Creamy Goodness · 26-11-2012 09:04AM

scammer gets scammed.

http://www.zug.com/pranks/powerbook/

blue note · 26-11-2012 09:13AM

.

dj jarvis · 26-11-2012 10:22AM

i heard of one done in the late 80's early 90's by some motorcycle couriers in london

it starts with setting up a premium rate phone number ( cost around 100 at the time ) you can set the charges for this line , call it what you like and have the recording of what you like

so these couriers would get sent all over London and the south east of the UK ,
normally dealing with large company's and government dept , they would arrive on site asking for a imaginary contact , security or front desk obviously would not find them , so the courier would ask can he use a phone to contact his office - 9 times out of ten he would be directed to a phone that HE could dial and use ( lazy stupid people )

so the preimium rate line would be called - he would sit for 5 minutes "waiting" for the contact name , all the time clocking up bill
then would say he has the wrong address and leave - BANG - 30 pound in charges in a few minutes,

also heard that in gov dept, they would arrive at lunch time , no one around, and they would grab a load of phones and ring the number , then leave them off the hook , some would not be found for hours if at all .

best part of this scam , is that the line they set up got paid every 2 weeks , but the poor sods who own the lines the calls were made from would not see a bill for 2 moths - so they would be LONG gone by the time any questions were asked

HOW SWEET IS THAT !!!

Winty · 26-11-2012 11:56AM

dj jarvis wrote: »

i heard of one done in the late 80's early 90's by some motorcycle couriers in london

it starts with setting up a premium rate phone number ( cost around 100 at the time ) you can set the charges for this line , call it what you like and have the recording of what you like

so these couriers would get sent all over London and the south east of the UK ,
normally dealing with large company's and government dept , they would arrive on site asking for a imaginary contact , security or front desk obviously would not find them , so the courier would ask can he use a phone to contact his office - 9 times out of ten he would be directed to a phone that HE could dial and use ( lazy stupid people )

so the preimium rate line would be called - he would sit for 5 minutes "waiting" for the contact name , all the time clocking up bill
then would say he has the wrong address and leave - BANG - 30 pound in charges in a few minutes

HOW SWEET IS THAT !!!

Under the same style you make up a few thousand cards and print "sorry we missed you, we have a delivery waiting for your collection. If your unable to collect please call 0845 000000 and we will redeliver free of charge"

Post this into every letter box you can find and people call the number and listen to music while they wait to be connected to a non existing courier company for a non existing package paying a premium phone charge

Green Mile · 26-11-2012 12:09PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

i heard of one done in the late 80's early 90's by some motorcycle couriers in london

it starts with setting up a premium rate phone number ( cost around 100 at the time ) you can set the charges for this line , call it what you like and have the recording of what you like

so these couriers would get sent all over London and the south east of the UK ,

normally dealing with large company's and government dept , they would arrive on site asking for a imaginary contact , security or front desk obviously would not find them , so the courier would ask can he use a phone to contact his office - 9 times out of ten he would be directed to a phone that HE could dial and use ( lazy stupid people )

so the preimium rate line would be called - he would sit for 5 minutes "waiting" for the contact name , all the time clocking up bill

then would say he has the wrong address and leave - BANG - 30 pound in charges in a few minutes,

also heard that in gov dept, they would arrive at lunch time , no one around, and they would grab a load of phones and ring the number , then leave them off the hook , some would not be found for hours if at all .

best part of this scam , is that the line they set up got paid every 2 weeks , but the poor sods who own the lines the calls were made from would not see a bill for 2 moths - so they would be LONG gone by the time any questions were asked

HOW SWEET IS THAT !!!

But would you have to register the premium number with comreg.ie ? If so, if anyone complained, comreg would have all your details to report to the gardai.
It's a good idea but I doubt it would work (in Ireland)

dodzy · 26-11-2012 01:28PM

In Exile wrote: »

Traveller I knew from working in a Bank told me this story before.

They got a job to lay tarmac in a new industrial estate in Spain. Only person around was the owner of the lot who hired them and the traveller convinced him they were using this new high tech tarmac that had really bad fumes so it would be best if your man left them at it and come back later that evening.

Anyway, guy arrives back that evening and there is a perfectly flat surface as far as he can see. Traveller tells him not to let anybody on to it for at least 12 hours until it sets properly and not to drive on it for at least 24.

Travellers arrive back the following day for payment and it is hard enough to walk on so the owner pays up and they take off.

Sun comes out that afternoon and the "tarmac" sinks. Turns out when the owner left, they covered the whole place in wood chippings and then covered it all in black gloss paint. Looked really good but once the sun came out, it heated up the paint and it sunk

Traveller & Tarmac in the same sentence. 'Nuf said.

Anyone · 26-11-2012 01:28PM

Valentines Day. Basically a made up day to sell more cards. And it worked!

Capt'n Midnight · 26-11-2012 01:30PM

Green Mile wrote: »

But would you have to register the premium number with comreg.ie ? If so, if anyone complained, comreg would have all your details to report to the gardai.
It's a good idea but I doubt it would work (in Ireland)

comreg - you have got to be joking

yer man from irish physics did that, the company got a fine of just €1,500 for over a hundred thousand such calls :mad:

Capt'n Midnight · 26-11-2012 01:33PM

My hero is the programmer who walked into his boss's office and told then he'd just defrauded them and if they agreed to drop all charges and let him keep all the money he'd fix it so no one could repeat what he did.

Or if they pressed charges he'd let the world know how he did it and the company would be bankrupt in a week.

He got the keep the money and didn't have to worry about being caught.

dj jarvis · 26-11-2012 01:37PM

Green Mile wrote: »

But would you have to register the premium number with comreg.ie ? If so, if anyone complained, comreg would have all your details to report to the gardai.
It's a good idea but I doubt it would work (in Ireland)

nowadays - yes most likely , but this was late 80's , so the numbers had little or no regulation at the time - do you remember the British tabloids would have pages and pages of these numbers , they exploded in popularity

this scam i like , becasue its non violent , does not target vulnerable people , and in fairness it would not lead to gaining a huge amount
and i would say tough on the company's and depts involved ,
if they did not have proper polices in place for phone use and security then they are ALWAYS going to get chancers trying it on

as i said before - SWEET

dj jarvis · 26-11-2012 01:45PM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

My hero is the programmer who walked into his boss's office and told then he'd just defrauded them and if they agreed to drop all charges and let him keep all the money he'd fix it so no one could repeat what he did.

Or if they pressed charges he'd let the world know how he did it and the company would be bankrupt in a week.

He got the keep the money and didn't have to worry about being caught.

very similar to another scam that was doing the rounds ( and still is ),
a hacker will target a SME , get into the file server and encrypt all the files
now the company is in a bind , they can not used their database , so all accounts , customer contacts and projects are encrypted with a key they dont have ,

so they get a phone call from the hacker , they demand 1000 euro for the release of their files , if you don't agree they just leave them locked , totally useless , next to impossible to break the encryption.

the 1000 euro is paid via a 3rd party ( western union or such like ) and the files are freed up - i have never heard of them NOT freeing them up after payment
simple as you like - no damage - no violence , and small money
and it will teach SME company's not to scrimp on IT security in the future

keithclancy · 26-11-2012 01:54PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

very similar to another scam that was doing the rounds ( and still is ),
a hacker will target a SME , get into the file server and encrypt all the files
now the company is in a bind , they can not used their database , so all accounts , customer contacts and projects are encrypted with a key they dont have ,

so they get a phone call from the hacker , they demand 1000 euro for the release of their files , if you don't agree they just leave them locked , totally useless , next to impossible to break the encryption.

the 1000 euro is paid via a 3rd party ( western union or such like ) and the files are freed up - i have never heard of them NOT freeing them up after payment
simple as you like - no damage - no violence , and small money
and it will teach SME company's not to scrimp on IT security in the future

A mate of mine has fake boxes to act as honeypots.

His hobby is intentionally making what looks like a full company infrastructure with fake data and then watching some guy poking around in it and generally wasting their time.

E.G. having a 400meg file called "Customer CC Export.xls" and then rate limiting the VM to say 2-3kb/sec randomly cutting it off every so often.

Usually he ends the thing with putting a shock pic (like goatse,2 girls 1 cup) embedded into what look like Business word documents.

He then blows away the whole thing and starts from scratch again

joydivision · 26-11-2012 02:07PM

keithclancy wrote: »

A mate of mine has fake boxes to act as honeypots.

His hobby is intentionally making what looks like a full company infrastructure with fake data and then watching some guy poking around in it and generally wasting their time.

E.G. having a 400meg file called "Customer CC Export.xls" and then rate limiting the VM to say 2-3kb/sec randomly cutting it off every so often.

Usually he ends the thing with putting a shock pic (like goatse,2 girls 1 cup) embedded into what look like Business word documents.

He then blows away the whole thing and starts from scratch again

I bet he gets all the chicks .

Capt'n Midnight · 26-11-2012 02:21PM

Crooked Jack wrote: »

...When my granda was a young fella there used to be a well off farmer would pay for buckets of picked berries by weight. Apparently granda and his friends used to come up with all sorts of ingenious ways of attaching weights to the bucket without yer man noticing. Cute hoors.

When picking peas it's traditional to pee on them to increase the weight

TheRealSquishy · 26-11-2012 02:25PM

Local golf club was overrun with rabbits so they offered a local oul lad cash in hand if he came out every week for a few months and caught them and based it on commission to give him the incentive to catch more and agreed that he would drive back the country and set them free because they couldn't be seen to be killing loads and loads of rabbits.

Every week he would go out and catch a heap of them and the manager would come out and count them and give him whatever money was agreed and watch him drive off with the rabbits. Then the other 6 days of the week he paid one of his friends to go out with a few rabbits at a time as to not raise suspicion and let them go just outside the golf club again.

Supposedly guaranteed him a job for years and after a while the rabbits got used to him and would just come straight up to him for capture when they saw him 'cause he treated them well at home so he had an easy enough, relatively well paying, secure job. Still can't believe the gold club never copped on though!

:D

Corholio · 26-11-2012 02:38PM

ColeTrain wrote: »

That's a true story. The guys name was Peter Gibbons. He was never found guilty as his office caught fire and destroyed all the evidence.

Yeahhhhh.....if you wouldn't mind we're just gonna take your post and put it in the mightn't have happened category, that would be terrific.

hay_maker · 26-11-2012 02:48PM

travellers who go round the country painting buildings for farmers use a mixture of paint and diesel with a ratio of 1:10 paint to diesel

username123 · 26-11-2012 03:17PM

When I was in college we discovered that irish pound coins had been minted using the old mint for pre decimal irish pennies, which could be bought for 10 pence each in local markets.

Some vending machines couldnt tell the difference between the two. We cleared out cigarette machines in local pubs and then discovered that the college condom vending machine would dispense not only condoms but due to some glitch, would also spit out a pound coin, and if you continued, when you had exhausted all the pound coins, the entire stack of old pennies would come out like a slot machine win.

I still wonder what happened all those condoms.

Crooked Jack · 26-11-2012 03:24PM

username123 wrote: »

When I was in college we discovered that irish pound coins had been minted using the old mint for pre decimal irish pennies, which could be bought for 10 pence each in local markets.

Some vending machines couldnt tell the difference between the two. We cleared out cigarette machines in local pubs and then discovered that the college condom vending machine would dispense not only condoms but due to some glitch, would also spit out a pound coin, and if you continued, when you had exhausted all the pound coins, the entire stack of old pennies would come out like a slot machine win.

I still wonder what happened all those condoms.

Who knows? Apparently a condom can hold around half a dozen good sized spuds before it will break. The possibilities are endless.

gobnaitolunacy · 26-11-2012 03:28PM

When the Euros first came out, someone found that the Thai 10 Baht coin was roughly the same size as a €2.

Worked in vending machines until the game was up and the machines recalibrated to reject them.

damagegt · 26-11-2012 03:33PM

dj jarvis wrote: »

i heard of one done in the late 80's early 90's by some motorcycle couriers in london

it starts with setting up a premium rate phone number ( cost around 100 at the time ) you can set the charges for this line , call it what you like and have the recording of what you like

so these couriers would get sent all over London and the south east of the UK ,
normally dealing with large company's and government dept , they would arrive on site asking for a imaginary contact , security or front desk obviously would not find them , so the courier would ask can he use a phone to contact his office - 9 times out of ten he would be directed to a phone that HE could dial and use ( lazy stupid people )

so the preimium rate line would be called - he would sit for 5 minutes "waiting" for the contact name , all the time clocking up bill
then would say he has the wrong address and leave - BANG - 30 pound in charges in a few minutes,

also heard that in gov dept, they would arrive at lunch time , no one around, and they would grab a load of phones and ring the number , then leave them off the hook , some would not be found for hours if at all .

best part of this scam , is that the line they set up got paid every 2 weeks , but the poor sods who own the lines the calls were made from would not see a bill for 2 moths - so they would be LONG gone by the time any questions were asked

HOW SWEET IS THAT !!!

I know of people that used a modern version of this using Bluetooth.

Its all very simple.A premium rate line is set up.The scammer goes to a public area with lots of people about.Bus station/bus,train station/train or a public park in the summer.The scammer uses a bluetooth scanner app and requests connection to peoples phones.You wouldn't believe the amount of people that leave their bluetooth turned on.

Using a Bluetooth name of the area your in such as "Bus Eireann" and if that doesn't work names like "69*Cutie19*69" would rope in some lads.

They grant access to the phone.From here they have full control of the phone.A few minutes were nothing is done then the scammer disables all tones,vibrations and incoming calls are barred.The scammer then uses the accessed phone to ring the premium line and Bobs your uncle.

Best scam you ever heard of?

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