We’ve all been duped before at least once. Remember when someone told you that if your hand was bigger than your face, you’d get cancer? Congratulations, you got scammed.
Reddit is where I go for answers to the tough questions like: “What scam can you still not believe you fell for?”
These people weren’t afraid to tell the truth so that strangers don’t make the same mistakes they did.
Here are the scams people can’t believe they actually fell for:
1. Grandma’s Scam.
“When I was little my Grandma would take me the dentist for my regular cleanings. After the fluoride she would tell me now you’re not allowed to have candy for a month because of the fluoride. She would get the dentist to agree with her.
I believed this for a couple years until I mentioned how it’s not fun having to wait a month to eat candy because of the dentist to my friends at school. I knew something wasn’t right when I realized noone knew what I was talking about.
I went home and told her I knew the no candy after the dentist wasn’t true. Her response was “well I’m suprised I got away with that for as long as I did.” –AnchorofHope
2. They’re always on the hunt for new blood.
“I got pulled into an Amway meeting. When I was in college I was working as a waiter at a Pizza Hut, and a customer came in and struck up a conversation. Eventually he pitched me on a possible new job. He described it as “kind of like an internship.”
The first red flag should have been he wouldn’t give me any specifics other than something about “running a business.” Next he gave me a date/address of where to meet and he told me to dress in a suit. That also seemed weird since we were meeting at 7pm. Who interviews at 7pm?
Anyway I get there, and about a hundred other people are there. I was getting a weird vibe and I should have run at that point, but I was desperate for something other than waiting tables. After an hour of parading different motivational speakers they finally announced they sold Amway to achieve their goals. I then went home older, wise, and destined to serve pizza for many more months.” –Link-to-the-Pastiche
3. He was a prince though!
“I’ll never forget when I was a teenager in the 90s. I received an email about having a family member over seas. I asked my mom if I did lol, cause the email said I was entitled to an inheritance.” –zidanetribal
4. College: The Ultimate Scam?
“I got duped into paying close to 100 thousand dollars to some people who told me that if I took a bunch of chemistry classes, along with some random philosophy and literature classes thrown in there, I would almost be guaranteed a high-paying job. All I had to do was pay the money and pass the classes. They said I could take out a loan for the 100k and would easily pay that off with my fat paychecks.
Turns out almost no such jobs exist. Fortunately, I was able to get some good scholarships and owe a fraction of that. In any even I was scammed out of four years of my life and still owe a few thousand dollars to a lender. The scammers laughed all the way to their Cancun vacations and luxurious homes with my scholarship and loan money. I’ll never see that money again.” –
5. They wouldn’t show it on TV if it weren’t real.
“Back in the late 80s/early 90s there was an “Alien Autopsy” show on Fox, hosted by Jonathan Frakes (Star Trek’s Commander Riker.)
I was a true believer. I thought for a long time it was a real documentary.” –Hysterical_Realist
6. Looks like a cool product.
“Fake reviews. They are everywhere now. I don’t even trust Reddit or YouTube comments sometimes because I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s company plants commenting about how great their product is.” –ndcdshed
7. Scammed in the parking lot.
“Me and my dad go into Walmart to buy some groceries. We come out and load them into the truck, and the truck won’t start? Never had problems with the truck before this. My dad is getting frustrated as we have chilled food with us and it’s summer. Suddenly, a homeless man on a bike rolls up and asks what the problem was. My dad explains that he has no idea his truck just won’t start. Guy asked to take a look.
Guy gets under the truck and in 10 seconds comes back out. He told my dad he found the problem, a small part was missing on his truck (me and my dad are dipshits when it comes to cars so I can’t remember what part he said. Also I was 10). The man said he just so happened to have the same part in his bag of nicknacks. Said if he gave him $50 he’d put it on for him. My dad, excited, agreed. The man went under the truck, another 10 seconds pops back up, says give it a try. Truck starts no problem. My dad thanks the man so much and then gives him another $40 for his trouble. It was only on t he ride home that I brought it up to my dad “you’re telling me none of that seemed off to? Random homeless man rides up just in time with just the right part we need?”
It finally hits my dad and he turns around to find the guy but he was long gone.” –Hereistothehometeam
8. Becoming complicit in an actual crime.
“I put a room up for rent once. Someone applied and said they would be moving in at the first of the month. They said they were military and switching bases. This person said they were going to go ahead and ship their car out and fly in. The car arrived and was offloaded by truck. A few days later the car was gone.
The person never arrived. A month or so later the police knocked and asked about the car. Ended up being that the car was stolen by whoever this person was that shipped it and the person who picked it up was a buyer who thought it was legit. Apparently he had a set of keys mailed to him and a fake title. Idk if it ever got sorted but they initially assumed that I was a part of it.” –BLACKMACH1NE
9. Deja vu.
“Guy at the gas station said he and his cancer ridden wife broke down a mile up the highway, needed $10 to get them gas for a 30 mile trip to the city. I just got paid was feeling rich so I gave it to him. Went to the same gas station two days later and the guy was there again with the same problem.” –kdiddy733
10. Oldest trick in the book.
“Happened to me in Costa Rica. A French guy comes over panicked and says “Do you speak English? French?”
Me: Yeah, what happened?
Frenchie: I was robbed and lost all my clothes, wallet, passport, everything. I need to get the embassy but have no money, can you help me buy a ticket?
I was backpacking and spending less than $20 a day, but felt the need to help, so I give him $10. We part ways.About 2 weeks later I come back from a trek, and there he is again with the same act. I was gonna deck him, and I say “Oh no, seriously?” Letting him interpret it as sympathy, then I say “It happened to you again?” and he does the fastest fade away I’ve ever seen in my life, literally turns the corner and disappears.” –BobbyDropTableUsers
11. The old panhandling scam.
“I gave half my nights tip money to a woman who said her car broke down and she had to go pick her kids up from daycare. I believed her because she was standing in front of a car getting towed. I told someone about it later and they described her to a T and said “yea that’s Kimbo, you just bought her a weeks worth of crack”. I’ve met like six people since then that she’s done the same thing to.” –justsomethoughts8
12. This is a good way to make money.
“At the start of college one year when everyone was moving into houses in the usual shitty but affordable part of a college town, a guy walked up to us and said he can get us free HBO, he’d just take $20, he knew a guy.
We’re like cool, he takes out his cell phone, walks a few steps away out of earshot, says check our TV, we go, and lo and behold, HBO! We give him $20 and he walks away.
A week later, it was gone. The dude just called HBO for some free trial week. He must have hit up every college kid moving in that day and made bank.” –StoolToad9
13. Could have happened to any of us.
“I had a visa gift card for $100 I got for my birthday, and wanted to check the balance after a few purchases online.
I look up “check visa gift card balance” and clicked on the first thing I saw.” –throwaway74274380
14. Why didn’t I think of that myself?
“I once came down with a bout of the hemorrhoids. Well, I assumed it was based on what I knew about hemorrhoid. Too embarrassed to ask friends and family for advice, I did what most people do in these circumstances, I sought medical advice from the Internet.
This was back in the 90’s so I logged onto AOL and searched for a cure. I found a website that offered a permanent cure of hemorrhoids. The curator of this site learned this cure when he was a POW in Vietnam, and for $10 I could be hemorrhoids free forever.
Ten dollars poorer and I get the email (with the cure). The cure was to stick my finger up my ass and twirl it around for ten minutes a day, every day. It was then I realized I just paid someone to tell me to stick my finger up my ass.” –_Sol-Diablo_
15. We’re a family though.
“My former best friend and his dad cheated me out of my money to invest in their company. When I asked for a contract, his dad said, “Between true friends, words aren’t necessary.”
When they started making money, I asked for my money back, and they said they didn’t owe me a thing.” –texan-wanderer
16. This isn’t what Axe is?
“I bought pheromone cologne in high school for like 100 dollars because it was said to cause a chemical reaction that makes women attracted to you. It smelt awful and I never spoke to a chick while wearing it. I later found out the pheromones were taken from some type of animal urine. I was spraying piss on me and was confused why chicks weren’t into me.” –Ab10ff
17. Flim Flam.
“I was working at a supermarket and this guy came in, purchased a soda for like a dollar and some change and then gave me a $100. I was like 17. Obviously this guy is gonna get ~$97 back with the $100 he gave me. So when I’m dolling out his change, he starts requesting all these denominations, confusing the hell out of me. He also had a guy with him talking to people behind him to distract them.
I have no idea how much money I ended up giving him when the transaction was completed, but it turned out he swindled me out of about $200. This is what is known as a flim flam scam. I never felt so stupid in my life. A few months later, my sister was working with me, and as I was coming in to start work, I saw the men that screwed me leaving, and they got her too. She was devastated and felt the same way I did.” –anonymous_trash
18. We know where you are.
“Someone in my super small town got their grill stolen off their front porch one day. Obviously they were like, what in the hell? And they’re bummed.
A couple of days later, the grill shows back up on their front porch with an attached note that reads something along the lines of,
“Our son has a problem with stealing things which do not belong to him. We found this on our property and got it out of him who he took it from and made sure he brought it back to you. Please don’t call the police to report this and enjoy 4 tickets to the Cleveland Indians game on us. So sorry for the inconvenience.”
Needless to say, the people who lived there were relieved to have their grill back and went to the game that Saturday to enjoy the tickets some nice parents (presumably) had left for them to make up for their shitty son’s actions.
Except.
Our town was about 2 hours from Cleveland. Between the drive there and back and the baseball game, I’d say the family was gone for about 10+ hours that day. Guaranteed.
When they returned home, they’re house had been BURGLED. Everything. Electronics, cash, jewelry, ANYTHING you could think of as potentially valuable was gone.
Someone concocted a hell of an elaborate ruse they knew would get those people out of their house for a good half a day in order to rob the ever-loving shit out of them. All for the cost of a couple of Indians tickets.
It’s a funny story to tell, but no doubt was incredibly scary and invasive at the time to that poor family.” –kelseamoore
19. The old Catfish.
“Ohhh boy, I still cringe about that. Back in the late 90s, early 00s when chatrooms were popular, I met this guy there and we ended up chatting pretty much daily. He had an unusual name for the region, that should have been the first clue. We chatted and sent letters to each other (by actual post)..tried to meet up with him so many times, but he always had something come up.
One night on new year’s eve when we were supposed to meet finally, HIS COUSIN shows up and said yea he’ll come soon, he told me to wait here with you. Pretended to call him several times to ask where he was, an hour or so later I just went back home and never talked to the guy again. Turned out the “cousin” was the guy I was chatting with and he had made a deal with another guy to see how long I would believe all this. I can’t believe I fell for it. Keep in mind I was 16 something back then.” –Finewhatever1
20. Good prank.
“Not exactly elaborate but this girl in my fifth grade class brought soy sauce in a coke bottle once. Then she proceeded to “share” it with me and I being the dumbass that I was straight up open the bottle and chugged it down before even smelling it. That was a bad day.” –elysianyuri
21. Got him.
“In the late 50s or early 60s, some guy came into my grandpas shop selling color TVs out of the back of a truck. The family had never had a color tv, and the price was way less than what a store charged, so he bought one. He excitedly brought it home, plugged it in and turned it on. Black and White. He played with the knobs and antenna, nothing. No color. The guy took a bunch of old black and white TVs, slapped a rainbow sticker on them, and sold them as color. Brilliant.” –Jealous-Network-8852
22. As advertised.
“I was at this bizarre fair type of thing, and I fell for going into the tent which housed the “180 pound man eating chicken.” I knew it was going to be cheesy and a likely waste of $2, but I had to go see it anyway.
It was a regular man who picked up a plate of fried chicken and started eating it when paying customers came in. I wasn’t even mad.” –lobsterandi
23. Would have done the same.
“Someone calling my hotel room, saying it was the front desk, and that they had some sort of error with their payment system. The person (a male) said they just needed to re-run my card along with verify my name and address. Half-asleep, I begrudgingly gave them what they wanted, hung up the phone, and said “Fuck…what the hell am I doing? I booked through Priceline.”
Called the front desk and a female answered. Sure enough no men were working the front desk and nobody in the hotel staff had called requesting anything of the sort. Next call was to report that card stolen.
Should have followed my first instinct and just told them I’d come down to the front desk and resolve it there.” –Buncha_Cunts
24. I want to believe.
“My older sisters told me eggs grew on trees. I vehemently disagreed. They made me plant an egg yolk. I came back later to check, and a stem had grown. Later, leaves showed up. I started to believe. I came back again and they had put plastic Easter eggs filled with candy on the tree.” –squirrellywolf
25. Welcome.
“In fourth grade, someone convinced me to give them the brownie from my lunch in order to join the Pen 15 club.” –Neko_asakami
h/t Reddit: r/AskReddit