Wanna see something cool? Give me twenty dollars.

*you give me twenty dollars*

See, wasn’t that cool?

Well, in the world of scams, a lot of other cool things happen.

The most standard cool things are scams known as the ‘Advance-fee scam’.

Guard your wallets, and your bank pin, this is going to be juicy.

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Advance-fee scam

Someone you meet promises you riches, the catch is that they’re in quite a bind. A pinch, you see. So they need a little lubricant to get out, by lubricant, I mean money.

Don’t worry, they’ll pay you back with interest.

So they need some of your money to give you more money.

With the cold hard cash that lubes the tubes to free the bind that grinds, our person of interest is free to give you that money that they promised.

Except, they don’t.

No money, no promise kept, it was all a lie.

So you invested your money to pay an advanced-fee for returns that don’t exist.

This scam comes in many forms

You’ve might have received or heard of phone calls from Nigerian Princes that need help. They might ask for some money, and in return, they give you their riches.

Except they don’t, another scam learned the hard way.

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Our lord and savior, Ponzi, offered to double your investment back in the day. See, he would talk about how he found a loophole to make money off of postage coupons.

He would get some sucker to invest a little money, say something small like $25. He would then deliver you $50 next time you meet. He takes off some interest off the top, and says to you that he’s doing the whole postage coupons again.

So you think you’ve got a cash cow, so you invest more, say, $100. He would then give you $200 in the promised time.

But, when he butters you up with the previous deliveries, now you want to invest more. Maybe you’ll invest your life savings? Heck, it worked twice right, why not have another go round?

Except this time he bails, you never see him again, and you lose all your money plus your so called winnings.

Wire transfers and Paypal

Nowadays swindlers are getting crafty.

They might promise to deliver you something other than double your returns.

For instance, you might be buying concert tickets, used motorcycle, or some other obscure thing that you don’t need from a marketplace or directly through an advertisement.

The ‘vendor’ says they’ll deliver your goods after they receive a deposit or the full payment.

They’ll ask for the money via wire transfer or Paypal.

You see, the thing about a wire transfer is, that when you send the money. . . It’s gone.

You can’t trace it after you send it, there’s no getting that money back. The transaction cannot be reversed.

Just think of the money as being burned.

Additionally, the ‘vendor’ selling you those used Pokemon cards might also ask you to use PayPal.

They’ll tell you some excuse to get you to use PayPal family instead of PayPal business.

In which case, PayPal family isn’t backed up by the same legal jargon and mercantile practices as PayPal Business. So you typically won’t get a refund.

PayPal’s customer support is top tier, no regrets, an easy 10 out of 3 star service. . .

 

In Closing

If someone you don’t know, including someone you haven’t seen since high school, asks for money to ‘double’ your investment. Say No.

Especially if you don’t have a promissory note and collateral or insurance.

You should also be wary of any non-reputable third party ‘vendors’ selling you anything that can’t be verified or traced. They probably don’t even have the thing they’re selling you.

This all is actually some-what valid, sound advice, and education. However, for the sake of consistency and obvious legal reasons, this is

*Not Valid Financial, Legal, Life, or Any Advice.