Beware! Cheaters and Scammers Behind Every Door!
Sometimes I find it a little alarming just how much energy and effort goes into trying to cheat and scam people out of their (and lives, even) money these days.
Maybe it's just because I'm nearing retirement age and there's a general perception that retirees are "easier prey" when it comes to being scammed and taken advantage of... or maybe it's just the state of the world in general — I honestly don't know!
Regardless, I was checking my voicemail this morning and I had no less than four different voicemails telling me about investment programs, tax consolidation and debt consolidation programs and some kind of coupon book I needed to purchase in order to "save money."
In a sense it was an unusual day because there were no messages asking me if I was going to "approve this $399 charge from Amazon" for some piece of equipment that I had never bought!
The debt consolidation message was particularly sneaky because it made it sound like I already had "an assigned caseworker" handling my debt consolidation. Of course I have nothing of the sort.
As I write these words I'm not so much writing them from the perspective of "oh my goodness, I wish there were a way to get this spam out of my mailbox" or "I wish there were some way to make these people go away," I'm writing it from a sad and reflective perspective that we live in a world where it almost feels like trying to scam somebody out of their money is as common an occupation as mowing people's lawns or stocking grocery shelves at your local Safeway.
What is wrong with this world?
Yes, I know, so very many things!
Not at all related (well, maybe indirectly), our middle son — who's in his mid-30s — has been more seriously dealing with the dating scene as of late and was talking about some of his frustrations while he came here last week to visit.
He had been to a number of those "speed dating" events and been singularly unsuccessful. He'd actually spent about $40 to go to each of about four or five of these arrangement and have not gotten a single call back.
He then gotten even more depressed when he learned from a friend from his — who had some kind of insider information — that many of these events have a huge imbalance between the number of male applicants and female applicants and so in order to balance things out the organizers would actually hire a number of female actors to bring things into balance.
But of course these female actors have no interest whatsoever of being actual matches; they're just getting paid $40.00 an hour to show up and chat with random men for a couple hours.
Perhaps it's not exactly a scam, and perhaps the information is not exactly true — I don't know, I'm not in the singles market — but it definitely sounds a bit sketchy, even if it's not an outright scam.
Technically speaking, I suppose that sort of practice has been around since forever. Even when I was in college all the really pretty girls would get invited in for free ahead of time to club events, to make it seem like it was a ”hot” club, as a result of which all the guys waiting in line to pay a cover charge would think they were really getting something that they weren't.
Is it any wonder that we have such a low level of trust in our society?
Of course this leaves us to wonder why the situation is the way it is. How did we get this way? Would we still be this way if so many people weren't struggling so much simply to keep from getting evicted from their apartment next month? Have we artificially created a Society of mistrust by setting the bar so high that nobody can actually get to it without cheating and stealing their way there? This idea of managing OK in life thanks to an honest day's work just a myth that should be thrown away?
I don't have any actual answers to this, I'm just speculating and reflecting on life, as it seems to be manifesting...
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great 4th of July weekend!
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Created at 2025.07.04 00:06 PDT
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Voice messages that make it seem like you're "pre-recorded" in a program are one of the most dangerous types of deception, because they create a sense of realism and make people feel like they’re already involved.
You are right about that
and for me I love these shots 😄
What? Paying for dates? Your son is looking in the wrong place. Here in the community, there are many beautiful girls looking for their prince, so he's looking in the wrong places 😆.
On the other hand, scams are very common in Latin America, not only online but also in everyday life. It often happens that you are offered an “all-inclusive” deal, but when you arrive at the location, there is fine print and you end up paying twice what you had intended to “save.”
It's a world turned upside down 🙃.
Thank you for sharing such a beautiful reflection with the community 🤗.
About a decade ago, when I was taking some courses at the local community college, I went to a speed dating thing at the student union building just to see what was going on. There were 4 gay guys at the LGBTQ table, a couple dozen of us straight guys, and 3 girls slowly running the gauntlet.
One of the things we kept trying to do at the library was keep people aware of scams and fraud. Seniors are definitely targeted more. Y'all still answer your phones sometimes, for one thing. For another, a lot of older folks still think we live in a high trust society, and don't just assume people are lying until proven otherwise. And of course e-mail spoofing has led to lots of scams where people hide burner emails behind what looks like official Amazon, Microsoft, and credit card or bank labels. It's a digital war zone.
One of the things people should always train themselves to do is never answer with a yes if they prompt you into identifying yourself, you never know what they'll be doing with that "yes" reply attached to your name. Most times my phone tells me it's a spam risk, it doesn't catch all of them though, and if they ask for me to identify myself, I always respond with "who is calling." I can't believe yesterday I got a call from that same group of ATT scammers I wrote an op on awhile back, running down the same exact line. Click. Block.