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A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

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Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#21

Post by shkkmo »

mhluongo wrote: post #10

It's the fact that the author paid in bitcoin that made this work. Most other online payment methods can be easily reversed with evidence of fraud. We deal with this sort of stuff all the time running cardforcoin.com. Social evidence is a great fraud deterrent. Edit: My mistake, I reversed the payment direction. All the author needed to do was call Apple to have the cards cleared and replaced.

Who did the author pay in bitcoin? The author received bitcoin from the scammer only after threatening to out the scammer to his parents.

Your half-assed attempt at self-promotion is not contributing to HN

Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#22

Post by hoodoof »

vacri wrote: post #19
hoodoof wrote: post #11

Tell his parents is precisely what you should do. That's what would lead to possible behavior change. Letting him get away with it validates the behavior and teaches that it's OK and he will be able to talk his way out of such things again. It does everyone a disservice to not tell his parents. The author got manipulated twice. First convinced to hand over his money and then convinced not to tell the parents. The sca…

Telling the brother seems to have done the same function as telling the parents, since that's the point at which the behaviour changed.

The scammer said it is his parents that he does not want to be told, so that's precisely where his care factor is.

Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#23

Post by mikeash »

vacri wrote: post #19
hoodoof wrote: post #11

Tell his parents is precisely what you should do. That's what would lead to possible behavior change. Letting him get away with it validates the behavior and teaches that it's OK and he will be able to talk his way out of such things again. It does everyone a disservice to not tell his parents. The author got manipulated twice. First convinced to hand over his money and then convinced not to tell the parents. The sca…

Telling the brother seems to have done the same function as telling the parents, since that's the point at which the behaviour changed.

Telling the brother showed that there was a threat. Not telling the parents showed that the threat was a bluff.

Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#24

Post by fataliss »

I find like 22 is already fairly old to do something stupid like that and call it a day with a "sorry". You are fully responsible legally and you should know better. I agree that going all out to make sure that person gets the worst punishment possible for it would be over the top. But I'd definitely at least tell the parents.

Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#25

Post by nxzero »

hoodoof wrote: post #11

Tell his parents is precisely what you should do. That's what would lead to possible behavior change. Letting him get away with it validates the behavior and teaches that it's OK and he will be able to talk his way out of such things again. It does everyone a disservice to not tell his parents. The author got manipulated twice. First convinced to hand over his money and then convinced not to tell the parents. The sca…

The assumption is that the scammers parents would react in a way that would make a meaningful difference and the very fact that the scammer is a scammer to me calls this into question.

Best way to express your opinion about something with someone is directly, not by asking their parents to do so for you.

Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#26

Post by hoodoof »

nxzero wrote: post #25
hoodoof wrote: post #11

Tell his parents is precisely what you should do. That's what would lead to possible behavior change. Letting him get away with it validates the behavior and teaches that it's OK and he will be able to talk his way out of such things again. It does everyone a disservice to not tell his parents. The author got manipulated twice. First convinced to hand over his money and then convinced not to tell the parents. The sca…

The assumption is that the scammers parents would react in a way that would make a meaningful difference and the very fact that the scammer is a scammer to me calls this into question. Best way to express your opinion about something with someone is directly, not by asking their parents to do so for you.

Do you have kids? My experience of kids is that they are greatly influenced by how their parents see their behaviour.

Unless of course the parents have not built good relationship with their children, in which case the kids might not care a hoot what the parents think.

Re: A scammer stole $500 from me and in the end begged me not to tell his parents

#29

Post by lisper »

josu wrote: post #16
lisper wrote: post #15

> As I prepared the cards to ship them to him I sent him photos I uploaded via my open source image hosting service: PictShare. This fact is very important later on. I think I must have missed something. I read the whole story and I still don't see why the photos of the cards mattered.

>His IP address from opening the image I sent him (also confirmed his location)

Ah. Thanks!
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