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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

#91

Post by mikkom »

downandout wrote: post #90

Obviously what the kid did was illegal and morally wrong, and contacting his family was certainly effective. But I believe that contacting his family probably violated most state and federal debt collection laws. After all, essentially what happened is that he was late on a $380 debt payment. Imagine if you were a few days late on a credit card payment, and they started calling your relatives telling them that if the…

> After all, essentially what happened is that he was late on a $500 debt payment.

That is far too nice way to describe the issue and I would assume that even in US these are two separate issues (being late from mutually agreed payment and trying to scam someone)

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

#92

Post by mikkom »

yuja_wang wrote: post #42
gertef wrote: post #20

Essentially, author believes it's more important to help the scammer recover than to help the other victims get their stolen money back.

Exactly! That's why he should have gone to the Police.

You should note that he's from austria (based on his domain name), I would assume it would be quite a feat to go to visit US police from Austria and not worth his $500.

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

#93

Post by homingbrain »

ufmace wrote: post #52

Yeah, I'm not buying that apology for a second. Probably the first thing any con artist learns is how to fake being really sorry as well as they faked being legitimate anytime somebody manages to turn the tables on them. I bet you can get your money back and then report him to the police too. He's way beyond being corrected by his parents, and he probably threw that in just to make you think there's an option besides…

> he probably threw that in just to make you think there's an option besides the police

That's what I thought, too. For some reason, scammers often have high social intelligence. Maybe it's like with any other domain: if you understand how computers work, you are compelled to use computers a lot. If you understand how people work, you must be compelled to use people?

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

#94

Post by baku-fr »

downandout wrote: post #90

Obviously what the kid did was illegal and morally wrong, and contacting his family was certainly effective. But I believe that contacting his family probably violated most state and federal debt collection laws. After all, essentially what happened is that he was late on a $380 debt payment. Imagine if you were a few days late on a credit card payment, and they started calling your relatives telling them that if the…

He wasn't "late on a payment", he definitely tried to scam the author since he deleted his reddit account and lied on eBay.

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

#95

Post by downandout »

baku-fr wrote: post #94
downandout wrote: post #90

Obviously what the kid did was illegal and morally wrong, and contacting his family was certainly effective. But I believe that contacting his family probably violated most state and federal debt collection laws. After all, essentially what happened is that he was late on a $380 debt payment. Imagine if you were a few days late on a credit card payment, and they started calling your relatives telling them that if the…

He wasn't "late on a payment", he definitely tried to scam the author since he deleted his reddit account and lied on eBay.

Any good lawyer would say that the two weren't necessarily connected. All the author knew when he contacted this kid's family was that he was owed $380. He was attempting to collect on that debt by using embarrassment and threats of police involvement.

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

#96

Post by Udik »

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…

Downvoted you. It's a big jump from "somebody, 22 yo, scammed somebody else online at least once" to "psychopath".

To be frank, I think I wish the word "psychopath" was deleted from the dictionary altogether. It's just a handy label to apply to all sorts of baddies, effectively dehumanizing them (he's a psychopath- he would do anything to you, so you're justified in doing anything to him).

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

#97

Post by baku-fr »

downandout wrote: post #95
baku-fr wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn't "late on a payment", he definitely tried to scam the author since he deleted his reddit account and lied on eBay.

Any good lawyer would say that the two weren't necessarily connected. All the author knew when he contacted this kid's family was that he was owed $380. He was attempting to collect on that debt by using embarrassment and threats of police involvement.

I still don't see how this is a debt. A debt is something you willingly take and make your best to pay it back. If you can't, you stay in contact with the other party. You don't just delete your account and play dead. Playing devil's advocate is sometimes a good thing, but that 22 yo dude was just being plain shady. He clearly never intended to pay.

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

#98

Post by owaislone »

hoodoof wrote: post #22
vacri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

or may be he was a master social engineer and this was a calculated move to stop the author from going to the police

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

#99

Post by pbhjpbhj »

loeg wrote: post #47
hoodoof wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He's 22, not 9.

I'm not sure of your point, without tone it doesn't come across at all.

People can become even more concerned to win their parents approval as they grow through adulthood.

When I think of the things I've done as an adult that I'm least proud of then I wouldn't want to tell my parents about them.

As a child with no experience you've got an excuse for your mistakes. As an adult choosing to scam people the only places you've got to hide seem to be anonymity and sociopathy.

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

#100

Post by downandout »

mikkom wrote: post #91
downandout wrote: post #90

Obviously what the kid did was illegal and morally wrong, and contacting his family was certainly effective. But I believe that contacting his family probably violated most state and federal debt collection laws. After all, essentially what happened is that he was late on a $380 debt payment. Imagine if you were a few days late on a credit card payment, and they started calling your relatives telling them that if the…

> After all, essentially what happened is that he was late on a $500 debt payment. That is far too nice way to describe the issue and I would assume that even in US these are two separate issues (being late from mutually agreed payment and trying to scam someone)

The problem is that legally, unless and until the kid is found guilty of fraud or theft (or he pleads guilty to such a crime), the money owed is nothing more than a debt that this guy attempted to collect in illegal ways.
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