Saw this very interesting story about seems to be about an online bakery that sold bread to customers but some how scammed them of thousands dollars. This seems very fascinating since you’d believe the normal safeguard of a credit card would prevent this kind of scam from happening.
No one around here has the patients to tell me how this scheme worked. (Chinese don’t like to translate detail). Any Chinese readers or speakers… please give us the dirt. There is a TV report on Yahoo New’s home page at this time.
吐司好吃到流淚!博士被騙到流淚
From what I gather, the fraudsters sold bread online, then told the guy the money didn’t go through, and could he please resend the money? (Only like $90NT or something like that). He went back, but they called again, said there was a problem, and then the fraudsters called back claiming to be bank investigators saying his bank account information account was hacked by the fraudsters and he should move his money immediately to a “safe” account. He moved 12,000,000NT to this account and lost it all.
Some of my details might be a little wrong, but that’s the general gist of it.
I get calls like this sometimes. Like they would tell you that you had “accidentally” signed up for some kind of a payment scheme where you would be deducted an amount every month, and that you had to follow certain steps to cancel it. However from what I found out (after a lot of frustration, no money lost though) is they really tell you to send money to some safe account, or something like this.
Basically in the end I told them since I didn’t sign anything if they had a problem on their end it is their problem. I never heard from them ever since.
Very strange… and kind of stupid. Considering there is a 24 hour number for customer service on your ATM card and credit card. I love to call them in the dead of night when I need some service. They are more patient. Anyway, am I wrong in believing that if your account has been hacked, you are not responsible. The matter could wait till morning. But if you willingly withdraw and transferred the money, you’re out any protection? Why didn’t they just call customer service. They’d be able to put everything on hold…
Hey… I am half asleep… How did the guy make the transfer? Aren’t we limited to $30,000 NT a day? I, myself put a lock on all atm transfers. I prefer to do that in the bank.
What the %&#^#… buy toast on line? Really. We don’t have enough bakeries. In the old days when I faxed my order in from work, I just paid the delivery guy. That’s how I think it is with places like 85C. Thanks for the report. Please share some more details as they emerge.
There’s an easy way to avoid such scams. When someone calls, ask whom they’re calling. They usually don’t even know your name, in which case you should just hang up. And if they know your name but you don’t know who they are, tell them there’s no such person, they must have they wrong number, and hang up.
Now I’m reallly dumbfounded… If what a poster here said was true, that the guy actually went to the bank teller, brushed off the warning that the teller gave him and continued to transfer his money into the other “safe account?”
The original complaint was that his account was hacked. The bank manager sits behind the tellers and scrutinizes everything. The account is insured by Taiwan’s FDIC. His bank is not going to fail. They could have turned off his account and gave him a new one if he had any real fears… This does not compute. This person is in very well paid job that takes great intelictual power. I’m down here slaving with the masses… how can this be.
This is why I left psychology. But I still want to understand what this guy did. And how he could sail through all the safeguards that are there to stop him.
Did he ever get his toast? Must be some toast! Why did it not make the English papers!
Dragonbones… I would not ( hopefully) fall for this kind of scam, but I do mind being left out of telemarketing offers or other promotions because I’m a foreigner. I encourgage the salesperson to try to introduce the product to me.
I think this is a very interesting story, I think it is probably true , it sounds like the typical way to operate, first put you off guard, then pretend to be different bank managers etc. I’ve thought about this issue quite a bit previously.
First of all just because you are high functioning in one part of your life (PhD/manager in a tech firm) doesn’t mean you can’t have deficiencies in others, like anxiety or gambling complex. There’s a hook that can be used to catch a lot of us, we are all human.
Second I think that some people are very easily ‘influenced’, this is a brain chemistry thing. The scammers just need to find the 1 in a 100 or 1 in a 1000 that can easily be hypnotised in this manner. It is a number game for them, that’s why they use telephones as they can randomly call people for almost no cost. There have been studies done and people with strokes, brain tumours can change personality. Some people are probably geneticaly less able to resist suggestion. Old people have been shown to be more easily influenced as any door to door salesperson could tell you (I did some door to door sales temporarily once, I learned how easy it was to influence old people in particular, they knew it themselves and would try to refer me to their son/daughter if available, they were lonely and wanted somebody to talk with and it was exciting for them for somebody to take an interest, I didn’t take advantage but many do).
Sometimes scammers target people, for instance I once got a call about meeting a policeman at the local court, now as it happened I was involved in a court case for something else at the time. This was an automated hook call, press 9 and you go to a real person. I believe they got lists of all people involved in court cases, then used an automated system to call everybody, when somebody pressed 9 they got through to a real scammer…these people can be quite professional. Luckily I checked with other people and quickly realised it was a scam. All legal notices are delivered by registered mail only.
Third people sometimes can be put off balance using different methods. You’ll note a lot of scammers first try to make people nervous by telling you money has been taken out, you have been summoned to court etc. and then they gain your trus by saying they’ll be able to help you, all unofficial of course, the nervousness or anxiety interferes with rational thinking and the bigger the hole the more nervous and possibly more irrational one can be. I had something stolen before, at the time I went and paid somebody to look for that, in the end that guy ran off with my money too! Later on I analysed what the guy told me and couldn’t believe I had given him the money, but I was desperate to get the object back and my desperation made me take a foolish decision.
Fourth some people have a high ego. Even though this guy was asked very clearly what was the purpose, was this for somebody else etc. and warned that this was a possible scam he continued with his behaviour. Perhaps he believed he was right and that was it and he was so far into it he didn’t want to face the daylight.
