It all started with an online video of what appeared to be Elon Musk promoting a new investment opportunity…
I always wonder if when I’m older I’ll somehow just lose what seems like common sense to me today.
“I started telling my friends and they were all saying ‘oh, that’s a fraud. Don’t do that.’ But it was so real. I mean, you could see it all online and we checked them out through the better business bureau in England, and their website looked all so legitimate.”
If someone tells you that they are going to make you a millionaire, it’s a scam. If Elon Musk tells you that HE is going to make you a millionaire, you’re an idiot. Elon Musk is a billionaire, he doesn’t need you to get a line of credit too small to buy him a car.
“I started telling my friends and they were all saying ‘oh, that’s a fraud. Don’t do that.’ But it was so real. I mean, you could see it all online and we checked them out through the better business bureau in England, and their website looked all so legitimate.”
Working with real geniuses here.
I have a friend that fell for a scam. They actually called me up to ask for money for “insurance” on a dog they had never seen and wanted to get. I told them it was a scam and that there was no way I was going to lend them the money. They said goodbye, called somebody else up for money, and got it. In the end they got scammed and didn’t get a dog like I told them.
This is a huge reason to support adoption over buying pets.
They gave someone they had only known for a few months remote access to their laptop and their bank accounts? Come on.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic for people who should know the absolute basics of internet and bank account security. It’s not 2005 anymore.
Even ignored their friends who told them it was a scam.
But I like Scotia bank saying no clear evidence of fraud, lol. Ok
It’s their own greed that got them in this situation. Fuck these scammers but if they weren’t so goddamn greedy they wouldn’t even be on the lookout for these schemes. Why even take so much risk when you are already retired? That dream home should stay a dream if you can’t afford it already after you retire.
@veeesix “Invest” in cryptocurrency… always a scam, guaranteed.
I had likely this very video served to me on Monday by YouTube. It pretended to be and ABC News interview with Elon. It was clearly an AI generated video and matching audio. I reported it to YouTube for all the good that’ll do. YouTube should be partially liable for running ads like this on their platform!
Agreed! Anytime I get served a celebrity-endorsed ad I’ll watch the lipsync very carefully.
You watch ads? 😉
Ads are the easiest way to filter for the stupid people. Only the stupidest see them.
lol I usually skip them! But the deepfake ones are the most interesting and give me a chance to exercise that report button.
@veeesix What became of well-established adage that nobody is going to just offer you free money?
The format of the scam has changed a bit, but the fundamentals remain… electronic or old school paper, this should have been obvious as a scam.
Someone, 80 right now, was 50 when commercial internet became popular, & late-30’s / early 40’s when computers came to workplaces. This stuff is decades old, and everyone has had decades to learn.
I feel sorry for this victim, but it was preventable.
Totally preventable. Setting aside tech literacy for even a moment, they fully ignored the warnings their friends gave them and went along anyway.
FOMO. So many people lost their minds because they “missed out” on the crypto bubble. I’m convinced that’s the only reason NFTs even got halfway as far as they did - folks trying to artificially meme up a new gold rush that they could ride
The irony of NFTs is you could just post your public keys and people could verify you own some hash signifying your ownership of a jpeg, without all the blockchain and gas fees.
