People Who Fell For Total Scams Share Their Real Life Stories

Whether you’re traveling in a foreign country or starting out in a new business, it can be difficult to know when someone is being honest or just pulling your chain. And when people turn out to be telling you lies, you can sometimes find yourself out a lot of your hard earned time and money.

These real people shared their fascinating stories of falling for scams that could happen to anyone.

Pyramid Scheme

When I was halfway through college (late 2000’s) I was lured into a MLM scam. A classmate who I considered an acquaintance/friend invited me to her house where her family was hosting an MLM presentation for like two dozen people.

It sounded nice and unfortunately, I wasn’t quite as cynical back then so I was interested in it. Fortunately, my natural sense of laziness actually saved me in this sense because I only sunk about $20 into some packs of energy drinks before I forgot about the whole thing.

The sick thing about MLM is that the people who get sucked into it often target their friends and families and unfortunately I’ve been noticing some relatives in Vietnam posting about it on Facebook (stupid HerbalLife).

Out of courtesy, I warned one, but I don’t think he believes me (despite me linking some articles and sharing my own experience) and I’m not pushing the issue.

Story credit: Reddit /Zerole00

A Fight Broke Out

While living in Buenos Aires, I was having a beer with friends outside the Retiro train station with some friends. The patio was jammed with tourists who had their wallets and phones on their tables.

Suddenly there was a commotion amongst these locals right beside the patio, and a “fight” broke out.

It was a pretty big one, like 7 or 8 people seemingly beating on each other. This lasted all of two minutes. When the tourists returned to their seats, some discovered they had lost their wallets and some of their phones.

While they were looking for these things, the fighters vanished into the crowd.

Story credit: Reddit /bmisko

Tourist Trap

The second day of my two-week-long honeymoon in Thailand. My wife and I decided to go exploring and wanted to visit the local mall in Bangkok.

We get off the ferry boat with a map in hand, looking somewhat confused and a nice, well- dressed Thai man comes up to us asking if we need help in surprisingly good English.

He mentioned that the shopping malls are closed till 1 pm due to the “mourning of the Kings death” but he knows of a place where we can get high-end suits and dresses discounted. If we follow the road all the way down a Tuk Tuk ( Thai taxi type of thing) will take you there.

Sure enough, we walk along the road and a gentleman was waiting right there for us.

We hop in, and they drop us off at this big fancy clothing store. They separated my wife and I to our men’s and women’s departments much to my dismay and horror. She didn’t seem too concerned so I let it fly. They start showing me fabrics for a custom-fitted suit.

I pick out some and before I know it I’m being measured. Finally, find my wife and she has two dresses picked out. Grand total came to about $1500 American dollars.

We leave and the same Tuk Tuk is waiting for us, and then takes us to a Jewelry store where a gentleman is showing us rare “gemstones.” My wife is a sucker for Jewelry so buys one for about $250. Finally, we leave and get a regular cab back to our hotel.

I pull out my phone and look up the “suit” place we went to. It literally was hundreds of people describing the scam from the beginning ( nice, well-dressed Thai man giving assistance, to the Tuk Tuk Driver) to the end. We felt absolutely robbed.

Also, read that the gemstone was fake hence the “no return” policy.

We finally got our stuff in the mail back in the States about two weeks later. My wife’s dresses are essentially Wal- Mart quality. My custom fitted suit is surprisingly decent and does fit incredibly well so it wasn’t a total bust. But we were tourists that got absolutely swindled.

Story credit: Reddit /obie1124

Time Wasted

I guess I made it worse for myself by the effort I put in, but anyway…

I was walking home through the main street of my city after a night out (stuffing my face with leftover pizza) when a lady came up to me saying she needed to get to the hospital immediately, because her fiance was in ER.

She looked genuinely distressed and I quickly gave her directions of where to go and what bus to get.

But she said (and I’m paraphrasing to make this more vague) “No I don’t think it was that hospital, I think it’s the new one on the eastern side of the city.”

I looked up what bus to get and told her. “I don’t have any money,” was the response. The bus stop was just round the corner, so I gave her £2 and accompanied her to the bus stop, since one was just coming, and I watched her get on…and then she got off again.

Starting to get suspicious, I rushed up to her and asked what happened. “The bus driver told me to get this other bus, he said that one was more direct?” I looked it up, and saw that the closest stop for it was on the complete other side of town. “That’s odd, the time it’s going to take you to walk there will make it much longer?” I said. She just acted confused too, and kept saying she didn’t know the city very well.

The other stop was in the opposite direction for me, so I just accepted defeat and left her to it, feeling pretty certain that she had nabbed £2 from me.

Oh, you don’t know the city at all because you’re not a local, but have a good grasp on where the different hospitals are? Why are you in a city you don’t know alone, away from your fiance, who just got into a fight on the other side of town? Just didn’t add up really.

The £2 was nothing but I spent a good 20 minutes trying to help her out when I just wanted to go to bed.

Story credit: Reddit /[deleted]