How I Almost Got Scammed (Part 2)
Hello monkeys, this one’s been due for a while, I’ve been slacking…
So this is a continuation of what happened after I went to the meeting with the scammer guy. Read part 1 here
By the time of the meeting, I was pretty sure that Y was trying to scam me. We were supposed to meet in the library but he switched and texted me that he was having a meeting with another student at a building nearby and he’s going to be a little late. I told him that I’ll go meet him in 15 minutes when his meeting was over. I went immediately. Since it was the winter session, there was no one there and he was pretty easy to find. The only guy in a suit sitting at a booth… alone.
I went up to him and he greeted me, he seemed startled to see me as I rushed up to him (earlier than we were supposed to meet). I told him that I thought he was in a meeting and he said that the student just left (how convenient) and “seemed” excited for the opportunity. I should mention again that the entire building was almost deserted and if someone was there I would have seen it. So we sit down and start talking. I could sense that he though I wasn't taking him seriously because he was in an iron pressed suit and I was in a hoodie and a thick jacket.
Y then proceeds to tell me about their grand plan about how (in truly stereotypical scam artist fashion) this was such a great opportunity and I can make thousands, if not millions before I graduate. Infact, he says, he knows 2 people who quit school to do this full time (just spewing out some fresh early morning bullshit). He also said he actually just bought a house for 1.25 mill or something (yeah buddy, that’s why you’re here pitching your idea to a half asleep sophomore at 9 AM)
Anyways, his grand plan was….. it’s so dumb I don’t think I’ll be able to explain it and make sense. Basically he would set me up with my own personal website where people would go and buy items that they typically go to stores for, and I would get a cut of the sales. He also said that if I can get 5 friends into the project than I would be awarded five starts or something (they had this whole point system where you would start from silver and move to gold by adding people to my network) and if each of those five got five more, I would get a cut from all of them. I told them that sites like those already exit so what would make theirs so special especially with giants like Amazon and eBay. This question got him (and it wasn't even that hard of a question) and he started baling the same stuff and drawing lines on his notepad but never really answering my question. Then he tells me that they are the only company that all the big banks and apple have decided to partner up. Guaranteed success.
This is where it gets fun. I had originally decided to grill him on his business plan and and send him running home but seeing that he couldn't even handle the softball questions, I decided to do the complete opposite and pretend to fall for it. I started asking him questions about how much money I had the potential to make and what others have made. At one point I even talked to him about what I was going to do with all my money.
He then slipped in the fact that they would need $347 to set me up with my site (why $347 exactly I had no idea). I told him that it was no problem but I didn't have money on me and that I was going to Florida for my cousin’s wedding for two weeks ( I have no cousin in Florida) but I’ll give it to him soon as I’m back. We talked a little bit after that and we parted ways.
Now, I had though that he was on to me and that I wouldn’t get any response. I got a call from him later that day and he told me that X loved my enthusiasm and would like to speak to me and he did! X pretended that he was very busy with work but just wanted to welcome me onboard the team. I decided to take it a bit further and told him that I had gotten 2 more friends who want to work as well and we’ll bring over the money as soon as I’m back.
I had pretty much forgotten about the whole ordeal in those two weeks but got a text from Y asking if I had gotten back and I was ready with the money (he asked if I was ready for work but he meant money). At that point I didn’t really care and stopped replying to his texts. The last text he sent me was “hey man, I need to know if you want to be part of the team otherwise I have a lot of people dying to get in”.
I wanted to keep up the act a bit longer just to see how far I could take it (maybe ask for another meeting somewhere far and never show up) but I didn’t. Also, he was a nice guy (other than the scam part) and I didn’t want to make him run around all over the place.
So that’s my experience with the scammer. Tell me what you guys think, should I have kept up the act?
No, I think you took it to an appropriate level. Baiting and playing with idiots is only fun for so long...
haha you're right
Boy, that (de) escalated quickly...
yeah i got bored, the fire just wasn't there after 2 weeks
Glad to see part 2 posted. Can't tell how many multi-lvl marketing schemes people have tried to get my friends and I into(partly why I found your post interesting). Seems really prominent in colleges. One time I was in a meeting and baited/trolled the speaker. The kid who invited me just looked at me in shock, was pretty funny haha.
thats interesting! so they actually have these meetings? I didnt go to the one they invited me. Care to expand on what went down in yours?
Glad to. My friend told us he wanted us to come to an event and wouldn't tell us why(later found out this was a sales tactic, so you couldn't do research beforehand). At the meeting we were given samples of the product(a drink in this instance).An outside speaker would talk to us about this great opportunity and how we were getting in on the ground floor. Similar to what you mentioned points recruiting etc. They also offered a new BMW as a reward for top recruiters(not insurance just the monthly lease). Included some success stories and the how the speaker was just an "Average College Kid" but he was an idiot. Literally the entire meeting was shitting on people who worked for someone else. Really turned me off with that. The way it worked as I understand it was that you buy the product $149 a month and had to get other people to sign in under you and you get a percentage of their monthly fee and this was a recurring passive pay system meaning you could sit on your ass for a month and still get paid.
There are definitely some success stories but you have to be really good salesmen and be willing to put yourself out there. Both of the people I knew who did it lost north of $700 each and really pissed a lot of us off in the process.
Heads up, any business whose employees get the majority of their pay by recruiting other people to join are pyramid schemes.
you should probably report this to whatever university authority is present not everyone is as street smart as you
that would have been difficult, I had no way of proving that he was trying to scam me
you're not obliged to prove anything when you report it all you really ought to do is notify the university with what they tried to do seems like the right thing to do
Great story. Reminded me of a group of people in the UK that upon receiving those "get rich today" emails lure the scammers for weeks until arranging meetings in very far places and not showing up. They even made a tv show about these guys..
@"Froggen" and @"InvestmentJunkie", both of the "business opportunities" pitched to you are clearly pyramid schemes and anyone who has ever read the definition of 'pyramid scheme' would see right through these scammers. Glad to see there are people smart enough to not fall for these schemes, but disheartened by those who do.
I sent my friends who were doing it an article on Herbalife and it included a very basic definition of pyramid scheme. The whole thing was so laughably stupid that my friends and I who weren't doing made enough jokes to cover about 3 months. My roommate summed up the business model best: buy this pile of ccrap and convince other people to buy their own pile of crap.
And this took an additional part and almost two weeks to post? Also, why are you doing several posts in a row? Are you also a BananaPointsJunkie?
Not nearly as entertaining as I thought it would be. I like my ending much better.
This guy wasn't trying to scam you, he's just an idiot who already got scammed and was trying to recruit people into his affiliate network.
Good for you though for wasting a gullible sap's time and giggling at delight at the idea of dicking him over even more than his poor judgement has probably already dicked him over in life. That's quite an accomplishment.
you're on a roll lately.
this is a pyramid scheme, and unfortunately it was born out of tupperware and Mary Kay, the 2 legitimate MLM (multi level marketing) companies out there. they seem like pyramid schemes, but people can & do do well at it. the downside is it's easy to fall prey to, but I agree with @"Marcus_Halberstram", the amount of time you wasted on this was way too much. just politely say no and get on with your life.
@Marcus_Halberstram 1) yeah the ending was a bit anti-climactic, but by that time a lot of time had passed and I wasn't as interested anymore.'
2) I was a dick to him (even though I didn't do anything that dickish to begin with) because he 100% deserved it and I was pissed cause he was clearly lying. As to him being a gullible sap, sorry but I have 0 sympathy for him. I understand where he is coming from, he might have been at a vulnerable state and got screwed over by some piece of shit. I also understand (but not at all condone) him trying to get his money back the same way but he should absolutely expect to get fucked over by people he's trying to scam, what I did was nothing. If I was in his position, I would definitely expect being screwed by people i'm trying to fuck over. His being scammed does not justify him scamming others in a similar position.
Finally, reading all these other stories from @Skinnayyy @vad4705 @jss09 @she_monkey @JulianRobertson @Winning Since 1776 I wish I had taken it a lot further than I did
My fiance's cousin fell for one of these too. He had like no money, and was having a hard time getting a job. So obviously a get rich quick scheme has to be legit sounding!
It was for an energy drink and energy bar and energy this that and the other thing. You payed 275 dollars to sign up at the ground level, but you could pay more and get upgraded automatically to silver.
You would buy the products and sell them to people. If you recruited people, they would buy their products from you. you bought your products from the person who recruited you and so on. So pretty much you had to price your product above whatever the person above you is selling at. Sounds like an awesome market model right? Also the whole if you recruit people you get a cut of the initiation fee is involved too.
The best part, this is also at a time when Monster, Red bull, and 123987 other energy drinks and bars are on the market so they have a crazy amount of known competition. And to top it off, it tasted completely terrible. He couldn't sell it for half the price of a red bull.
It's called multi level marketing. It is probably the biggest cult and form of bullshit going. I fell for it, considering it was from one of my close "friends."
He even promised to give me my money back. But yeah $300 to learn how much people suck. Don't fall for this bullshit.
Some of you seem genuinely sad OP didn't go for a ride in a trunk with a ballgag in his mouth.
Maybe he's actually leading you on like he did to the sales dude. Mind blown
Riveting tale.
Buddy of mine from high school did one of these. I was visiting him in college and saw his fridge stocked full of energy drinks, asked how I could buy a few to try out and apparently you can't buy them individually/in a store, only if you sign up for their monthly package. He was successful in it (was in the group at the top of the pyramid from the beginning of when it got big). Got a new Mercedes C-class, etc. It took up so much of his time he dropped out of school to focus on it and never saw his friends because he was always at those conferences/meetings trying to find new recruits. I remember him being in the top 5% of earners based on their gold/platinum/diamond certification or whatever terms they use.
Then half his people quit because they didn't make any money and now he lives at home and works at a restaurant to cover the car payments.
Yep. You can't just sit on your ass and be successful since virtually nobody below you will be successful and almost all will drop out, so you've got to constantly be recruiting. I'm a laissez faire capitalist but even I think these even legitimate multilevel marketing schemes should be banned since they take advantage of people's ignorance.
Last summer when I was interning I got a random facebook message from a girl that I knew through a mutual friend in college that lived in the same city I was working. I used to hook up with our mutual friend and had met this girl and always thought I had a good chance with her if things died out with the other girl(which they did).
We have a short facebook convo briefly catching up then she suggests that we meet at a bar that night downtown. Of course I oblige. Turns out it was one of those multi-level marketing schemes selling energy drinks or whatever that vemma shit is. I was so fucking pissed when she started talking to me about this pyramid scheme. Apparantly, she has no emotional intelligence because she continued to text me about it after I left and made it clear I wanted nothing to do with her and that scam.
Yea.. agree with above. These pyramid scheme/multi level marketing are pretty common, especially before ecommerce took the middlemen out of the game. Women bought cosmetics from Avon, and you actually considered buying things from door to door marketers.
In any case, I got scammed like this myself by a friend from freshmen year of college. Probably like the poor kid in your school, he already got scammed and was trying to recruit you to get under him (in the pyramid) so he can dig his way out of his $loss. She also did one of those weird majors, so combined with both of us graduating into the recession, I presume this was her only "job" option.
I kind of wish I did what you did. I was disgusted at both women (college friend and her "partner"... aka woman above her on the pyramid). The friend mumbled @ it and said it was a "start up". I ended up grilling them with questions on how this business model would not work and got pretty frustrated myself. :(
This sounds almost verbatim to a scam that I was pitched when I was in school. It's basically an Amway affiliate called LTD Team., which was pitched to me as a startup that is "half Amazon and half eBay." I will call them out by name so you guys know to avoid them.
Red flag #1 was I got cold called on this by some dude that I just met randomly at a party a while back, asing if I want to "make some money."
I got cold emailed myself!
Exactly what happened to me a few years ago. Drawing on their notepad, can't really explain what the hell their "business" does. People seriously think it's so easy to make money.
MLM at it's finest. It seems like there's always that one friend that falls for this bs and then tries to recruit you. When I was in my first year of uni, a friend of mine wanted to grab lunch with me and discuss a 'business opportunity' without explaining too much. In my naive state I thought it was something along the lines of an internship/part-time work. Ended up watching a two hour presentation on how by recruiting two people and those two people recruiting just two more, you end up with thousands under you. I almost fell for it, until I realised that I would be begging friends and family to buy juice from me. 'Independent Distributors' LOL
Yea, sounds like the run of the mill pyramid scheme scam artist. Really rooting for Ackman to kick the crap out of Herbalife. Had a girl that I really cared for get into a similar company, but she's too far gone now.
I really wish I had it in me to tell all the people I know that "No, you don't have your own business, you are a sales person for a bigger company that treats you terribly and you're selling a terrible product." I see wayyyy too many people trying to throw scentsy candle parties and pure romance parties and a bunch of other crap parties.
Just go ahead and tell them, you'd sound like a prick at the time but you'd be doing them a huge favor
This sounds like a Quixtar pitch.
The comments make this thread. Glad to see the consumer is so well protected in the US... Can't really pull this shit off as easily in Europe (England not counting).
I had a similar experience but that was back in high school. I was invited by a company to their event on how to make money fast. In retrospect, it served me well, at least I learned the concept of MLM since later on, when I got approached, I knew exactly what to do ;) It was for selling knives, I think it was Cutco. or something similar. Great post overall and thanks for sharing.
When I was 25 waaaay back in 2010 I had an affair with an unmarried (divorced) 47-year-old co-worker for several months. After several months she called it off because she got a "real" boyfriend (a man in her proper age range). While I missed the sexual aspect, it was really no big deal--I was happy for her actually. A few months later I got another job and I never really heard from her again.
Fast forward 16 months and I get a voice mail from her saying she wanted to see me again and for me to give her a call back. While basically pitching a tent I give her a call back the next evening. Turns out she was trying to sell me on one of the new MLM schemes. She was so short on interested "investors" that she ends up calling her ex-lover whom she has not spoken to in nearly a year-and-a-half. I was polite but very clear that I wasn't interested.
To make matters worse, she was like an executive VP of a major real estate finance company and graduated from a prestigious university. How??
I have first hand experience with this at my university. There's a company called Vemma. Basically same system expect they attach sales of this energy drink called Verve to the not-a-pyramid-scheme. Anyway long story short I took them farther than you did. I bought a package. Led him along for 4 months, and then had my guy bring over $250 of his product to hand out a party of about 25 people that I held in my apartment. The drink is actually fair to mix with alcohol. My group of friends did not give a damn about the 'opportunity' as expected and we ended up just having a massive mixer and then never contacting the dude again afterwards. One of the best parties ever I ever had. Scam the scammer.
Way to go man! Didn't the dude ask for the money first before handing over the drinks?
This guy deserves a medal
I did buy some of the product initially yes, but I did so directly throughout their main website and he set up my account so that the company would credit the guy for my purchase and add me to his network blah blah blah. I spent around $50-$70 dollars in the baiting process, and at the end of the day I 'earned' a $10 check from the company (hooray...) and about 3 times the amount of product I paid for. Plus, you know-party. But yeah man scams are out there, I would've never given any cash directly to the guy.
That is awesome! My experience was with Vemma as well. The nutrition info is crazy. I think I remember something like 5000% of your daily recommended vitamin C. We took a bottle to our chemistry friend and he said all of chemicals were too complex to be broken down in a human so its practically no health benefit.
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