#how to spot a scam blog | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kyra45 · 23 days

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How to spot a scam blog

A very simple guide to figuring out if the blog messaging you is a scam:

Was you sent an ask within some time of sharing a specific type of post such as a trending topic or subject? - Usually scam accounts target particular posts and will spam asks to everyone who shared it. The ask may relate to certain events going on or more. These asks are always sent to many users all at once so it’s suggested to tumblr search part of the ask and see if its been sent by other accounts labeled as a scam or accounts with similar style.

Is the account relatively new? - More often than not, the accounts sending the asks are about a week old or even newer. They haven’t been made too long ago and often send asks within hours of being made. If you have timestamps turned on, you’ll be able to see the date something was posted. A fresher account is usually not going to be one who’s finding you unless they are searching tags and saw your blog.

How many posts are on the account? - Scam accounts rarely have many posts on their blogs beyond the initial pinned post. All their posts, being very few are very little, are most often just posts from a trending topic they looked up or a popular tag they decided to look through. They will share only a few and then make no further posts. This is to pad out their blog to make it look used but it’s easy to see how new the blog is if you scroll to the end.

Are the shared posts fitting a theme? - Scam accounts try to share posts based on the scam they’re trying to run. This means they’ll share posts related to the topic of their choosing and then stop once they’ve shared a few. Most of these posts come from the OP themselves and not from someone the blog is following though in rare cases they’ll find a person to reblog from so they don’t look suspicious.

Are the reblog dates accurate? - If you use timestamps, find a post the blog shared and check ‘Other notes’ and see if the reblog date matches the date that is listed on the blog itself. Often, scammers will backdate posts to make them look much older then they really are in an attempt to deceive people into thinking they’ve used tumblr for months or years.

Is the url auto-generated? - Not always seen from a scam account, but scammers often just use auto-generated usernames because it’s quick and easy to do. But real accounts may have these too. It’s just a thing to keep in mind.

Is the url familiar or similar to one you’ve seen before? - Scammers often try to copy their older accounts by using usernames based around previous scam attempts. It becomes obvious after about a while and usually makes it easy to figure out the scammer is back again. This isn’t always from scam accounts as regular accounts may do this for reasons.

How often do you get asks? - If you barely get asks and suddenly keep getting mutual aid asks it’s very likely you’re just a scammers latest target and they’ll keep spamming asks. This means you’ll consistently get the same style of asks from a brand new account that shouldn’t know you unless they found you in tags. You will keep getting these asks on a daily basis. You will eventually always get these asks.

Did they request you to message them directly? - On rare occasions a scam account will want you to send them a direct message and then they’ll just ask you for thousands of dollars on the spot.

Does your bio say no mutual aid asks? - Scammers don’t read/don’t care they will ignore that and send you asks anyway that won’t stop them.

Short version: More often than not the blog asking you for money is a scam if you don’t usually get asks for money from brand new accounts.

#scam #how to spot a scam blog #psa #scam alert #scam warning #important information #long post #longpost

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adragonofthings · 11 days

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Dragon tip #4

When bringing awareness about Palestine via sharing posts and fundraisers, keep in mind you may receive asks from accounts who claim to be in Palestine needing mutual aid for their family or having a family member in Palestine who needs help. Unfortunately, there are scammers who are pretending to be in Palestine and they mass send asks to every account they find that shares Palestine related posts.

These accounts are usually only a few hours old or a few days old at best. The link to their ‘GoFundMe’ isn’t one, as it leads to a PayPal account. Sometimes they share only a few Palestine posts that are popular and then go on to spam asks. Searching the sent ask will usually lead to locating the numerous accounts that sent it. These accounts often have stolen text from a real GoFundMe as well.

It is suggested to be wary of brand new accounts that may enter your inbox asking for money. Check that your funds sent are going towards a reputable charity or legitimate source and not a scammers pockets. Search the usernames or ask to see if it’s been labeled as a scam account.

While spotting scams is often necessary, please make sure you are boosting legitimate fundraisers. There are numerous guides out there that can explain what a scam looks like.

#tips from the dragon #how to spot a scam blog #scam #Palestine

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the-scam-alert-blog · 1 day

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Introduction :

I want to reblog all legitimate donation posts, PSA to spot a scammer, and posts or asks which contained the scammer's blog or account. Please let me know if your account or blog is legitimate, and i will delete my reblog. Thank you.

🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

#PSA and #how to spot a scam blog = explaination which we can use before donate or reblog a donation post.

#donate , #list , #real account = real and genuine Palestinian people donation post.

#scam alert = 99% scam account (because i have not verified it, but i have a hunch.

#scam detected = 100% scam account

#psa #how to spot a scam blog #donate #list #scam alert #scam detected #real account #news from palestine

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theoriginalfalcon · 16 days

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More scammers

So far this week, I have had no less than 5 people reach out to me through the chat feature un this site. So far ALL OF THEM have been reported and blocked because they tried to get me to buy into their OF, or tried to prostitute themselves.

For the record, I have seen every sort of scam on the internet that has ever been tried, and I can recognize it either immediately or almost immediately, so scammers, don't waste my time, because I WILL report your criminal asses.

On the up side, at least the more recent ones didn't give me the obvious fake sob story that they needed money and I should send them some, like a few have tried to do over the past couple of months.

With gofundme such a popular thing these days, there is no reasonable way that anyone should be trying to directly ask perfect strangers for money on the internet.

Not so much as ONE of the people contacting me has been a real person with a real interest in anything but trying to scam me out of my money.

They will try to do it to the rest of you as well, so watch out. DO NOT TRUST ANY OF THEM.

Because of these scammers and fakes, I view EVERY contact with suspicion. Sadly, I have not been wrong yet.

Still waiting to be proven wrong, but it's unlikely.

So, for all of you folks that are genuine, PLEASE, do not reach out to anyone with "Hi" or any other single word greeting, as an initial comment. Put some damned thought into it. Don't be like these scammers.

Feel free to reblog this if you have had similar issues.

#scam warning #scammers #how to spot a scam blog #fraudsters #fraud #fake profiles

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the-kipsabian · 7 months

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spammer removed o7

you love to see it, great work gang! 💜

#thank you for asking! <3 #thetimecrystal #for some reason tumblr doesnt let me report blogs at all no matter what type of report im trying to file in their system idk why #but glad this got resolved so fast!#im gonna keep the post up as another good example on how to spot and deal with the scams #but thank you for your co-operation! 💜

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thelurk3r · 3 months

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Hey, hi! Im really sorry for sending this, i just hope im not overstepping any boundaries as I’m about to ask help which is very important right now :( our cat, Sleepy needs an urgent vet care. She is pain and I can't afford to pay the vet to help her so I'm reaching out to ask for help, I mean even if you can’t help monetarily, reblogging or sharing it would truly mean a lot. She is my daughter’s best friend and she’s all I have left of my mom who passed away last 2021. In case you’d be insterested to help, I have pinned the post on my blog, please try to also answer the ask privately as some people tend to get weird on this stuff. Please send us prayers, be safe. ♥️🙏

your blog is young and you've sent a fuckton of people this exact message. if you're real, there's better ways to get help for a cat than this because it's hella sus.

#SCAM SPOTTED #how tf did they even find me though. how do any scammers find this blog.#then again how does anyone

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kowabungadoodles · 8 months

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How to spot a (heart wrenching sad cat) Charity Scam

So I've been get a lot of requests for money in my askbox lately, from users I have never seen before! Usually sad cats, sometimes gender affirming medical bills, a queer person being made homeless etc etc... and guess what? None of them are real! It's scammers who have learned how to work tumblr's userbase and prey on our general sense of community and charity.

Here it is, so sad! So tragic! But let's note a few things:

It's generic. They don't know me, I don't know them. it's addressed to 'friend', no use of nicknames or usernames.

Even the cat and the problem are generic 'little kitty' who has 'urgent needs'. This is not how real people talk, this is because this scam is being used over and over with different accounts a different 'cats'.

Praying (uh huh.)

Asking you to reply privately- This is so people don't spot the scam and point it out the mark and because if too many people posted replies to the same message it would beome really obvious that this is a scam. If they're looking for 'boosts' so badly, then why do they need you to reply privately?

Now that I'm suspicious, let's investigate.

Sent me an ask and then followed me! Sounds like they're just hitting up anyone and everyone, but even more likely they have a list they're working from.

(I get so many, I'm probably on a mail-out list a mile long, just being hit up for cash. Likely I fell for one of these once and got my name added to every scam list for miles, but oh well.)

So let's see if they're a bot or a real person!

The blog looks genuine enough, they've got a bio, a fandom etc. And it says they're an artist!

And of course there's that sad cat post, pinned right to the top, so I don't have to look any further through the blog for verification... Looks super legit, pics of the cat, pics of the bill... of course anyone can print out a bill and take a picture of it...

As I do scroll futher, it's full of reblogs making this look like an active user. So how can I tell it's not genuine?

Well, if they're an artist they probably post right? Doodles? Pictures? Let's have a look at their origional posts.

The fastest way to do this is by using an outside tool like Original Post Finder.

just type in the suspicious username and go...

Voila! As suspected, the only post this bot account has ever made is Sad Cat Post.

Confirmed: Scam. Do not give your money to these guys, it looks so real but they're just here to make you feel like a bad person for not handing over everything you can. Charity is wonderful, supporting friends is wonderful, but tbh save it for people you actually know irl/ mutuals you have an actual relationship with. Don't believe any rando who comes knocking!

Love and kisses, stay safe out there.

#scam #tumblr scam #I'm putting this in all the same tags the scam post uses #kitty mom #emergency #catblr #kitty help

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my-silly-poker · 2 months

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gaza scam warning

Hey gamers, recently there have been a number of scam blogs on tumblr claiming to be Gazan victims. They've been making a number of iterations of the exact same blog and story but with different names and sometimes different PayPal links.

Thus far, the content of these scams are being stolen from 2 real fundraisers. Please lend your aid to these people who need help instead of the disgusting scam farm

Help Haya Orouq's family escape Gaza

Help Rawan AbuMahady's family escape Gaza

These are examples within the past month which have been deleted.

Ma22ya

Khalilhan

jovialsuitdonutai

miniaturepostkingjaiur

Donation scams on tumblr are extremely common and anyone who has a tumblr account will encounter them at some point. You have likely encountered them before and not realized it. They throw together a brand new blog with a story of needing aid, then use bots to go through follow lists and post notes to send messages to random users. Scambusting blogs like kyra45 do a lot of work to track and call out these scams when they surface.

Scam Spotting Tips

They send an ask often accompanied with a follow despite having never interacted with you before. Ask yourself: How did you find your blog? These interactions usually come out of nowhere when you have no original posts or interests they could've found you through, because they're just going down the lists of random blogs.

They reblog just enough posts to make you think that their blog is in-use when it is actually only a day or a few old. Enable timestamps and try find the blog's oldest post; if a blog seems old but still seems suspicious, be wary of post backdating

They often disable or delete comments on their donation post to hide comments that call them out. Open the notes and see if it says "some replies have been hidden, blocked or removed." Blocked/hidden comments sometimes still appear in reblogs of a post but not the original, so open a random reblog and see if telling comments appear there.

It isn't unusual for the story and the ask to either be exact copy-pastes of each other, or otherwise have very telling suspicious details, such as: using different names, having different goal amounts, contrasting story details, etc. Pay attention to and trust the suspicion of details that stand out as odd.

Like many of the above examples, they often use an automatically generated username consisting of random words

Reverse image searching can be a helpful giveaway if it works, but don't trust it entirely - scammers often steal images from private Facebook groups/profiles or alter the images so that people don't find the source. An image not having a source should also be suspicious, as you should wonder why this person's social media presence is exclusively a 3 day old tumblr blog

When you receive an ask from a blog like this, reporting them for spam or phishing and reporting the PayPal account for fraudulent activity does help get these accounts taken down.

In name of the situation, here are great verified resources to support real people who need help:

Many organizations and gofundmes for Gaza

Verified fundraisers for individuals in Gaza put together by @palestineasdiqa on Instagram and Twitter

Click to donate for free using ad revenue

Participation and political resources for US, UK and Canada

USPCR's toolkit

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shadowfoxsilver · 1 month

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Some tips on how to spot a blog that’s trying to scam you by pretending to be in Palestine:

Check the date of the pinned post if they have one. It likely is only a few hours old at best or a few days old.

Check how many posts the account has and if they’re all just reblogs of a trending post or popular post. Usually scammers reblog just a few then nothing else. Their only original post is the pinned one and maybe a few asks they answered.

Search the contents of their pinned post/aid post and see if it comes up on a real fundraiser site. Scammers tend to steal their info off of real people and real fundraisers hoping no one will notice. They’ll claim their fundraiser is pending but they don’t run or own anything they’re taking from. Some will even steal names to impersonate people.

You’ll only get these asks if you actively post about Palestine or share Palestine related posts. These accounts will often share the same posts then contact you via asks asking you to share their post. They will continue asking even if you tell them you don’t have money. They won’t read your blog so even having a ‘don’t sent donation asks’ in the bio or pinned won’t stop them. They just want you to share their post and won’t take no for an answer.

Often times you’ll get the same ask from entirely different accounts or the ask is tweaked by using parts of another ask. But the post itself will always be the same as the previous account before it was removed for being a scam. These scammers reuse the same exact ask so often searching the ask will pull up past accounts who sent it.

The pfp and images are often stolen from the real fundraiser that the scammers have copied. When you call them out on it, they’ll usually send you hate mail instead of explaining anything. And then block you only to send you the same mutual aid ask from another blog because they think you won’t notice.

If you answer these asks, and know it’s a scam, call out the scammer and link to legitimate fundraisers or useful links to verified charities. This way the scammers ask will be seen if searched and people who see it will find sources for supporting actual people.

Not all mutual aid posts for Palestine is a scam. It’s just suggested to do some research into a brand new account asking you for money. Please support verified charities and fundraisers made by people who have confirmed their legitimacy in some way or have proved they are the person that it was made for. It’s unfortunate these scams are happening, but they do exist.

#mod talks #Palestine #how to spot a scam blog #scam #long post is long

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kyra45 · 7 months

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Keys guide to scam spotting v3

What kind of scams are on tumblr? Quite a lot, actually! As a result, this post will link to posts I’ve made (or by others) that explain what kind of scams are out there. Please be aware these posts are quite long but give as much detail as possible. I’ll add them here as I write them or add ones I have found.

Pet donation scams - Scams that use stolen pet pictures and impersonate the owner.

Donation scams - Scams that use medical emergencies/etc and steal fundraising posts from Facebook/etc.

Romance scams - Romance isn’t always from someone with good intentions they might just want your money.

Commission scams - The high price offered isn’t true, unfortunately, and you’ll not get paid.

Fake check scams - The check isn’t real when they offer to send you support with it.

Mutual aid scams - No you don’t pay someone to share your campaign.

Gift card scams - Not too common but blogs who promise you can win these from a link aren’t legitimate.

Palestine based scams - Sometimes the blog asking you for funds is stealing their content off a legitimate fundraiser for someone in Palestine.

Diabetes and Insulin themed scams - Written by my friend @12percentspider , this post explains how diabetes works and why the person asking you for $300 (claiming they need insulin and are down to their last pen) is a scammer.

#scam #how to spot a scam blog

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adragonofthings · 7 months

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Dragon tip #1

Sometimes random new blogs send you asks to share their pinned pet post. Take caution. These may be scammers. Always check the date of their posts and see if they can answer questions about the pet itself.

#Tips from the dragon #scam #pet donation scam #how to spot a scam blog

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nethervoice · 1 year

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HOW TO SPOT A VO SNAKE OIL SALESMAN

One of my colleagues just sent me an email he got from yet another get-rich-quick “coach” offering a magical formula to instant voice over success for newbies. First of all, this snake oil coach bought the wrong email list because my colleague is a very successful VO and trainer with many years of experience. He’s the LAST person who would need this so-called success formula. So, clue number 1…

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#how to spot a VO snake oil salesman #Nethervoice #Nethervoice blog #Paul Strikwerda #snake oil #snake oil salesman #voice over scam #voice-over #voice-over blog #voiceover #voiceovers

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sagewordstarot · 2 years

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Real Talk Rewind: Before the Beginning

The best place to start is at the beginning. Or in this case, before the beginning. Hello and welcome to TaoCraft Tarot blog and podcast. I’m glad you are here. Picking up where we left off in the Real Talk Rewind blog post and in honor of the Halloween anniversary of re-branding my old Tarot work into TaoCraft Tarot, I’m re-introducing the whole story start to finish. On one hand this is the…

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#ace of swords #how to find a psychic you can trust #how to find a tarot reader you can trust #how to spot a psychic scam #pittsburgh tarot reader #Portfolio #psychic #real talk #Sage Snow #TaoCraft Short Sip Tarot #TaoCraft Tarot Blog #taocraft tarot podcast #tarot #tarot reading #trust your instincts

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 months

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Prison-tech is a scam - and a harbinger of your future

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Here's how the shitty technology adoption curve works: when you want to roll out a new, abusive technology, look for a group of vulnerable people whose complaints are roundly ignored and subject them to your bad idea. Sand the rough edges off on their bodies and lives. Normalize the technological abuse you seek to inflict.

Next: work your way up the privilege gradient. Maybe you start with prisoners, then work your way up to asylum seekers, parolees and mental patients. Then try it on kids and gig workers. Now, college students and blue collar workers. Climb that curve, bit by bit, until you've reached its apex and everyone is living with your shitty technology:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Prisoners, asylum seekers, drug addicts and other marginalized people are the involuntary early adopters of every form of disciplinary technology. They are the leading indicators of the ways that technology will be ruining your life in the future. They are the harbingers of all our technological doom.

Which brings me to Minnesota.

Minnesota is one of the first states make prison phone-calls free. This is a big deal, because prison phone-calls are a big business. Prisoners are literally a captive audience, and the telecommunications sector is populated by sociopaths, bred and trained to spot and exploit abusive monopoly opportunities. As states across America locked up more and more people for longer and longer terms, the cost of operating prisons skyrocketed, even as states slashed taxes on the rich and turned a blind eye to tax evasion.

This presented telco predators with an unbeatable opportunity: they approached state prison operators and offered them a bargain: "Let us take over the telephone service to your carceral facility and we will levy eye-watering per-minute charges on the most desperate people in the world. Their families – struggling with one breadwinner behind bars – will find the money to pay this ransom, and we'll split the profits with you, the cash-strapped, incarceration-happy state government."

This was the opening salvo, and it turned into a fantastic little money-spinner. Prison telco companies and state prison operators were the public-private partnership from hell. Prison-tech companies openly funneled money to state coffers in the form of kickbacks, even as they secretly bribed prison officials to let them gouge their inmates and inmates' families:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/02/mississippi-corrections-corruption-bribery-private-prison-hustle/

As digital technology got cheaper and prison-tech companies got greedier, the low end of the shitty tech adoption curve got a lot more crowded. Prison-tech companies started handing out "free" cheap Android tablets to prisoners, laying the groundwork for the next phase of the scam. Once prisoners had tablets, prisons could get rid of phones altogether and charge prisoners – and their families – even higher rates to place calls right to the prisoner's cell.

Then, prisons could end in-person visits and replace them with sub-skype, postage-stamp-sized videoconferencing, at rates even higher than the voice-call rates. Combine that with a ban on mailing letters to and from prisoners – replaced with a service that charged even higher rates to scan mail sent to prisoners, and then charged prisoners to download the scans – and prison-tech companies could claim to be at the vanguard of prison safety, ending the smuggling of dope-impregnated letters and other contraband into the prison system.

Prison-tech invented some wild shit, like the "digital stamp," a mainstay of industry giant Jpay, which requires prisoners to pay for "stamps" to send or receive a "page" of email. If you're keeping score, you've realized that this is a system where prisoners and their families have to pay for calls, "in-person" visits, handwritten letters, and email.

It goes on: prisons shuttered their libraries and replaced them with ebook stores that charged 2-4 times the prices you'd pay for books on the outside. Prisoners were sold digital music at 200-300% markups relative to, say, iTunes.

Remember, these are prisoners: locked up for years or decades, decades during which their families scraped by with a breadwinner behind bars. Prisoners can earn money, sure – as much as $0.89/hour, doing forced labor for companies that contract with prisons for their workforce:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/

Of course, there's the odd chance for prisoners to make really big bucks – $2-5/day. All they have to do is "volunteer" to fight raging wildfires:

https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-wildfire-california-incarcerated-firefighters-face-dangerous-work-low-pay-and-covid19/

So those $3 digital music tracks are being bought by people earning as little as $0.10/hour. Which makes it especially galling when prisons change prison-tech suppliers, whereupon all that digital music is deleted, wiping prisoners' media collection out – forever (literally, for prisoners serving life terms):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/08/captive-audience-how-floridas-prisons-and-drm-made-113m-worth-prisoners-music

Let's recap: America goes on a prison rampage, locking up ever-larger numbers of people for ever-longer sentences. Once inside, prisoners had their access to friends and family rationed, along with access to books, music, education and communities outside. This is very bad for prisoners – strong ties to people outside is closely tied to successful reentry – but it's great for state budgets, and for wardens, thanks to kickbacks:

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/12/21/family_contact/

Back to Minnesota: when Minnesota became the fourth state in the USA where the state, not prisoners, would pay for prison calls, it seemed like they were finally breaking the vicious cycle in which every dollar ripped off of prisoners' family paid 40 cents to the state treasury:

https://www.kaaltv.com/news/no-cost-phone-calls-for-those-incarcerated-in-minnesota/

But – as Katya Schwenk writes for The Lever – what happened next is "a case study in how prison communication companies and their private equity owners have managed to preserve their symbiotic relationship with state corrections agencies despite reforms — at the major expense of incarcerated people and their families":

https://www.levernews.com/wall-streets-new-prison-scam/

Immediately after the state ended the ransoming of prisoners' phone calls, the private-equity backed prison-tech companies that had dug their mouth-parts into the state's prison jacked up the price of all their other digital services. For example, the price of a digital song in a Minnesota prison just jumped from $1.99 to $2.36 (for prisoners earning as little as $0.25/hour).

As Paul Wright from the Human Rights Defense Center told Schwenk, "The ideal world for the private equity owners of these companies is every prisoner has one of their tablets, and every one of those tablets is hooked up to the bank account of someone outside of prison that they can just drain."

The state's new prison-tech supplier promises to double the amount of kickbacks it pays the state each year, thanks to an aggressive expansion into games, money transfers, and other "services." The perverse incentive isn't hard to spot: the more these prison-tech companies charge, the more kickbacks they pay to the prisons.

The primary prison-tech company for Minnesota's prisons is Viapath (nee Global Tel Link), which pioneered price-gouging on in-prison phone calls. Viapath has spent the past two decades being bought and sold by different private equity firms: Goldman Sachs, Veritas Capital, and now the $46b/year American Securities.

Viapath competes with another private equity-backed prison-tech giant: Aventiv (Securus, Jpay), owned by Platinum Equity. Together, Viapath and Aventiv control 90% of the prison-tech market. These companies have a rap-sheet as long as your arm: bribing wardens, stealing from prisoners and their families, and recording prisoner-attorney calls. But these are the kinds of crimes the state punishes with fines and settlements – not by terminating its contracts with these predators.

These companies continue to flout the law. Minnesota's new free-calls system bans prison-tech companies from paying kickbacks to prisons and prison-officials for telcoms services, so the prison-tech companies have rebranded ebooks, music, and money-transfers as non-communications products, and the kickbacks are bigger than ever.

This is the bottom end of the shitty technology adoption curve. Long before Ubisoft started deleting games that you'd bought a "perpetual license" for, prisoners were having their media ganked by an uncaring corporation that knew it was untouchable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

Revoking your media, charging by the byte for messaging, confiscating things in the name of security and then selling them back to you – these are all tactics that were developed in the prison system, refined, normalized, and then worked up the privilege gradient. Prisoners are living in your technology future. It's just not evenly distributed – yet.

As it happens, prison-tech is at the heart of my next novel, The Bezzle, which comes out on Feb 20. This is a followup to last year's bestselling Red Team Blues, which introduced the world to Marty Hench, a two-fisted, hard-bitten, high-tech forensic accountant who's spent 40 years busting Silicon Valley finance scams:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

In The Bezzle, we travel with Marty back to the mid 2000s (Hench is a kind of tech-scam Zelig and every book is a standalone tale of high-tech ripoffs from a different time and place). Marty's trying to help his old pal Scott Warms, a once-high-flying founder who's fallen prey to California's three-strikes law and is now facing decades in a state pen. As bad as things are, they get worse when the prison starts handing out "free" tablet and closing down the visitation room, the library, and the payphones.

This is an entry to the thing I love most about the Hench novels: the opportunity to turn all this dry, financial skullduggery into high-intensity, high-stakes technothriller plot. For me, Marty Hench is a tool for flensing the scam economy of all its layers of respectability bullshit and exposing the rot at the core.

It's not a coincidence that I've got a book coming out in a week that's about something that's in the news right now. I didn't "predict" this current turn – I observed it. The world comes at you fast and technology news flutters past before you can register it. Luckily, I have a method for capturing this stuff as it happens:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Writing about tech issues that are long-simmering but still in the periphery is a technique I call "predicting the present." It's the technique I used when I wrote Little Brother, about out-of-control state surveillance of the internet. When Snowden revealed the extent of NSA spying in 2013, people acted as though I'd "predicted" the Snowden revelations:

https://www.wired.com/story/his-writing-radicalized-young-hackers-now-he-wants-to-redeem-them/

But Little Brother and Snowden's own heroic decision have a common origin: the brave whistleblower Mark Klein, who walked into EFF's offices in 2006 and revealed that he'd been ordered by his boss at AT&T to install a beam-splitter into the main fiber trunk so that the NSA could illegally wiretap the entire internet:

https://www.eff.org/document/public-unredacted-klein-declaration

Mark Klein inspired me to write Little Brother – but despite national press attention, the Klein revelations didn't put a stop to NSA spying. The NSA was still conducting its lawless surveillance campaign in 2013, when Snowden, disgusted with NSA leadership for lying to Congress under oath, decided to blow the whistle again:

https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73e3d854ad

The assumption that let the NSA get away with mass surveillance was that it would only be weaponized against the people at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve: brown people, mostly in other countries. The Snowden revelations made it clear that these were just the beginning, and sure enough, more than a decade later, we have data-brokers sucking up billions in cop kickbacks to enable warrantless surveillance, while virtually following people to abortion clinics, churches, and protests. Mass surveillance is chugging its way up the shitty tech adoption curve with no sign of stopping.

Like Little Brother, The Bezzle is intended as a kind of virtual flythrough of what life is like further down on that curve – a way for readers who have too much agency to be in the crosshairs of a company like Viapath or Avently right now to wake up before that kind of technology comes for them, and to inspire them to take up the cause of the people further down the curve who are mired in it.

The Bezzle is an intense book, but it's also a very fun story – just like Little Brother. It's a book that lays bare the internal technical workings of so many scams, from multi-level marketing to real-estate investment trusts, from music royalty theft to prison-tech, in the course of an ice-cold revenge plot that keeps twisting to the very last page.

It'll drop in six days. I hope you'll check it out:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

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neechees · 3 months

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Raisedeyebrowemojii Scamming information post

So as some of you know, it's been revealed that @raisedeyebrowemojii was a scammer, and for those of you that don't know, I'm sorry you had to find out this way. This is going to be an information post on raisedeyebrowemojii's scamming, lies, the evidence, and where they stole from, and the debunking of all their claims as comprehensively as possible to help the people they scammed and manipulated get some closure, and hopefully to provide insight on how you might spot them again.

I carried out an investigation on the now confirmed scammer, and now deactivated user @blktransdyke, who deleted within hours of my callout post. On that post I connected blktransdyke as being the same person behind raisedeyebrowemojii due to the information both of them had posted for alleged fundraisers, which you can see in the post here. For a short recap, both blktransdyke and raisedeyebrowemojii "Jay" both had the exact same story of allegedly being trans/homeless/disabled and posted photos of the exact same brown tabby cat named "Trouble", both claiming that it was their "best friend's cat" and raisedeyebrowemojii created a patreon for Trouble the cat, only for me to find that Trouble the cat is a hyperpopular cat vlogging/fanpage with 42K followers on facebook, and both of these blogs stole from this page and neither of them were affiliated with this famous facebook.

Moving on, with some help, ive also found more evidence that raisedeyebrowemojii was a scammer. I know many people were already convinced by the callout post I already did, but I think it's important to debunk a lot of raisedeyebrowemojii's claims due to the fact that so many people thought they were genuine, that they had died, and due to the fact that they stole pretty much every detail of their alleged life from somewhere else, and I can prove it, so I want to clear things up, and maybe allow some people to gain peace in the knowledge that "Jay" did not die, and was never in danger of dying to begin with.

The rest of this post will be under the cut because again, this is going to get long. I encourage everyone who was approached by or donated to raisedeyebrowemojii to reblog to help get the word out, thank you. Image descriptions will be available in alt text.

For starters, raisedeyebrowemojii went by the name "Jay", and on the donation posts of theirs (scams), they used the paypal name "Jay Baldwin", and Jay claimed to be disabled (allegedly they had tourettes, autism, cerebral palsey, were deaf, in a wheelchair, had a terminal kidney disease, and allegedly other undisclosed disabilities), Canadian, that they lived in the city of Toronto (in Ontario, Canada), and a trans lesbian. Screenshots for that below

Misuse of terminology & racefaking

Let's talk about their bio first. I suspect that the scammer behind this blog is neither Black nor Canadian, due to the fact that, as I mentioned in this post, 1. Black Canadians don't really refer to themselves as "African American" as much here in Canada, partly due to the fact that a lot of Black Canadians actually have roots from the Caribbean & not directly from Africa or America, 2. "Jay" claimed to be Canadian but also said they had an uncle & grandparents still living in South Africa, which means they're implying they're either a first or second generation African Canadian immigrant, so why would they call themselves "African American" if they have no national/ethnic ties to America, and they are Canadian? So, like the blktransdyke blog, who i proved is most likely the same person as raisedeyebrowemojii, both of these blogs are using incorrect/strange terminology for the ethnicities they claim to be, thus indicating racefaking and a falsified Nationality.

Falsified Nationality

Here I also have reason to believe this person is not Canadian, or in the very least, did not live in the city of Toronto, or likely the province of Ontario. Partly due to the evidence ive just given above, but also due to the reasons I'm about to give & the connected next point I'll get to soon. For one example, "Jay" made the donation post in the first screenshot i gave where they claimed they were scared they were going to freeze to death, and that they could hardly even type on their phone due to the absolute insane cold temperatures of Toronto.

However, I took a look at the Toronto weather forecast for the day that raisedeyebrowemojii posted that update (February 12th, 2023) and found that the temperature had gotten up to 6°C (or 42.8°F), with very little wind, and it didn't even get below freezing temperatures that day, and only got two degrees below freezing the night before (which is when they claim they were staying in a shelter). Canadians will know that this type of temperature in FEBRUARY is actually very very warm and pleasant. Like, unseasonably, weirdly warm. Screenshot for that below.

Now, for an actual homeless person, being outside in the cold, even if it's warmer than usual, this is still difficult and harsh conditions to live under. However, this is still a large exaggeration from what Raisedeyebrowemojii claimed it was, and youre not very likely to freeze to death in this kind of weather compared to the usual Canadian temperatures. The way "Jay" described it makes me think that it is not a Canadian who made this post, and is someone who was not in Toronto to actually know what temperature it was that day, but just assumed it would be very cold.

Impersonation of the real Jay Baldwin

Thanks to some help (of people whom I will keep anonymous for their safety & as a precaution of the scammer harassing them), i managed to locate the identity of the REAL Jay Baldwin, and was able to concretely find out that this person is who raisedeyebrowemojii was impersonating. So, who is the real Jay Baldwin you ask?

Jay Baldwin is a Black, disabled (who uses a wheelchair and has Cerebral Palsey) nonbinary Canadian and the founder of the private Facebook support group "Disabled, Queer, and Fabulous" with over 1.1K members, and is a student at Carleton university in Ontario, Canada, and this Jay Baldwin has actually been doing really well for themselves, and has gotten pretty famous in the Ottawa area. And, as you can see, the raisedeyebrowemojii "Jay" apparently has a lot in common with THIS Jay Baldwin, including their names, being Black, a disabled wheelchair user with Cerebral palsey, nonbinary, Canadian living in Ontario, and both use they/them pronouns. But let me show you how I know they've been stealing from this person.

One way I can tell that raisedeyebrowemojii definitely was not THIS Jay Baldwin is their faces. On the screenshot to the left is the icon that raisedeyebrowemojii (of allegedly "themselves") used for their blog, taken from the webarchive screenshot of their blog, and to the right is a cropped portrait photo of the real Jay Baldwin, taken from this information page on the official Carleton University website, which also lists most of the information I just listed about the REAL Jay.

Obviously these two people look absolutely nothing alike. And we can tell that raisedeyebrowemojii meant for their scamsona to look like the person on the left, because they also used a photo of another dark-skinned Black person in ANOTHER donation post. So they stole these selfies from a different person altogether, although I haven't yet been able to locate where they'd stolen them.

One of the reasons that raisedeyebrowemojii's lies were so convincing though is that they were stealing or misconstruing some of Jay Baldwin's life experiences almost in real time, and I believe that raisedeyebrowemojii was keeping tabs on Jay in order to harvest their life details. For example, on a Facebook post, Jay Baldwin mentioned the death of their father a few times, but also on June 26th 2022, made the memorial post below about the death of their uncle

and meanwhile, on August 25th 2022, raisedeyebrowemojii ALSO suddenly started saying that their dad died, which you can see on the screenshot of their tumblr profile, which as webarchive screenshot shows, was not there before. While they changed the dates, raisedeyebrowemojii was clearly pulling from the real Jay's life, so it looks like we can see around the time that the dcammer decided to randomly incorporate this into their scamsona. As far as I can find, raisedeyebrowemojii never made a donation post regarding their "Father" and said that he was abusive, so adding this detail from the real Jay's life shows that it was unnecessary except to look more real and to manipulate people into believing them.

In the ways that raisedeyebrowemojii misconstrued things, they also of course constantly used the story that they were either homeless or on the verge of being homeless. Where Jay would post facebook updates of doing very well and being happy in life and even doing & hosting events for disability rights, raisedeyebrowemojii around the same time would post about needing money due to either allegedly starving, of dying, needing medical attention, or being homeless.

Below are screenshots of, in the order that they appear (so we're going chronologically in time that these were posted by both raisedeyebrowemojii and Jay Baldwin respectively) from left to right, raisedeyebrowemojii asking for money on February 16th 2023 talking about being in allegedly horrific conditions, then Jay Baldwin posting a peppy update on facebook, looking very happy and having a drink with the caption "Cheers to life!" on February 22nd, and then another donation scam post by raisedeyebrowemojii begging for money saying they're "on the streets" and "will die", posted on February 26th 2023.

You'll be happy to know that the real Jay Baldwin is not homeless or food insecure, and seems to have had a good relationship with both of their parents and is in an accepting home, unlike what raisedeyebrowemojii claimed THEY had, and claimed they were being abused. Raisedeyebrowemojii likely falsified all that while still impersonating Jay and keeping tabs on them in order to create a false sense of urgency whenever they wanted money at random.

Normally I wouldn't go into this much detail about the people who were stolen from in scams, but I feel like this case in particular it was important to point out where the scammer was pulling from to debunk their lies, but also because the real Jay Baldwin has become quite an iconic figure in their area, and all this information was taken from multiple publicly available sources, and so I can only assume that Jay is comfortable with this personal information being known.

Little to no life details, interests, or personality outside of the impersonating Jay Baldwin, and manipulation

As I'm sure many of you know by now (as ive mentioned it in previous posts, and that some of you currently reading this were victims of the scammer), but raisedeyebrowemojii contacted multiple, predominantly Black users to attempt to befriend them, and they did this in order to appear more legitimate, and most likely so that they had "friends" to call upon should any of their scams have been questioned. We've also seen this with multiple other scammers where a new blog will appear and suddenly start tagging mostly Black users to ask them to (unknowingly) reblog their scam posts.

And as a more famous example, we've seen this with the famed scammer Laura Deramas where she befriended multiple users to get them to stick up for her.

But to get down to the title's point, outside of the life details they were stealing or misconstruing from the real Jay, Raisedeyebrowemojii didn't have much of their own personality or traits, which is common in scams. Say, for example, a scammer will create a scamsona who is a lesbian and loves cats and is making a fake donation post for a sick cat, and so in order to make their blog look more convincing, they will randomly reblog popular posts from tags about cats or lesbianism.

In Raisedeyebrowemojii's case, we had one user mention that while Raisedeyebrowemojii was trying to "befriend" them, Raisedeyebrowemojii would only answer very generic questions asked of them despite the fact that they sent the messages first appearing to try to get to know that user, like answering "I like reading!" Instead of answering what their favorite books are if asked about their interests. Below is a screenshot of that conversation. This user emphasizes that they never got an answer to the last question they asked.

"Kidney disease" and alleged "death"

I stated on my blog that I believe raisedeyebrowemojii randomly said that they were diagnosed with a "terminal kidney disease" (allegedly chronic kidney disease) specifically with the view that they could leave, deactivate, or abandon their blog and then move onto ANOTHER scam blog (and likely this was the blktransdyke blog) without looking suspicious or weird, because then people would just assume they had died, which is exactly what happened.

Raisedeyebrowemojii stopped posting around June 2023, and the blktransdyke blog appeared in early April 2023, which makes me think this is when they started to move to that blog or potentially even another blog we don't yet know about. Funeral scams, or scams where the scammer pretends their persona has "died" in general is not new and is actually pretty common. It's possible that raisedeyebrowemojii was going to (or may still attempt) to return on another blog and pretend to be a family member or "friend" of the raisedeyebrowemojii in order to ask for alleged "funeral money", which we've seen with blogs like the now deleted blog @destrawberry.

But the main reason I think why they stopped posting in specifically June is because that is around the time the real Jay Baldwin was gaining popularity again, doing multiple public events, and was doing very very well, so I think the scammer became aware there was now more of a chance of people discovering their scam. In June, Jay won an award at an LGBT film festival for a documentary they had made ("Supporting Out Selves") and an Academic Hospital wrote a piece on their success, and in August they announced that they teamed up with ASE Community Foundation for Black Canadians with Disabities to host their 3rd student summit in September. You can find evidence of this by googling or by looking at Jay Baldwin's facebook, but of course, please give respect to the real Jay Baldwin & do not pester them.

Conclusion

All in all I hope that this clarifies a lot of things for those of you that were confused by all this, and again, I extend my dearest sympathies to those who donated to raisedeyebrowemojii and were manipulated by them, I know the feeling and I'm so terribly sorry that it's happened to you too. I advise any Black users especially to be very cautious about any new blogs with a donation post up that is new, and this new blog is trying to ask you to reblog their donation post: it's common for scammers to retarget anybody who may have donated to them, talked to them, or even just barely interacted with them before.

I'll put some of raisedeyebrowemojii's old paypals, gfm accounts, etc in either the replies or another reblog, because for now I'm running out of space. If you donated to them at any point, i suggest you report their accounts where you did the donating. And in the mean time, my colleague @kyra45 is taking testimonies on raisedeyebrowemojii, so if you have an experience with this scammer and would like to share that experience with us so we can document this scammer's behavior, please send Kyra an ask.

#raisedeyebrowemojii #scam #donation scam #blktransdyke #donation scammer #scams

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