Apparently I'm a sucker. There's one born every minute they say.

[NeuroTypical]

Huh.  You'd have to explain how MLM translates into fake certifications.  If you took her up on her offer, what would it look like?

(I have 4 personal experiences with MLM people.  They all involved pushing product on the surface.)

[LDSGator]

4 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Huh.  You'd have to explain how MLM translates into fake certifications.  If you took her up on her offer, what would it look like?

(I have 4 personal experiences with MLM people.  They all involved pushing product on the surface.)

I shared her profile with you on FB. Her thread was deleted in the Disney group

[LDSGator]

@NeuroTypical owes me a cola everyone. Confirmed she‘s real

[NeuroTypical]

Yep, @LDSGator looped me in so I could watch it live.   Indeed a real old school MLM person.   Quite an enjoyable experience to see one dumped on their duplicitous head by a black belt in anti-MLM-jitsu.

[mordorbund]

On 2/4/2025 at 2:09 PM, LDSGator said:

The more we talk about scammers and expose them the better we all are. I have much more respect for the person who admits they were scammed and warns everyone about it than someone who can’t swallow their pride and clams up about it. 

I wasn’t going to say anything out of shame, but you’re right. I’m terribly embarrassed but I’ve been scammed. This isn’t one of your minor scams where you might have to buy a new computer — I’m talking about a major scam where I’m out of my life savings. Just so you know I’m serious, I’m talking about $3.5 million.

This was all tied up in a trust to be given to my 2 sons when I died, but now through a series of legal shenanigans I’ve blindly signed it over to a group of charlatans. I’ve spoken to lawyers but they say it’s morally wrong but legally legit. I’ve exhausted every remedy I can think of and I’m at desperation. I can’t just pull the money and put it in another fund because any fund directly tied to me would be theirs as well (this is why I dare not transfer it to my sons now).

The only thing I can think of is if someone unrelated to me is kind enough to let me transfer it to their name. According to the legal documents, you need only hold onto it for three years before transferring it back to my sons (we’ll use different accounts). For your generosity and gel in the matter you may keep $150,000 for yourself.

Your help is appreciated.

*generic “you”, it doesn’t have to be @LDSGator

[mordorbund]

On 2/4/2025 at 2:09 PM, LDSGator said:

The more we talk about scammers and expose them the better we all are. I have much more respect for the person who admits they were scammed and warns everyone about it than someone who can’t swallow their pride and clams up about it. 

I wasn’t going to say anything out of shame, but you’re right. I’m terribly embarrassed but I’ve been scammed. This isn’t one of your minor scams where you might have to buy a new computer — I’m talking about a major scam where I’m out of my life savings. Just so you know I’m serious, I’m talking about $3.5 million.

This was all tied up in a trust to be given to my 2 sons when I died, but now through a series of legal shenanigans I’ve blindly signed it over to a group of charlatans. I’ve spoken to lawyers but they say it’s morally wrong but legally legit. I’ve exhausted every remedy I can think of and I’m at desperation. I can’t just pull the money and put it in another fund because any fund directly tied to me would be theirs as well (this is why I dare not transfer it to my sons now).

The only thing I can think of is if someone unrelated to me is kind enough to let me transfer it to their name. According to the legal documents, you need only hold onto it for three years before transferring it back to my sons (we’ll use different accounts). For your generosity and gel in the matter you may keep $150,000 for yourself.

Your help is appreciated.

*generic “you”, it doesn’t have to be @LDSGator

[mordorbund]

1 minute ago, mordorbund said:

I wasn’t going to say anything out of shame, but you’re right. I’m terribly embarrassed but I’ve been scammed. This isn’t one of your minor scams where you might have to buy a new computer — I’m talking about a major scam where I’m out of my life savings. Just so you know I’m serious, I’m talking about $3.5 million.

This was all tied up in a trust to be given to my 2 sons when I died, but now through a series of legal shenanigans I’ve blindly signed it over to a group of charlatans. I’ve spoken to lawyers but they say it’s morally wrong but legally legit. I’ve exhausted every remedy I can think of and I’m at desperation. I can’t just pull the money and put it in another fund because any fund directly tied to me would be theirs as well (this is why I dare not transfer it to my sons now).

The only thing I can think of is if someone unrelated to me is kind enough to let me transfer it to their name. According to the legal documents, you need only hold onto it for three years before transferring it back to my sons (we’ll use different accounts). For your generosity and gel in the matter you may keep $150,000 for yourself.

Your help is appreciated.

*generic “you”, it doesn’t have to be @LDSGator

Aw great, now some scammer is duplicating my posts! When it rains it pours!

[Carborendum]

8 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

The only thing I can think of is if someone unrelated to me is kind enough to let me transfer it to their name. According to the legal documents, you need only hold onto it for three years before transferring it back to my sons (we’ll use different accounts). For your generosity and gel in the matter you may keep $150,000 for yourself.

Your help is appreciated.

*generic “you”, it doesn’t have to be @LDSGator

Let me guess.  The only way for me to receive *your* money is if I connect my bank account to yours and authorize a transaction?

Or would I have to get a bunch of vouchers that is equal to the funds that you're *definitely* going to send me after you receive the vouchers?

Would you happen to be in Nigeria?

Edited February 5 by Carborendum

[LDSGator]

15 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

I’m talking about $3.5 million.

 Hey, for a guy who worked in the electronics department at wal mart for 20 years you saved up a decent nest egg. 😛 

[mordorbund]

40 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Let me guess.  The only way for me to receive *your* money is if I connect my bank account to yours and authorize a transaction?

Or would I have to get a bunch of vouchers that is equal to the funds that you're *definitely* going to send me after you receive the vouchers?

Would you happen to be in Nigeria?

What are you insinuating?!

[Carborendum]

15 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

What are you insinuating?!

I don't have any idea what you're talking about:

Microsoft's Research Scientists Finally Solved Why Scammers Say They're From Nigeria - Business Insider

[Vort]

Here's one I just got by email:

I didn't immediately spot this as fraudulent, but look at the sender's info:

 

And just lookie what I see when I mouse over the included link (supposedly) to the BYU Alumni Oral History Project:

Grrrrrrr.

[zil2]

56 minutes ago, Vort said:

Here's one I just got by email:

I didn't immediately spot this as fraudulent, but look at the sender's info:

 

And just lookie what I see when I mouse over the included link (supposedly) to the BYU Alumni Oral History Project:

Grrrrrrr.

There's a fair chance that PublishingConcepts.com are a company hired by BYU (you could contact them directly and ask).  As to the mile-long link - I can't see the domain, but those are almost always redirects via a tracker so they can determine how successful their emailing campaign is.  Rather than clicking the link, I always copy and paste the actual URL from the text (if I go at all), and in the browser that I keep locked down like Fort Knox (no scripting allowed, anti-tracking plug-in, etc. etc.).  The following URL goes where it says (unless ThirdHour has started adding tracking to URLs in comments):

https://alumni.byu.edu/oral-history-project

From that page:

Quote

PCI Partnership

BYU has partnered with PCI (Publishing Concepts, Inc.) to produce an Oral History Publication for Brigham Young University. PCI is a family-owned business based in Dallas, TX, with over 100 years of experience publishing directories for educational institutions, fraternities, sororities, and military organizations across the country.

FWIW.

But you are right to be suspicious!

[Vort]

1 minute ago, zil2 said:

FWIW.

But you are right to be suspicious!

Nope, apparently I am not. I'm the example of someone who is too suspicious for his own good. That will be true right up until I fall into some stupid scam, at which point I will simply wish that I was too suspicious for my own good.

[Vort]

Ah, the humliation of being wrong in public. Just got a BYU Alumni postcard in the mail today (you remember the US Mail, right? Paper letters with stamps in the upper right corner?) from Michael Johanson himself. If he's scamming me, he's going to a lot of trouble and expense.

[mordorbund]

22 minutes ago, Vort said:

Ah, the humliation of being wrong in public. Just got a BYU Alumni postcard in the mail today (you remember the US Mail, right? Paper letters with stamps in the upper right corner?) from Michael Johanson himself. If he's scamming me, he's going to a lot of trouble and expense.

Oh yeah. Sorry about that. I guess I should have thought about how this initiative would look in this age of scammers.

Anyway, we’re just collecting histories of where our alumni came from and where they’ve been since graduating. If you don’t want to click on links (understandable), you can just send me the following:

What was your first job after graduating?

What was your childhood address you left to come to BYU?

What was the name of your pet?

What is your mother’s maiden name?

I again thank you for helping with this project.

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

Ah, the humliation of being wrong in public. Just got a BYU Alumni postcard in the mail today (you remember the US Mail, right? Paper letters with stamps in the upper right corner?) from Michael Johanson himself. If he's scamming me, he's going to a lot of trouble and expense.

I was just wondering, if this was legit, why didn't I get one?  Then I remembered that I've gone through great lengths to protect my privacy.  Even my siblings don't know my address.

This is too suspicious for my own good.

[zil2]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

Nope, apparently I am not. I'm the example of someone who is too suspicious for his own good. That will be true right up until I fall into some stupid scam, at which point I will simply wish that I was too suspicious for my own good.

I disagree.  You did all the right things - the email claims to be from BYU, yet the domain is not BYU's.  You could also have looked at the other domains in the header and would have rightly been suspicious about "sparkpostmail.com" with its meaningless letters and numbers in front.  The full header might have held even more suspicious looking servers through which the email passed.

You're also right to not let images load automatically in email.

IMO, it's better to dismiss it as spam than to assume it's OK.  The only thing you did wrong (and even that is only if you're interested in participating in this alumni business) is to not manually go to the URL and / or look up this publishingconcepts.com (not by going to the URL, unless you really have your browser locked down so it can't run scripts), but by doing a web search to see if it looks legit or suspicious.

Would that every person on the planet were as suspicious as you - scammers would have go back to knocking door to door or doing "surveys" in grocery store parking lots.

[zil2]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

you remember the US Mail, right?

A reason to use your fountain pen!

[zil2]

22 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Even my siblings don't know my address.

I've forgotten my own address.    I have to think about it or look it up.  (I blame one of my pen pals in the UK - the one who has my real address rather than my PO box - he keeps getting my address slightly wrong - mixing up the zip code or the house number, or both.  Thankfully, he's never accidentally put an incorrect but otherwise valid address, so the PO are forced to try to figure out what he should have written, and his letters always make it to me. But then I see the house number jumbled and I'm like, "Wait, what's the right order?" )

[NeuroTypical]

16 hours ago, Vort said:

16 hours ago, zil2 said:

But you are right to be suspicious!

Nope, apparently I am not.

One of my family works for a place that has mandatory training on how to not fall for phishing and other kinds of scams.  IT runs tests periodically with emails that mimic a scam email, and whoever clicks the link or otherwise falls for it, gets assigned to additional training.  

And yes, occasionally there's some legitimate email coming from a partner company who isn't as savvy about such things, then everybody reports their email for phishing only to be told no, it's a legitimate email.  

That's the current state of the game.   So don't 2nd guess yourself @Vort, you're applying correct principles in your email skepticism. 

[NeuroTypical]

14 hours ago, zil2 said:

15 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Even my siblings don't know my address.

I've forgotten my own address.    I have to think about it or look it up.  (I blame one of my pen pals in the UK - the one who has my real address rather than my PO box - he keeps getting my address slightly wrong

Heh.  My email address is in the format of [email protected].   There's a [email protected], and I get about an email a month from someone with whom he's trying to do business.  Seems to be a friendly bloke living in the UK.  He travels abroad at least yearly.  Remodeled his home recently and has pretty good taste in furniture.  I'm not oenophilic enough to speak to his taste in wine, but I assume it's superb.

Edited February 7 by NeuroTypical

[zil2]

1 hour ago, NeuroTypical said:

My email address is in the format of [email protected].   There's a [email protected]

Check out this: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#:~:text=to integrated Gmail-,Dots don't matter in Gmail addresses,ll still get that email.

My gmail address has a . in it and when I signed up (in 2011), I got a schpiel to this effect.

[zil2]

Just now, zil2 said:

My gmail address has a . in it and when I signed up (in 2011), I got a schpiel to this effect.

And for some stupid reason, I never thought to test it.  I'm about to send an email to myself without the . in the address....  Ha!  It worked.  Now I'm tempted to use the version with a . in some places and the version without the . in other places, just as a mechanism to distinguish who, if anyone, shares my email address.  (Of course, almost no one knows my gmail address - I've never gotten a drop of spam in it, so this test really won't reveal anything.  Nevermind.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.)

[mirkwood]

2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

One of my family works for a place that has mandatory training on how to not fall for phishing and other kinds of scams.  IT runs tests periodically with emails that mimic a scam email, and whoever clicks the link or otherwise falls for it, gets assigned to additional training.  

And yes, occasionally there's some legitimate email coming from a partner company who isn't as savvy about such things, then everybody reports their email for phishing only to be told no, it's a legitimate email.  

That's the current state of the game.   So don't 2nd guess yourself @Vort, you're applying correct principles in your email skepticism. 

 

We got a mass email telling us to stop marking the "lunch truck schedule" notification email as phishing.