Hudson
Electron
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2016
- Messages
- 769
- Nebulae
- 4,884
I can't even remember how I met this guy. We played CS together for long enough to work on building a team out of our little circle of friends that played regularly. He's a nice guy and chilled out on discord never letting the pressure get to him. We nearly always had fun, so I was shocked and disappointed to find that someone I thought I knew and would have fun with in future turned out to be so corrupt.
I've seen all sorts of abuses and scams in my time on the internet, but this was far from incidental, and it wasn't obvious to me. This was a group of friends deliberately trying to cheat others out of items and somehow I haden't even noticed. He'd once claimed he'd won big on a CS:GO gambling site, and showed off an inventory of about £250 in value. I never wanted to congratulate him on the winnings because I don't like to encourage gambling, so I wanted to ignore the whole thing.
One of his friends mentioned something about scamming "some kid" to get the items, but it sounded like banter. How could someone so nice be so determined to scam that he'd do it and not be obvious? Several weeks later he ended up asking me to give him a knife, and when I said that I'd have nothing if I gave stuff away to everyone that asked, he said "just give it to me and don't tell anyone" which is what all the beggers say. There was the hint of greed. Minutes later he asked for a +rep comment on his profile.
Why would someone want a +rep comment out of the blue? Everything started clicking in my head, and sure enough when I curiously checked his comments they were full of his friends claiming he buys items for Steam wallet codes. It might be a painfully obvious scam to most, but for the few that fall for it I imagine it's devastating. Imagine if a kid had lost £250 over it? It would probably be everything they had, even if people might say "he deserved it if he's that dumb."
I confronted our mutual friend(yellow), and he admitted that the scammer(red) had scammed before, trying to get another mutual friend(green) to get involved. The scammer himself then mentioned another friend(blue) had suggested he get involved. Reading through all their comments showed that they'd all been in this scheme together leaving fake comments on eachothers profiles at roughly the same dates, with the exception of yellow that seemed uninvolved.
I thought I was a good judge of people. I removed myself from that circle of friends, and after a bit more digging at who else was leaving the comments, and what their comment sections were like, it was obvious that the circle of friends I knew was one chain out of many that were linked. I knew scamming was rampant in games with item economies, but to not notice I was hanging out with someone involved was sobering.
As time goes on I've seen more scams, and have known more and more people that got scammed. It's sad when you see it up-close, and the victims have little to no recourse and obviously no options to insure their items. While I've been careful to avoid daily scam attempts that have come my way(most are obvious, but some are more cunning) I've always had my guard up from having a higher than average value inventory, while I guess most users don't consistently come across scammers and might have to learn the hard way.
I've seen all sorts of abuses and scams in my time on the internet, but this was far from incidental, and it wasn't obvious to me. This was a group of friends deliberately trying to cheat others out of items and somehow I haden't even noticed. He'd once claimed he'd won big on a CS:GO gambling site, and showed off an inventory of about £250 in value. I never wanted to congratulate him on the winnings because I don't like to encourage gambling, so I wanted to ignore the whole thing.
One of his friends mentioned something about scamming "some kid" to get the items, but it sounded like banter. How could someone so nice be so determined to scam that he'd do it and not be obvious? Several weeks later he ended up asking me to give him a knife, and when I said that I'd have nothing if I gave stuff away to everyone that asked, he said "just give it to me and don't tell anyone" which is what all the beggers say. There was the hint of greed. Minutes later he asked for a +rep comment on his profile.
Why would someone want a +rep comment out of the blue? Everything started clicking in my head, and sure enough when I curiously checked his comments they were full of his friends claiming he buys items for Steam wallet codes. It might be a painfully obvious scam to most, but for the few that fall for it I imagine it's devastating. Imagine if a kid had lost £250 over it? It would probably be everything they had, even if people might say "he deserved it if he's that dumb."
I confronted our mutual friend(yellow), and he admitted that the scammer(red) had scammed before, trying to get another mutual friend(green) to get involved. The scammer himself then mentioned another friend(blue) had suggested he get involved. Reading through all their comments showed that they'd all been in this scheme together leaving fake comments on eachothers profiles at roughly the same dates, with the exception of yellow that seemed uninvolved.
I thought I was a good judge of people. I removed myself from that circle of friends, and after a bit more digging at who else was leaving the comments, and what their comment sections were like, it was obvious that the circle of friends I knew was one chain out of many that were linked. I knew scamming was rampant in games with item economies, but to not notice I was hanging out with someone involved was sobering.
As time goes on I've seen more scams, and have known more and more people that got scammed. It's sad when you see it up-close, and the victims have little to no recourse and obviously no options to insure their items. While I've been careful to avoid daily scam attempts that have come my way(most are obvious, but some are more cunning) I've always had my guard up from having a higher than average value inventory, while I guess most users don't consistently come across scammers and might have to learn the hard way.
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