“It is really easy, You can get it at the store. CVS, Grocery stores, Target, Walgreens, Walmart, best buy, Publix, Giant, etc sell Google play gift cards. They come with different denominations. I need $200 worth of Google play gift cards. Buy (2)$100 denomination. Once you purchase them, carefully scratch the back of each card to reveal the pin. Send the pin scratched from each card to me via this email, or maybe take a picture of the scratched cards and have it emailed to me, I will forward it to her. It is easier that way. I will refund.

Thank you.”

Needless to say, i immediately blocked that email address and got mad at myself for momentarily believing it was from my friend. I think I didn’t get suspicious right away because she is so nutty. I did send her a message via FB saying her email had been hacked. I thought I was beyond falling for this carp.

Glad you didn't fall for it, but geez. If there is ever a question, I click on the email name to see if it's really from the person.

Yikes.. they sure are getting crafty.. and brazen.

Allison, i did click on the name. The first email was from her address but the second was from one that was very similar to hers, but had a couple extra letters. I agree that clicking on the sender’s name is a good idea when things look a little suspicious.

Uhoh. I just emailed a college friend with whom I have not been in touch since we left school (ummm...48 years ago). I had found a note from her that I had saved from when we were in France and which referenced my darling French copain, sigh. She emailed back and then I sent a photo of the note. I wonder if she thinks I am a wacko trying to scam her. Haha.

Probably, Cyn!

Yeah, since the first email was from her legitimate address, I'm sure she was hacked. You said she's kind of nutty -- maybe she's terrible with her passwords and phishing on her end.

Seattle, i would not be at all surprised. Even her FB page is public.

A relative had this happen to her last January. She sent a massive e-mail saying that her account had been hacked, and to ignore any requests for money. It wasn’t until a few days later I received the scam request for the Google cards. Besides being very embarrassed, and doing lots of work to solve the problem, she was really upset to lose her AOL account.

We had received a scam from her e-mail years before, when the common ruse was being stranded somewhere on vacation. We knew that she and her husband were in France, but staying at their farm house that they owned with others in a small village where they had numerous friends. We ignored the request.

Oh my goodness, ded.

Similar story with my friend's mom.. On the day of a funeral for an old friend, my friend's elderly mom received an email from what appeared to be the daughter of the deceased. The daughter said something along the same lines; family crisis, need gift cards for the caretakers, etc. My friend's mom didn't want to call to confirm on the day of the funeral. Needless to say, she fell for it and was out $500 and her dignity (her words).

It was a perfect storm for absolutely crappy behavior.

My 83 yr old dad recently had someone try the phone call scam where the guy on the other end claims to be the grandson who is in a jam and needs money. When my dad asked him his name the guy proceeded to try an make my dad feel foolish for not remembering his favorite grandsons name. My dad hung up luckily.

My son’s gf’s mother went as far as to buy the gift cards after getting some scam phone call. Fortunately the checker at the store questioned her about why she was buying them and stopped her from sending the info to the scammer. She still was stuck with a bunch of gift cards, though.

Another time my very elderly mom got a call saying my older son was in jail and she should send money immediately. She wrote down the phone number and ” case number”. Thank goodness she told my younger son, who clued her in to what was going on. She wouldn’tntell me because she didn’t want me to know my son was in jail! we all got a good laugh out of it , especially older son.

I guess these guys just keep trying until they find a sucker

My Mom got a phone call around Thanksgiving one year saying her grandson was in some island jail and he needed $$ to get out and to buy iTune cards. She fell for it for thou$and$ even though the store employees and bank employees tried to stop her. Long story short, it got resolved with a lot of work.

omg, my mother will be falling for these scams next. She keeps getting sucked in to the mail and phonecalls telling her that she's won something ($500 in gift certs, a new car, etc) and all she needs to do is give them all of her personal info and pay some fee for processing. sigh.

My aunt fell for the gift card scam last year. After she bought the gift cards, she called me, suddenly realizing it might be a scam. I assured her it was a scam! I don't recall what she did with the gift cards, I suggested she ask her DIL to sell them.

I was at my father's house -- twice! -- when he got the "grandparent scam" calls. He always put the phone on speaker, so I heard every word. I sent him an message from the police department and from AARP explaining the scam, to let him know it really wasn't his grandson calling.

Yes, I got a fake e-mail with a legit address from a casual friend. It said she needed some type of quick financial aide due to some hold up etc. Of course she was the kind of person who would be good for repaying the loan, but NO ONE should or is likely to send you an e-mail asking for financial help, even something small. E-mail is a bad, bad idea for that. So whether it was from her or not, I was not going to help with that kind of inquiry. You should never reply to any e-mails, even from legit sources, that ask you for any type of personal or financial information. ONLY if you know the e-mail is coming and have made arrangements to get it and respond in advance. Even so, it should be encrypted. And never credit card or bank card stuff. If I get something from a financial institution, it is going to send me to a site where I log in . . . and other security features.

Right after my mom died and I posted some eulogy type things about her online, I received an e-mail AT WORK from someone claiming they had found a book of poetry in a used bookstore in Ann Arbor with my mother's name in it, and would I like it. There were several things about this e-mail that touched on things that could have been a reality for my mom. She was an English major in college and she loved poetry. She went to graduate school for library science at the University of Michigan, (which is in Ann Arbor) and she always put her name in her books. However, when she was in graduate school it was her maiden name, not married one. But the e-mail didn't say what the name was, just that it was my Mom's name.

My smell-o-meter was activated for a couple of reason. Why are you contacting me at work about this personal thing? Could it be that I wrote a eulogy in our organization's newsletter recently, talking about my mother's love of literature (I was asked and encouraged to do this by my boss, and it was relevant and appropriate because I was writing in context about legacies . . . ) This didn't get wide circulation, but it was public.

Second, they didn't type/state her name, just said it had my mother's name. Third, if my Mom got rid of a book, she didn't want it anymore and neither did I. I have dozens of books, many poetry, with my mother's name in them. If she had lost a treasured poetry book, she was a librarian, she could and would have easily replaced it. So no matter what, I didn't want or need contact with this person. I never replied. I was at first touched when I got the e-mail but after a few seconds I was horrified at the thought that someone would try a scam like that at a time like that.

Based on that and some of the letters described here, it seems that there are programs that can scan the web and find key words that are tailored specifically to you, not unlike the way all the other social and commercial web sites are mining whatever it is you type for key words and phrases to use in their sophisticated marketing programs. Scammers now have much of the same resources available to them.

So beware, you may get some type of e-mail just by participating in this thread . . .

I’ve gotten plenty of emails from cousins and friends who are stranded in Europe somewhere, lost their wallet, and could I send money to some . … I don’t evenknow anymore. I don’t read them after the first two lines. These ar NOT people who would ask me for that kind of help. Oh, and forget about the Nigerian prince scam.

Here’s another. I was in line at the bank. the older gentleman in front of me was taking out $400 cash and he was chatty with the teller. Seems he had missed a jury summons and this was the fine he had to pay, by buying a Visa card at the drugstore across the street with the cash. I couldn’t help but overhear. I signaled to the teller, she understood, and gently tried to indicate to the gentleman to really consider the situation, but he was a fine upstanding citizen who was willing to pay his ”fine”. When it was my turn, the teller agreed with me that it was a scam but there is really only so much she can do, she certainly can’t stop him from taking out his own money, and he was pretty insistent. Well, a few days later I was in, and she told me he had come back to thank her for trying to warn him, and said the cashier at the drugstore told him that it was a scam, showed him notices the store had from the police department to be on the lookout for such customer-victims.

The police do include mentions of all these scams from time to time in the city’s quarterly newsletter. But then people forget, and of course there is always a new scam going.

In a tangentally related note, I was actually ARRESTED for failure to return a jury card. The first one I got listing the penalties I would pay I thought was a scam. The second time I got the warning note, I was in the process of moving to another county, so ignored it. A year later, I got stopped for having a broken turn signal, and while running my driver's license, the policeman found the record stated that I had not returned my jury card and he promptly arrested me. Handcuffed me right in the middle of the street and shoved me into the back of the squad car. And when I expressed concern about what was going to happen to my purse since I couldn't carry it being handcuffed (it contained my wallet, car keys etc.) he told me not to try to resist arrest. I am NOT making this up or exaggerating! When I was being booked for this absurdity, the desk officer told me that while arrest was an option, it was rarely exercised, but that they were "cracking down" on this offense. I had to walk back to my car from the police station and I barely made it to work on time for a meeting.

Then I had to go to court, and I was terrified that I would have to pay a big fine for not returning the card, as was stated on the warning note. I brought along all kinds of proof that I no longer lived in the county and proof of when I had moved. The judge never asked for it. I told him that the reason I didn't fill out the card is I had moved to another adjacent county. He said, "You were arrested??!!" and then promptly banged his gavel and said, "Case dismissed." Even if I had to pay a fine because I still lived in the county, this would not have resulted in any type of record, so it was pure police theater.

And I was a late middle aged white woman on her way to a meeting at her office. So yeah, police sometimes do attempt to escalate interactions with folks during minor traffic stops. Even the booking officer rolled his eyes at his comrade when he heard what I was being booked for, but that sure wasn't going to make any difference. He muttered that last bit about it being "discretionary" after his colleague left.

Another note of caution. I was just clearing out my spam folder and I got ANOTHER note from one of my late mother's best friends, with whom she shared many activities including travel. I have several nice photos of her with my mom. The note said, "I thought you would remember the folks in this photo." Boy, I'd sure love to see another photo of my dear departed mother with her friends. But again, I have several already . . . looking at the e-mail address more closely, although my mom's friend's name is at the head, the rest of the e-mail address is pure rotten fish. Of course this last one was the second note I had received like this, but again chilling. Chilling because the ONLY time I have ever corresponded with this woman by e-mail was to inform her of my mother's death (in 2015!) because she was in FL at the time. So the scammer somehow gained access to the content of one of either my or her previous e-mails going back seven years.

Pink, I never knew you were such a bad-ass! Getting cuffed in broad daylight because you are so dangerous. Wow!! [snicker]