I've been scammed out of $27K

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How did you manage that? I'm interested, and I wouldn't mind learning from your experience.

I once lost $100 to a friend and that was the last time I ever tried buying anything from someone again. He claimed someone broke into his house and stole his game system and even pop was taken out of their fridge and some of his mother's jewelry was missing. Then he claimed he was going to pay me back and then he claimed 40 bucks he had got taken by his friend who was on his computer and he said she was talking to me confessing he lied to me just to see how stupid I be and then he said "What did she say?" and claimed it was his friend on his computer who was talking to me and he was taking a bubble bath. Well he never paid me back like he promised so I assume he did scan me out.

My husband got scanned out of $322 dollars but only got $200 back so he lost $122. It happened on ebay. That's why I always buy from people who have feedback instead of zero and check their listings before bidding.

I once lost $10 on ebay because someone send me a game that was all busted and it was poorly packaged and the seller wouldn't respond to my emails so I reported her and she deleted the listing so I couldn't leave her negative feedback and I never got my money back and paypal said it couldn't be resolved. I let it go because it was only ten dollars I lost and I never bid from a seller again with zero feedback. So all those nwebies on there won't be getting any of my bids sadly because of that once experiance.

Scams suck. Sadly there are people out there who are willing to pretend to be your friend for a few years before pulling a scam because they figured they have earned your trust. Some people will pretend to be your friend and then pull something on you a few months later or a few weeks later. That's why I never buy from anyone unless it's on a website like ebay.

Oh, dear. You have my sympathy. Losing money for any reason stings. Feeling stupid also stings.

It might help you to feel better if you (if you feel up to it)

1. Write down your recollection of what happened over the few years this person worked to gain your trust.
2. Take your written account & talk to your bank's local management, and ask to be handed on to the bank's fraud team. They may not be able to help you get any of your money back, but it might help them prevent fraud for other customers.
3. Call your local police department (on the business line, not 911), ask to be connected with the fraud team, and describe the events. Again, they may not be able to help you get any money back, but they may be able to stop the fraudster/con artist from hurting any other people. You should also know that your local police department may hand you off to a federal team.
4. If there were mail transactions involved, you may also want to talk to your local postmaster. The Postmasters take mail fraud very very seriously

I don't know if this is appropriate to say, but I'll put it out there anyway: proportionally, internet scams / in real life confidence scams happen more to neurotypical people than to the neurodiverse.

I saw your tweet & hopped over.

And erm I've been scammed IRL & my mother, years ago too.

I'm so sorry to hear that. You have my most heartfelt sympathy.

Sorry to hear about it. That really sucks.

I've lost stuff before, but it must be so much worse to have given it to someone you trusted (2 years for a scam... yeesh).

When you feel up to it, post their details online; there are many sites that keep tabs on known scammers and if you add their name, it'll at least make things a bit harder for them in future.

LizDitz seems to have some good advice.

No way! That's terrible. I hope you find a way to get it back.

Well i guess you really cant trust people over the internet Like you said before you are lucky he/she didnt get more.

Sorry for your loss

Ok, I agree with you.

Based on what you said, my guess is that you were the victim of a Nigerian email scam. They send you an email saying "Help me, I'm a poor rich guy in Nigeria and I need your bank numbers to smuggle a billion trillion quadrillion US dollars out of my country. When I get to the US, I'll let you keep 10% of that." In reality, they just clean out your bank account.

The bottom line is that you should NEVER do any business with a spammer or telemarketer. They are ALL crooks. Honest businesses do not spam or use telemarketers.

No, the person spent 2 years gaining his trust. It wasn't like one of those Nigerian email scams.

Money is money, even though it hurts right now it will come back to you the same way it did from the start. By hard work.

Lesson learned. Now Move on please before this stupid thing eats you up inside.
The INTERNET is not your friend just a provider of different means.

Hope you feel better.

It would be nice if he would post exactly what happened and how the scam worked. At least that way, he will help screw the scammers so that they can't use that scam on other people as easily.

I think it was just a matter of asking for cash, the scammer prolly asked for money and nice as alexptrans is gave it to him/her...

s**t happens, move on.

Never place any of your own possessions into the hands of anyone else for any reason at all unless/until you are at least willing to never again hold those things for yourself.

Thanks for all the replies, guys.

This is what happened:
A few years ago I became interested in learning to trade the Forex (foreign exchange) market. I found a website called Forex Factory, probably one of the largest online communities dedicated to trading. After a few months on that site, I noticed a member (called "jacko") was almost universally praised as one of the best traders around, and he was offering a year of mentorship for the cost of 500 dollars. So after some time I decided to go for it, sent the guy his 500 dollars, and I joined the group of people he was mentoring at that time. He seemed like a really great mentor, and I recouped my initial 500 dollars and then some by following his advice and trades. He would always answer any question I had about trading, and we communicated mostly by e-mail and SMS.

About a year later, he told all members that he was starting a "managed fund". A managed fund is a pool of money traded by the fund manager. So if the fund manager makes a 2 percent profit on a trade, all the people in the fund make a 2 percent profit on their investment. I didn't join the fund at first, but it all looked really legitimate - he would notify us about his trades in advance and there was never any suspicion that he was faking his results. So about half a year later I did join the fund (I wired 27K to the company, which was based in Hong Kong), and for the next year and a half the fund "grew" at about 30-40 percent a year. One time I took about 7 thousand dollars of my own money out of the fund and wired it back to my account, just to see that it was ok. Since there were no problems and I got the money I asked for, I wired it back to the fund. You have to understand that to all of us he was more like a friend - we would e-mail him and SMS him, and he would always answer us kindly and politely.

Well, a couple of weeks ago all the investors got a message saying the company was shutting down and that each investor would be getting back their money in late July - early August. By early August all communications with "jacko" and with his company ceased, the company cell phones could not be reached anymore, and the website went down. That's pretty much it. He hasn't been answering our e-mails ever since. Some people invested a lot more (some even as much as 80-100K).

Here's the thread on Forex Factory where you can learn more, if you want:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... 6&page=748

This links to the first page when people started suspecting something was wrong.

Double post