How low can you go?

When doing interviews, I’m often asked about the worst scam or scammer I’ve seen. Over time, that has changed due to having seen the scammers reach even lower lows. Let’s look at a few that I’ve seen over the years, starting with the very first “low” scam I experienced.

Noma is a horrendous disease that eats at a person’s mouth and face. The images of people suffering from it are both hideous and heartbreaking. A scammer pretended to be a noma charity and sent out emails asking for a $1000 donation to help rebuild a child’s face. They even had a link to a genuine noma charity, who was informed and put a warning about the scam on their site.

“Recovery scams” are a particularly nasty scam, where a scammer will message a scam victim claiming to be law enforcement and able to get their money back. In reality it’s the same scammer coming in for another attempt to scam the person. The person may already be left with nothing and desperate after their first scam. That doesn’t matter to the scammer, so long as they get some more money.

People have taken their own lives after being sextorted, yet some scammers will use that fact as part of their threats to the person. They will say things like “If you don’t send the money I’m going to release your video, make you famous and you may as well kill yourself like Daniel Perry.”

Many years ago we were in a call with a scammer. He was told that the money we were about to send was needed for life saving medication for the person’s son and he would die if he didn’t get it. The scammer cheerfully promised the money would be back within 2 days. This was despite knowing that if they took the money, a small child would die.

Recently I had a scammer claiming to be looking for someone to distribute Jeffrey Epstein’s millions to charities.

Also recently, I had a scammer claim “This fund belongs to our Late Costumer Mr. Zhang Zhaoyun from China who died without a Will after being infected on the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship with his wife and daughter with { Covid-19 } Coronavirus 5 months ago”.

Cameroonian scammers create sites to sell nonexistent N95 masks and PPE, but they also create sites to sell nonexistent “Suicide” pills to those who feel their quality of life is so bad the best option is to end it. A person who sends money for them will never receive them, but will receive blackmail threats from the scammer over the fact they tried to buy illegal medication.

Which one do you feel is the lowest?