My gullible friend lost $75 to a swishing attempt on his Paypal account: Crafty scammer tactics!

callerIDapp_user

Just received a text from +441677423518 stating my PayPal is blocked for "security reasons", apparently I bought something from a website that is flagged as a fraudulent site. They're asking for a $75 "unblock fee" and want me to call +447500936299. 🚫📵 Scammers are getting crafty. When I log into my account it seems all is good. Has anyone else also experienced this?

MorningcoffeeIV

That's a very 1990s type of scam. I thought scammers had gone a little more hi tech than that!

They'll be sending you chain mail next. ...

dunstonh

As mentioned above, that type of scam is an old long running one.  You see variations of it all of the time.

forgotmyname

Ahh lovely pyramid chain mail.... Send $10 to the person on the top of this email and then delete that name and forward it
to 5 or 10 friends... When they send $10 to the new person at the top and forward it again your turn will come around and your
payout is likely to be 5 or 6 figures..

nyermen

forgotmyname said:

Ahh lovely pyramid chain mail.... Send $10 to the person on the top of this email and then delete that name and forward it
to 5 or 10 friends... When they send $10 to the new person at the top and forward it again your turn will come around and your
payout is likely to be 5 or 6 figures..

And yet people really didn't see the issue with it.

I finally convinced a family member (who has a high IQ...) of how it doesn't work by doing the "number of people needed" maths to show them that the 12 layer would be 2.2billion people and so they would need to find more people than exist on the planet...