All you need to know about the Trump wing of the Republican party is that there is no bottom.
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From $500 to $3,00 a month? I think you missed some extra zeros there?
Farken hell! That is sleazy!!! Whose ideas was these … abominations?
In very limited fairness I read that a Democrat run PAC has done the ‘anti pattern’ of a small inconspicuous checkbox for recurring donations, but they’ve apparently since removed it, weren’t a major PAC closely tied to anyone, and didn’t threaten to tattle on people who cancelled.
They’re not even trying, are they? tarunmishr3679@gmail.com?
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<voice=Ed McMahan>You are correct, sir! </ voice>
Missed the last zero on that $3,000.
The pre-checked repeating donations are still being used, most recently by Californian gubernatorial candidates Caitlyn Jenner and Doug Ose. And I saw ads recently from the National Republican Congressional Committee that just had said “Trump is back!” with a “5x” on his picture, which is that same implied “if you donate to him through us, we’ll match your donation” tactic.
One guy decided to play both sides. James Kyle Bell had the “Keep America Great Committee” to masquerade as an official Trump campaign PAC, and a “Better Days Lie Ahead” committee for Biden. The $100,000 donated to the latter was returned after being cut off from its online fundraising portal. Bell has pled guilty to one count of wire fraud for the $500,000 he got via KAGC and admitted to deceiving the U.S. government out of over $1 million in phony Paycheck Protection Program loans.
However, the matching donations tactic has been noticed by the Department of Justice. If the match never actually happens, that’s “material misrepresentation”, which sounds like a criminal offense. The big clue is that the companies/organizations using it don’t say where the matching money comes from. It’s just there to add urgency to get you to make the donation.
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I have two phones. Work phone and a private phone.
On my private phone I have a banking app for $bank.
On the company phone, no banking apps.
Recently I received a SMS telling me that I’ve won a voucher from $bank and I need to go visit this URL to claim it.
Ja right. SMS was received on my company phone. I checked the URL out on a Linux machine (on the lab LAN) and it was a phishing website 
So I SMS’ed back “get lost”. Heard nothing from that scammer.
I know it makes you feel better to reply to the text, but it does less than nothing. They send out thousands of similar texts that are only designed to get you to click the link. Nobody ever reads replies. There is no point in it for them.
There was a time when I would take my time to fill in nonsense (swearing and offensive words etc) on phishing websites.
Nowadays I don’t have the energy for that.
According to the clickbait, if I take a science quiz and score 8 out of 10, my IQ is 146. But if I take a general knowledge quiz and score 10/12, my IQ is 142. So a score of 80% means I’m smarter than if I score 83%.
I guess this could be technically correct (the best kind of correct, as you know) since some people might be more inclined towards science. But clickbait counts on not people thinking things through.
More sleazy tactics from National Republican Congressional Committee. Their newest fundraiser message call people traitors for abandoning Trump by not donating to him:
ALERT
You’re a traitor…
You abandoned Trump.We were told you were a tried & true, lifelong patriot. But when Trump said he’d run for President if we took back the House from Nancy Pelosi… You did nothing. Was Trump wrong about you?
This is your final chance to prove your loyalty or be branded a traitor. We’re giving you one final chance to stand with Trump. You only have 17 min >>>
That’s where the text message is abbreviated. It’s also being sent to Democrats.
As a reminder, the NRCC has no connection to the actual Republican Party, so any donations have no guarantee of being sent to Donald Trump or the GOP.
Fact check: the House of Representatives hasn’t been “taken back”. Democrats still have the majority. And, I don’t remember Trump making running for President dependent on that happening because as of yesterday, he has not made any official announcement of any kind. It’s still hints and implications that he might run for President again.
Another reminder: As stated in the message, this is about showing loyalty to one person, Donald Trump. Not about supporting him, not about supporting the Republican Party or anything they stand for, not about supporting the country you live in. Just loyalty to one man who isn’t loyal to anyone except himself.
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Tone deafness is endemic in fund raising. Also apparently their list for this one appears to be more Democrats than Republicans.
I never get these juicy ones. I only get the get out the vote messages. Don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
This one’s more of a public service announcement/deep dive with a little of scammer mocking at the very end.
On October 12, a new cryptocurrency called “SQUID” was launched, basing its name off the Netflix series Squid Game. Over the next three days, trading went from 1 cent to $2.34. It was a “play-to-earn” cryptocurrency. You buy tokens to play in online games to earn more tokens.Many were looking to play an online game of the TV series this month. Buy-in for the first of six rounds would be 456 “Squid” and each round costs more. Winner gets 90% of the entry fees.
This gets covered by the BBC, CNBC and Business Insider, who reported on October 29th it was at $3.05 a token.
That same day, Gizmondo pegs it as a scam, citing the previous crypto scam “Mando”, which took its name from The Mandalorian (and used images from the show on its website). Gizmondo noted spelling and grammar errors on the website and the fact that you could only buy the tokens, but not sell them. The Twitter and Telegram accounts locked out commenting from outsiders.
The article wraps up with this:
The price of SQUID is currently sitting at $4.46, according to Coin Market Cap, higher than other meme-coins like dogecoin which is trading at $0.29. But that doesn’t mean SQUID is actually worth anything. It simply means that a lot of people are about to lose a lot of money when the creators finally make off with all the cash.
But don’t buy this coin, whatever you do. We’d be shocked if the website was still up by Christmas.
Prior to the 29th, the currency had been creeping slowly upwards a few cents at a time. On the evening of the 30th, it suddenly jumped from $17.46 to $26.37 before returning to a steady increase. A half hour before midnight on Halloween, it had hit $38.19. Ten minutes later, it was $88.94. Three hours later at 2:25 a.m, it was $628.33. At 2:35 a.m. on November 1, it peaked at $2,856.64.
While this was happening, people who had invested in it watched as the value started making dramatic increases and they had no way to cash in what they bought. Then they watched it crash.
During the next five minutes, the value of the cryptocurrency plummeted as the creators of Squid sold everything, bottoming it out at $0.0007926 (8/100ths of a cent). The website is gone, all other social media sites are gone. Everything everyone invested disappeared. The scammers got about $2.1 million out of the deal.
(Looking back at this before I save it, I wonder if that $9 bump on October 30th was the scammers testing whatever they were going to use that made the price spike to its final price of almost $3K.)
Another article on CoinMarketCap, the same site you can see the value rise and then fall in 5-minute intervals, points out other signs this was a scam:
-
There were two tokens: Squids and Marbles. Squids were what was being sold and you couldn’t sell after you got them. This was initially thought to be an anti-dumping mechanism. You can only sell Marbles, which were the reward for playing the forthcoming game. (You might have been able to buy Marbles, too.) To get in the game, you ponied up 456 Squid and it only got more expensive from there with each round. A different article said it worked out to paying a half million dollars to even get to the sixth round if you didn’t get knocked out earlier…
(My guess is if they had actually planned on making the game, there would have been something that would make it very hard to win each round, maybe hard enough that no one could win?) -
The restrictions on commenting on Twitter and Telegram only happened a few days prior. Earlier comments were from people pointing out this was a scam. (They were trying to silence those providing warnings.)
-
The Telegram account posts the following regarding the restrictions on Twitter not long before the price started skyrocketing: “Someone is trying to hack our project these days. Not only the Twitter account but also our smart contract. Squid Game Dev does not want to continue running the project as we are depressed from the scammers and is overwhelmed with stress.” It was going to “enter a new stage of community autonomy”, whatever that was supposed to mean.
What it actually did mean is the creators of the scam were prepping their “rugpull”. “Oh noes, somethin’ terribibble bad happened. We’re nopin’ right outta here. Excuse us while we goose the price.”
An article on CryptoPotato, published before the scammers skedaddled, has more red flags:
- Supposed tweets from Elon Musk supporting Squid. (Musk can’t seem to make up his mind whether he supports Bitcoin. Why would Squid even be on his radar?)
- Site used video from the TV series.
- People could not find any records of the employees of the company.
Here's the red flags I spotted in the articles that also confirm this was a scam:
-
In the Gizmondo article, they have a screencap of the timeline from the website with five tasks to be completed in November. Assuming that they are in chronological order rather than “these are the five things we’ll do this month”, the time between beta test and public release for the game is way too short.
-
All of the company employees suspiciously have a first name/first name format. The three obvious ones are Kevin Sam, Christian Abbigail, Lawrence Dan. The other three have less-frequently-used first names as the surname: David Kanny, Mabel Jah and Daniel Jolla.
While Christian was used as a first name for girls in medieval times, it’s more commonly used for boys. By the 18th century, it and Christiana were phased out in favor of Christina. -
For a company that had so many highly-educated people that graduated from universities in the U.S., the website, the social media sites and all materials relating the the game and the cryptocurrency had way too many spelling and grammar mistakes.
So if you made it all the way to the end, here's the mocking bit:
Guys, spelling mistakes are a universal trait of scams. You couldn’t take 15 seconds to paste what you want to say into Microsoft Word or OpenOffice and hit F7 to run spellcheck? Grammar checking takes more work, but at least get the easy giveaways taken care of, mkay?
I’ll spell/grammar check your scam for a small percentage.
#callme
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I’m going to post this verbatim because it’s a great story of shutting a scammer down that is also a very subtle way of mocking them. It also did some good by helping a woman see the kind of relationship she was getting into.
“Set That Red Flag On Fire” from Not Always Right, originally on Reddit.
We had a guy come in last night with his date. Throughout the evening, he was the picture of courtesy and good manners. He complimented me, thanked me every time I came to refresh waters or check on the table, made a point to be forgiving of a kitchen mistake, and was super extra nice. He was the dream customer, really.
I appreciated it but didn’t delude myself that I was the source and figured he was just in a good mood because the date was going well. They were chatting, laughing, having a great time, so I assumed I was an indirect beneficiary.
He was certainly in some kind of celebratory mood because he was sparing no expense. He asked for our highest quality wine, she got our most expensive entree, he ordered one of every appetizer for her to sample when she made a remark that she was having trouble deciding — it was a real feast.
The evening started wrapping up and I got their check.
Me: “Together or separate checks?”
The woman started to say, “Separate,” but he made a big deal of saying:
Man: “Oh, are you kidding? Together, definitely together. You never have to pay when you’re with me, babe.”
And so on and so forth. Then, he slid me a credit card. I got everything sorted and brought out the receipt. He filled it out and it came to $289.00 total. He didn’t even blink and made a big show of leaving a HUNDRED-DOLLAR TIP. He thanked me for my service and emphasized what a lovely night they’d had.
Of course, a tip that size is exceptional, so I thanked him profusely.
Man: “There’s no need to thank me! Waitstaff are so underappreciated. Just think of this as a stand-in for all the ingrates who don’t treat you right. Don’t plan to tip, don’t plan to eat out, you know?”
He was looking at the mesmerized girl the whole time and not giving me a glance. I couldn’t care less where he was looking; I was looking at the upcoming hundred bucks. I thanked him again and said I hoped to see them back soon, and that was that.
He helped her into her coat and off they went. Great night, I was riding high.
About ninety seconds later, he was back in the door, without her, going, “I think left my—” Then, when the door shut, he looked to make sure his date was out of earshot, and he turned to address me without the slightest shade of shame or embarrassment.
Man: “Mark the tip down to twenty bucks, hun. I was just playing it up for my date. You understand.”
And he turned to go.
Uh… I understood, but not how he hoped I would. But I couldn’t make a scene in the middle of work — that’s not my place — so I just repeated, in order to give his conscience a chance to sink in:
Me: “Okay, sir. You’d like to amend your tip from one hundred dollars to twenty dollars. Is that correct?”
And even though I didn’t show a hint of displeasure in my voice he shot back, extremely hostile:
Man: “Yes, and if I see a cent over the twenty on there, I’m going to dispute the whole meal with my credit vendor, so don’t try to pull anything.”
The most frustrating part of this for me was not even going from an over 30% tip to under 10%, but rather that this poor girl was being strung along with no idea of who the guy was behind her back. It was extremely manipulative of him, which is a major red flag.
I’ve had my fair share of toxic relationships in the past and really wish someone had pulled the blinders off my eyes, so I desperately wanted to do something to alert this girl to the trick the guy had pulled, hoping it would be a catalyst to her questioning his other actions. But, again, I was at work and that just wasn’t my place. So, I altered the bill and that was that.
Then, just in time, something occurred to me, and I darted outside, hoping to catch them in the parking lot. I got lucky. They’d parked on the street, instead, and he was still dealing with the parking meter. I flagged him down and rushed across the street, nearly stumbling into traffic in my haste for a delicious moment.
His date was already in the car but rolled down her window, since no one expects the waitress to follow you out to your car waving her arms like a crazy person.
I made it across and said, more than loudly enough for her to hear:
Me: “Sir, we amended your tip from $100 down to $20 as you requested, but you’ll actually need to fill out a different receipt reflecting your new total for our records. Your old receipt still has your original tip of $100 written on it, but since you just came in and asked us to charge you $20, instead, we can’t have a discrepancy in our records. I hope you understand. This is just a bookkeeping regulation that goes way above me. It has nothing to do with your retroactively downgrading your tip from $20 to $100; we’re just glad you enjoyed your evening.”
His jaw was on the floor. He tried to pretend as though he didn’t know what I was talking about, trying to give me some line about:
Man: “I think you’re after someone else; I only came back because I forgot my keys.”
But I would not let it rest.
The more he played dumb the more I repeated versions of, “You wanted to change your tip from $100 down to $20, so you came back in,” and on and on.
So we went back and forth for a few more seconds until, finally, he said:
Man: “Okay, whatever. Uh, sorry for the miscommunication. If you need me to fill out a new receipt, I can.”
Me, totally even-keeled: “You only need to fill out a new receipt if you want to change your tip from $100 down to $20.”
And I’m guessing he didn’t have the money in his account because… he did it. He filled out the new receipt. His girlfriend was visibly shocked, and the man was staring daggers through me; I could feel the rage emanating off him.
It was vicariously quite satisfying in place of the other toxic men I never did get that confrontation with. And all the bad tippers — ironically, the exact kind he had made a righteous speech decrying just a few minutes beforehand.
And then off they drove, I’m sure never to patronize our restaurant again, but hopefully, never to go out together again, either, which would make it totally worth it.
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Excellent, and good for her to do that.
This just in on my work whatsapp :
I do know my dad’s in the early 70’s, but if it was him, family would have phoned me on my private cellphone.
As for other families, our surname is quite… unique and there’s very few people with the same surname around in this part of the world.
I’m so in the mood of replying to that email with the whatsapp message as a quote, and a “Sure. Do tell me what is my surname.” Etc.
But I’m not in the mood for retaliating attacks.
Wonder how many people fell for that.
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I just hope the guy didn’t take it out on his girlfriend.
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Yeah. Me too.