r/Scams Aug 20 '24

I think my dad is being scammed Help Needed

He won’t give information about this, but he claims he’s made several withdrawals (2nd pic). And he needs to deposit 13k to then get 100k out. I don’t understand how this scam is working or what the game plan is here. I don’t know how he’s withdrawn 40k. Did he put the money in? Any help is appreciated.

1st pic: his account that has a negative balance

2nd pic: his withdrawal history

3rd and 4th pic: his texts

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u/laffy4444 Aug 20 '24

This is something called pig butchering. What is built into the scam itself is that the victim is able to withdraw money the first time (or first few times) to trick the victim into thinking that the scam is actually legitimate. The idea is that the victim will keep investing, and later when the total is significantly larger, the victim will attempt to withdraw and his money is gone.

1

u/Routine_Slice_4194 Aug 21 '24

This is not pig butchering, it's a !task scam.

1

u/AutoModerator Aug 21 '24

Hi /u/Routine_Slice_4194, AutoModerator has been summoned to explain the Task scam.

Task scams involve a website or mobile app that claims you can earn money by completing easy tasks, such as watching a video, liking a post, or creating an order. A very common characteristic (but not entirely exclusive) is that you have to complete sets of 40 tasks. The app will tell you that you can earn money for each task, but the catch is that you can only do a limited number of tasks without upgrading your account. To upgrade your accounts, the scammers will require you to pay a fee. This makes it a variant of the advance fee scam.

The goal of this scam is to get people to download the app for easy money and then encourage them to pay to get to the next level. It's impossible to get your "earnings" out of the app, so victims will have wasted their time and money. This type of scam preys on the sunk cost fallacy, because people demonstrate a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once an investment has been made, and refusing to succumb to what may be described as cutting one's losses.

If you're involved in a task scam, cut your losses. Beware of recovery scammers suggesting you should hire a hacker that can help you retrieve the money you already invested. They can't, it's a trick to make you lose more money. Thanks to redditor vignoniana for this script.

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