Scammers Now Pretending To Be Deaf

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What kind of lowlife scumbag would pretend to be deaf to scam someone? This is an age old "advance fee" scam with a new twist.

He recently received three odd phone calls from prospective customers—deaf people using a relay service—wanting to place a catering order for a party of about 100 people using a credit card. Oh, and even though the party is three weeks out, could his business send $956 to the party planner who will be picking up the food, even though the party is a few weeks out?
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I think they used the relay service, since the nigerian accent would likely have been a tip-off to a scam.
 
Maybe those same lowlife scumbags who decided Netflix doesn't need subtitles!!!!
 
They have been doing this for a while. They call here and ask for bulk laptops and for us to forward the extra from the check to their shipper.
 
Man how many warning signs do we really need to completely block Africa from the rest of the internet?

I kid I kid!... well ok maybe a little bit.

That said, yeah deaf people scam... like every time some "deaf" person hands you a card with some sign language on it that asks for money...
 
This is NOT a new scam.

I've been getting phony Relay call scams for years now. It really reached a peak several years ago then the phone companies put new rules in place restricting Relay use. It took forever and tech businesses like mine were getting hammered by these for quite a while.

There was I think around a 3-4 year period where we apologized but refused to accept any relay calls because 95% of them were scams and it takes 20-30 minutes to figure it out.

I even remember when it got really bad, the telco operator would tell me privately, even though they were not supposed to talk to me or they could lose their job, that the call was likely a scam and that they've been putting these jerks through all day long.

This stuff is really sick.
 
Yeah, because being deaf is really a handicap :rolleyes: It doesn't prevent you from doing anything. Most scams just play on stupid people and shouldn't be illegal. Life itself is a big scam.
 
ramicio said:
Yeah, because being deaf is really a handicap :rolleyes: It doesn't prevent you from doing anything. Most scams just play on stupid people and shouldn't be illegal. Life itself is a big scam.
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If you were blind, I'd love to be there to remind you that it isn't a handicap, and if you become deaf at the same time, i'll give you the biography of Helen Keller in Braille to help you get through your transition.

Don't worry buddy, I'll be there for you.
 
DyNamiC. said:
They have been doing this for a while. They call here and ask for bulk laptops and for us to forward the extra from the check to their shipper.
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This, I had to deal with a lot of this crap when I worked a used hardware company 6-7 years ago. I think in 4 years all of the relay calls we got were scams.
 
I use a relay service, www.sprintip.com, and I use that to help me make calls I otherwise wouldn't be able to make. I don't need to use it often at all. I don't really have any interest in VRC, since I can type over 100 words a minute and still get my point across in real time.

This isn't the first time these scams have happened, they've been happening for years. People have posed as disabled individuals to get alms way back in the streets of Jerusalem while Jesus Christ was still walking the earth.

So, like I said, nothing new, another day, another scam.
 
Most of life relies on sight. Being blind is totally different and actually a handicap. Blind people can NEVER do anything that require hand/eye coordination. Any coordination they have is positional memory. Sure, there are some "handicapable" people out there, but they are still not accomplishing what normal people can. It's just another quite disgusting PC euphemism to BS cripples into thinking because they change the name of something to sound better it changes the condition itself. Kudos to the people who have disabilities who choose not to use PC terms.
 
Advil said:
This is NOT a new scam.

I've been getting phony Relay call scams for years now. It really reached a peak several years ago then the phone companies put new rules in place restricting Relay use. It took forever and tech businesses like mine were getting hammered by these for quite a while.

There was I think around a 3-4 year period where we apologized but refused to accept any relay calls because 95% of them were scams and it takes 20-30 minutes to figure it out.

I even remember when it got really bad, the telco operator would tell me privately, even though they were not supposed to talk to me or they could lose their job, that the call was likely a scam and that they've been putting these jerks through all day long.

This stuff is really sick.
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Yeah, I ran into this over a decade ago, and was told at the time that it was a fairly old scam even then. The operators are required to relay ONLY the words that the originator types, but tone of voice can say a lot.
 
I thought this wasd gonna be about those ppl that hand out little pencils or fliers that say "I'm deaf, when I come back to collect this <item> please give me money".
 
ramicio said:
Yeah, because being deaf is really a handicap :rolleyes: It doesn't prevent you from doing anything. Most scams just play on stupid people and shouldn't be illegal. Life itself is a big scam.
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I want you to wear a pair of earmuffs for a few days, then tell me being deaf isn't a handicap.
 
westrock2000 said:
I thought this wasd gonna be about those ppl that hand out little pencils or fliers that say "I'm deaf, when I come back to collect this <item> please give me money".
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Yeah I run into those people all the time. Oddly enough, when I tell them to fuck off their hearing always comes back.
 
These scammers are disgusting. There are truly deaf people who really need the relay service, but the first thing on anyone's mind when they get a relay call is that they're statistically likely to be a fraudster. Life's already hard enough when you're deaf without criminals making people think you're a fraudster.
 
AT&T partnered with AIM a little while ago to provide services for the Deaf (AIM Name: ATTRelay) which you have to be verified after a certain period of time. Nonetheless it's still easy to get around by registering with a new name on AIM. The Federal Government has been changing some rules regarding the use of relay services in order to crack down on fraudulent transactions from what I could tell.
 
Also the frustrating thing is sometimes when I make a call and I get hanged up on when they get clued in that it's a relay call. I keep calling them over and over and have to say "LOOK! STOP HANGING UP ON ME" "Oh I'm sorry, I thought it was one of those scammers". So it's not only affecting people in general, it's also hindering communications from actual deaf people.
 
another point for 'it has been going on for ages'

I've received several calls over the years... all of them scammers, unless deaf people have a tremendous appetite for large quantities of laptops.
 
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