Back in 2021, my husband was scammed out of 2 billion won. Long story short, he purchased a large plot of land (South Korea). However, the land was located in a mountainous area designated as unfit for development, except for military or public use. Under the Forest Conservation Act, the area was virtually undevelopable, as it was meant to be preserved. Police believe that the real estate group subdivided the mountainous land into smaller lots and sold them to over 3,000 individuals, deceiving them by claiming to have insider information about upcoming redevelopment in the area.
Me? Probably the leaflet delivered to my workplace that said “Missing a package? Call this (premium rate) number.”
In retrospect I have no idea what I was thinking by calling it. Gonna blame stress, morning brain and the fact I’d been waiting an unusually long time for an international delivery, but I should have seen the big red flag.
Once I went through proper channels, it turned out the seller hadn’t even got around to shipping it. “Stuck in their system” or something like that. Thankfully that in itself wasn’t a scam (seller was a well-known web store) and my item turned up a week or two later at no extra cost.
Calling the number wasn’t a million pound mistake on my part, but over a handful of similarly gullible individuals, the scammers probably made a few thousand profit over the price of a few leaflets.
Someone else? Probably a slick mobile phone salesman signing an elderly relative up to a contract rather than sticking with pay-as-you-go. The mobile phone companies really don’t like PAYG customers because they’re not a guaranteed constant drip-feed of money.
Said relative is usually pretty sharp when it comes to scams, and frankly it’s not that expensive a contract, but still, I’m annoyed about it.