The Worst Scammer Ever

One of my side hustles is officiating at weddings. I advertise primarily on Craigslist, province of the looney, quirky, and strange, so these events are often small, informal, last-minute affairs. But I truly enjoy it. I get to see nervous, happy couples commit to one another. I get to write a nice ceremony. And I get paid for something that doesn’t really feel like work.

In early February, a woman named KC emailed me to do a very basic ceremony for her – basically just signing the paperwork. She seemed absolutely strapped, so I gave her a great deal – I would meet her and her party at a local deli and do the damn thing for $75, since I was driving that direction anyway.

I showed up at the agreed-upon time, 2 pm, got a cup of coffee, and waited. And waited. Damn me for not insisting on a deposit, I thought. Stupid Craigslist, I thought. At 2:15, I stood up and walked out, texting KC “I left.” The message showed as not delivered. Whatever.

A few minutes later, she texted me. “For some reason, my last message did not go through. I am on my way.”

“I already left,” I replied. “Find someone else.” Part of me had a little twinge. What if I ruined this woman’s chance to get married? Eh. I was already miles away.

“There’s something wrong with my phone,” she said. “I sent you $100 via Apple Pay. Please come back.”*

I blocked her number.

I got to H-Mart and parked my car. I looked at my messages. There was a message from another number.

“Sue, this is HAROLDLYNN. We sent you $100 via Apple Pay. Can you meet us at the audit office.” (In Washington, for some weird reason, you get your marriage paperwork at the County auditor’s office. But KC had assured me she already had their paperwork, which she would have HAD to to get married that day, since there is a 3-day waiting period. None of this was adding up.)

HAROLDLYNN had more to say. “We can send you more money. Please meet us.”**

I blocked HAROLDLYNN’s phone number.

KC texted me from yet another number. These people clearly had a surfeit of phones. “You need to send us our $100 back if you aren’t going to show up.” I blocked that number, too.

I had realized they were likely scammers, even if I wasn’t entirely sure how the scam worked. I looked it up on Reddit when I got home.

It’s def a scam. If you were to pay them a chargeback would immediately occur and you would be out $100 and the $100 you rec’d thru Apple pay would disappear

I looked in my Apple Wallet. Indeed I had $100 from a transaction from a Chime card. I thought it would disappear but it was there the next day, so I reported it to Chime, where the puzzled CSR said “Well, there’s nothing I can do for you.” I had to try hard to make him understand that all I was doing is letting them know about the scam so they could use the info I had – the transaction number, the many phone numbers – to possibly catch the scammer. “Well, I talked to my manager, and there’s nothing I can do for you,” he said. Man, it’s hard to get good help these days.

Last night – almost a month after the original incident, I got this text:

Apparently they sent me a real $100 and now it is mine and not theirs. Haha! Without even trying to, I scammed the scammers.

It strikes me that they spent a LOT of time to try to possibly earn $100 of ill-gotten gains. I hope the find a job, because I don’t think they are cut out for Apple Pay scams. Personally, I wouldn’t mind someone scamming me like this in the future, because that $100 is still in my account.

*I realized later that she had briefly blocked my number, so she could say she couldn’t get in touch with me, so I would leave and she could then text me and pretend to be frantic and send me the $100, probably from a stolen credit card.

**HAROLDLYNN wanted to send me more money so they could get more money back. Their initial plot was foiled when I offered them such a good deal to officiate their wedding.

Whew, this is complicated!