This person friended me from an online game I played asking if I wanted to be paid to be a penpal. I’m familiar with a lot of phishing scams and other sorts of scams but I’ve never seen a scam like this one. What exactly is this person trying to get from me, are they hoping to infect my device with something sinister or are they trying to phish information from me without me knowing it? They seem to put a lotta emphasis on me VIEWING this photo they’re gonna send me and it makes me think that whatever they’re gonna send me must be infected with some sort of trojan. Can someone explain to me what’s going on here?

  • bigkahuna1986@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Depending on the amount and the history of the customer cashing it you may get the funds right away. Probably not for a 1000$ but less then 200 or so. Eventually it will clear and you’ll get boned if it was bad.

    • Thurstylark@lemmy.today
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      2 days ago

      The way I understand it, scammers use the most incapable, podunk banks possible so it takes the most amount of time to fully clear a check, usually hoping that the mark will cash it in and send the scammer a portion of the bad check, so the mark is left with the bag. From the mark’s bank’s pov, the mark has spent more money than they were ever entitled to.

      • froh42@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I find it so weird that parts of the world never moved away from the cheque system. I used my last one mid-90s or so.

        SEPA bank transfers are cheap and real time.

        On top that cheque system is so ripe for fraud.

        • Lumidaub@feddit.org
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          2 days ago

          And then those parts of the world scoff at parts where people don’t use a credit card for every little thing.