The Alphaville Herald

Op/Ed: Under Cover in a Scam House

by Alphaville Herald on 11/05/04 at 8:58 pm

by Charlize Theron’

We all hate them, they’re greedy, obnoxious, rude, and just plain mean. But whether we like it or not, they’re a part of every TSO city, especially Alphaville. That’s right-scammers. Whether or not you have personally been scammed, most AV citizens all know at least one person who has been a victim of an elusive scam.

I decided it would be interesting to see this from the scammer’s point of view. I already knew what it was like to BE scammed, but what about actually doing the scam? I posed as a scammer’s “helper” …

Scamming can take place in many different creative scenarios. This is what sometimes makes them hard to recognize. One popular scam is the house scam. Lot owners offer a lot (usually a size for sale for a reasonable price. They then make the victim a roomate, and then act like they are going to move out so that the “buyer” can become the new owner. What they do instead is an unimaginab;y cruel act. They kick the victim out of the property, and usually put them on ignore. I know from experience how awful it is to be a victim of these scams, as they usually take large sums of money from the victim. That is just one example of the cold hearted scammers today.

I decided it would be interesting to see this from the scammer’s point of view. I already knew what it was like to BE scammed, but what about actually doing the scam? I posed as a scammer’s “helper” at a scam house (scammer’s helpers pretend to do business with the scammer and then act as a testimonial to get visitors to buy into the scam. This trick is often used when the scammer has a lot of red links with scammer comments, and they want to convince the victim they’re “honest”). Fortunately, no one bought into the scam while I was posing, or I would have felt absolutely terrible. I did receive a message from one disappointed sim who wanted to know why I did it. It made me feel horrible, and if the scammers are human like the rest of us, I’m sure they are sometimes affected by this too. I also came to an important realization: these people are actually con-artists, meaning the people willingly give the money over. Newbies are really the only one’s affected by such scams as these, as older and wiser TSO veterans know better. But I was actually appalled at how, excuse me for saying this, stupid some of these people could be. I mean, it doesn’t make it right to scam, but still, you would think someone would have a little more common sense than to give someone 10k separately, expecting to receive 20k in return (aka “doubling your money”). Anyone who knew about trading would know not to trust someone who does not make the trade on the first interaction. I also realized that some scammers do it for the money, meaning that veteran scammers recruit new scammers and offer them lucrative salaries or other items.

In conclusion, this does not in any way make scamming right. However, I hope it does open the eyes of newbies in danger and to just the Alphaville public in general. I have gotten an exclusive inside look at how the minds of scammers work, and I hope my fellow citisims will use this to their advantage.