27 Hilarious Scams People Have Pulled

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27 Hilarious Scams People Have Pulled

People have been wheelin’ and dealin’ since the beginning of time. Whether it’s the ol’ snake oil scheme or the newer open floor plan start-up, there’s no shortage of grifts throughout history. Someone is likely cooking up a new scam right this second, and podcasters will be tripping over themselves to bring the tale to the airwaves the moment it’s exposed. 

Some scams, though, don’t get the attention they deserve — like the guy who was embezzling money from a Little League team’s funds. Why isn’t his story woven into the tapestry of true-crime docuseries?

It’s certainly not the fault of these Redditors, who have been more than happy to share the most hilarious scams they’ve witnessed go down…

gsxr . 13y I once went 4 years without paying personal property taxes by convincing two counties in MO that I had paid each of them. They then argued over the whole issue, and I got a refund from each of them for the full amount of my personal property. ... 77

funkinthetrunk 13y My uncle, who's made a career out of skipping out on restaurant tabs and getting free electronics, faked his death by sinking a newly bought speed boat and then hiding in the hold of his commercial fishing boat. Не got my grandfather to radio in the Mayday. An entire city's fishing fleet went on search-and-rescue. Не even made the CNN ticker at the bottom of the screen. Uncle's wife collected the insurance money and went on a spending spree - - bought a new Lexus and everything. The cops found my uncle hiding behind the shower curtain in an upstairs bathroom.

momadance . 13y Right after high school a friend of mine hit a pole thus messing up his car. Не didn't have the money to get it fixed and he knew his insurance didn't cover it, but it did cover theft. So he reported the car stolen, hid it in the garage so the cops wouldn't see it. That night at like 4am he had another friend follow him out into the middle of nowhere and he left his car in a ditch. Got a ride home. Two days later he got a call that his car had been found

Huellio 13y I had a friend who worked at gamestop for a few years, and he devised a plan where, when new games were released, he would about once a day keep a receipt for a $60 game and just stick it in his pocket. When someone would come in a few days later to trade in said game, he would give them the cash as a trade in (35-40 bucks I think) but not run it through the system. After the person had left and there was no one else in the store he would then run the game

teester88 13y My ex-best friends dad was the Commissioner of a little league in my home town. Не ended embezzling about $169,000 from the league. Не spent 3 years in prison..... He's a douche ... 71

juken . 13y When I was a kid my buddy and I kept a candy box from a school fundraiser. On the weekends we would go to the dollar store and buy candy bars for 3 for $1 and then go stand in front of Walmart and Target and sell the candy bars for $1 each saying they were for a school fundraiser. ... 67

junkiescience 13y i i made a program on my TI graphing calculator in high school that emulated the memory clear function that teachers would check before exams allowing students with my app to be able to load their calculators with test info and not get caught. Sold it for $10 ... 22

pvtshoebox . 13y A similar scam was discovered at the Pittsburgh Zoo. A man was charging for parking in the zoo's own parking lot for DECADES before anyone realized that he had no affiliation with the zoo. Не just went to their parking lot six days a week and pocketed cash. A year ago, they renovated the parking lot (new lines, I think it was expanded too), and he decided it was time to retire. Now parking is free. ... 89

minus-ex . 1 13y My dad named me after him, so he could use my social instead of his crappy identity. My dad is a douche. My name has since been changed. ... 28

pics-or-didnt-happen . 13y I once printed up a bunch of fake church-charity raffle tickets and got my little cousins to go door-to-door selling them to people. $2 each or 3/$5. Collected enough money to take them to the water park. ... 88

lobsterandi . 9y I was at this bizarre fair type of thing, and I fell for going into the tent which housed the 180 pound man eating chicken. I knew it was going to be cheesy and a likely waste of $2, but I had to go see it anyway. It was a regular man who picked up a plate of fried chicken and started eating it when paying customers came in. I wasn't even mad. ... 1.1k

eraser_dust . 9y Someone called up my parents claiming they've kidnapped me, and they even had a crying girl on the phone. My parents freaked out for a bit until they realized I was still sleeping in my room. My dad decided to troll them by going, Oh thank god! That one was getting expensive, you can keep her. ... 164

mumu_land . 9y This guy faked the discovery of a huge gold deposit in Borneo by sprinkling filings from his wedding ring into a soil sample. Не then set up a little mine and floated it on the US stock exchange. Serious balls. ... 93

ReefOctopus . 13y A friend of mine sold a playstation 3 email address (hotmail) for $1300 before Christmas the year they first came out. Не made the auction look like all of the other auctions for PS3's, but at the bottom he wrote that it was for an email address. Paypal ruled in his favor, and he immediately withdrew the money from the account. ... 51

larrisonw 13y Someone I knew would go into wal-mart, buy an item and place it in his car. Then, he'd take his receipt back inside, shop, pick out the same item again, bring it over to the return center, and return it. ... 11

theshook 9y Was headed to a concert in CLE and found a parking garage. Dude was standing out front and said 20 dollars. Garage was right across from the venue so I agreed, payed him his 20 and he turned and sprinted down the street. Dude didn't work for the parking garage...I couldn't even get mad, just shook my head in awe of the chillness that the dude used to take my 20... ... 749

SheZowRaisedByWolves . . 5y A kid in my math class tried to get me to join the marines (senior year of high school) for a free subway sandwich. НЕ would get the sandwich, not me. It was apparently something his recruiter did. I told him no and he called me a fuckin' asshole then left the room. ... 301

Ohsoeasy . . 8y A friend from childhood asked me to help him move some shelves. I stood him up. Не moved the shelves anyway because I saw his mugshot on the news later that night. Не was going to get me to help him steal without my knowledge. ... 56

this_is_temporary 14y Roughly ten years ago a friend of mind told me how he would submit fake Little League scores to the local newspaper and have them printed in the sports section. That night at dinner, we decided to do something far more elaborate. We wrote up a sports-related story, submitted it as a press release, and the paper printed it nearly verbatim. Ten years later, we've written some of the most insane stories you can think of. They're purposefully over the top, and we go to great lengths to make things as factually inaccurate as possible (we once wrote

backronyms. 14y For a school bake sale, I went around selling brownies, one for a quarter, three for a dollar. Two people caught me. One was a math teacher. ... 32

13y ... I have a friend who failed out of college, but didn't want his parents to find out about it. Не knew that they would check his grades on the internet, so he made a fake website for his university on his parents' computer. Не changed their bookmark from the real university page to the fake one, made them enter in a login and password, and then displayed a phony transcript. The best part was he included working hyperlinks that would take his parents back to the other parts of the real university site. They believed it for

dieukulele . 13y A guy at a big rave party sold 1,000 tickets for a huge secret after-rave party to tourists for 40 or 50 dollars a pop. Description how to get there included. A few hours later, about 1,000 ravers congregated in a quite remote part of the city to find out that there was no rave party. A few hours after that, a happy scammer sat on a plane towards sun and beaches with over 40k of ill-gotten money. ... 1

nickolai21 . 1 13y For those of you that didn't know, The Colorado State capital building has a dome roof. For years an elderly man would collect buckets of rain water that fell off the roof. Finally, the state realized that gold flakes were falling off with the rain water, and started collecting it themselves. ... 2

lemayo . 9y Back when I was in university, I bought a roll of Subway stamps off of eBay. There were something like 1000 stamps for about $75. 8 stamps = 1 6-inch sub, so 1000 stamps = 125 6-inch subs, or 60 cents a sub. It was quite awkward going into the same Subway every day and getting a free sub, but no one ever complained. ... 96

nopantsirl . 9y I used to work in a mall when a chain pretzel shop moved in. They handed out coupons to the employees at the stores near them. They failed to anticipate my cunning and lack of morals. I photocopied those coupons (they didn't have an expiration date on them), and proceeded to use one/day for about 2 years. They had to train new employees how to accept them since they weren't from corporate and didn't have barcodes or expiration dates. I didn't care. I was living the life. 99 cent pretzels all day err day. ... 126

Krimsonmyst . 9y I used to sell my WoW account to various gold selling websites for ~$750, let them have it for a week or so, then I'd lodge a claim with Blizzard that my account was hacked. I would send them photo id to prove I was the original owner, and I'd get the account back. I was only able to do it 3 times though, after that Blizz said that if I didn't put an authenticator on my account they wouldn't help me any more in future. ... 35

ramlag 9y A local Wal-mart was changing locations and had various things marked down to alleviate inventory they'd have to relocate. One such item was the ps2's eye toy. Full retail value of $50, marked down to $15. So I bought one, returned it to another Wal-Mart in the area. Came back with the gift card they gave me ($50 credit), purchased 3 more. Returned them to other wal-marts (20-40 miles from original purchase). Now, loaded with $150 of wal-mart's dime, I bought 9 (tax, I wasn't about to spend anymore money than the initial investment) then returned the items
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