Another Scam To Look Out For That Happened To My Brother (he Almost Lost Nearly £400 But Luckily Didn’t

another scam to look out for that happened to my brother (he almost lost nearly £400 but luckily didn’t have it on him at the time, otherwise he would have lost it):

somebody messaged my brother on discord, saying that they had accidentally reported his steam account. he had his steam account linked to his discord, so people could see it easily, and he shared a server with this person.

he spoke with them and they sent him a screenshot of a steam page where they had apparently messaged steam support and steam apparently said that they couldn’t alert my brother as it concerned legal issues such as impersonation and scamming. now. looking into these screenshots, there were some obvious grammar and spelling issues - but my brother was panicked and skim reads, so he missed them.

my brother didn’t check his steam account to see if steam had alerted him of anything and to see if he could still access it. he just signed out, no questions asked about it.

this person put him in contact with a steam ‘support bot’ on discord, and the gist of it was, he had to pay half of his steam account value to prove it was him, and over the time that he’s owned his account, he’s spent almost £800, so he was being asked to pay almost £400. he was told that he had 2 hours to pay this. he only realised it was a scam after the account name changed and he reached out to our mother to ask for support and advice.

they ended up stealing his account as he had signed out after adding stuff such as a phone number. he got it back in the end after reaching out to steam.

a good indicator that it was a scam: it was talking about federal law. we live in england.

screenshots from him are below, i’ve just censored his accounts.

Hey guys let me tell you about advance fee scams

I hope y'all are familiar with these in this day and age, especially my artists out there, because they're incredibly common.

About half an hour ago I posted a drawing and tagged it #artists on tumblr, and very quickly received this comment.

My scam radar went off immediately, due to the generic blog name and lack of any emotion in the comment, but I decided it might be an entertaining venture so I dmed them. They asked for a drawing "of these", and sent me a random selfie. I got the details and told them it would be $15, and they promptly offered me $300. At this point I know it's a scam, but I play along for funsies and give them my paypal. Shortly, they send me this image for "confirmation" (I blocked out my email)

And they began to insist that I checked my email. I looked in my spam folder and found the following email.

This is fake. This is not a thing. And the "you're to refund the $200.00 back" is the scam. They send vaguely official-looking emails at you to "prove" that they sent you the money, then have you send them $200 (or however much the scam is for). Then, surprise surprise, you're out $200.

I continued to play along for a bit, and in the second email "Paypal" told me that I had to refund the $200 before they could "credit the $300 to my account", along with these lovely threats.

And yeah, it's silly. But it's not silly if you don't know and get scammed. So. Spread, please! And thank you very much to @mlaurel for the opportunity to get these screenshots.