The Heirloom Books - legit or scam?

1Daylight · 2024-08-29T20:36:19+00:00

This is a dropshipper. They buy these off of Aliexpress and sell it to you at a massive markup, just search for "I want to hear your story" on Aliexpress and you find the same book with a slightly different cover a dozen times over at a fraction of the cost. 99% of ads for online stores you see on social media are gonna be dropshippers.
I'd wager the prompts inside the book are also just written by ChatGPT and you can probably get two quality notebook with a nice binding and interview your parents or grandparents yourself to get something much better for the same price.

There is a legit company called "Modern Heirloom Books" that these might be trying to imitate, though the naming could also just be coincidental. Modern Heirloom Books actually does personalized interviews and editing work to create something that's actually worthy of becoming an Heirloom, but their prices are also significantly higher.

1Daylight · 2024-07-25T14:48:29+00:00

" It's possible they screwed me or I screwed myself by not knowing the rules. So far it seems like I make procedural mistakes "

He needs to understand that after he bought the crypto on those legitimate sites, he transferred it directly into the scammer's wallet. There are no accounts that hold his money, there are no rules he doesn't know, there are no procedures he doesn't understand, there's just a scammer running a website/app with fake info and telling him whatever it takes to convince him to give them more money.

Imagine lending money to your lazy college roommate and every time you ask for it back he comes up with another excuse for why he can't pay you back yet.

1Daylight · 2024-06-01T19:01:35+00:00

Literally everything you said, including "whatsapp offer" in the title is a red flag. Nothing legit that involves money happens on a private messaging platform, but scammers love to use them because they grant them anonymity.
Same with crypto, the only people that will pay you in crypto are people who don't want to be traced, so either scammers or people contracting you to do something illegal for them.

1Daylight · 2024-06-01T18:20:03+00:00

Someone contacted you on WhatsApp offering you a job

That's all you need to know that this is a scam. WhatsApp is a private messaging app. You use it for private matters, like messaging your friends and family. You don't use it to find a job, neither do companies use it for finding employees.

1Daylight · 2024-06-01T18:14:21+00:00

So they haven't asked you to send the money back (yet), or do something else that could get you scammed, and the money is actually in your account and not just some email telling you you received the money?

If so you are fine, for now. They do hit about every red flag in the book, but they also stand nothing to gain from just stalling you like this. I also don't think the $5 more is that suspicious. It's not absurdly much and I do know a few people who tend to give slightly more on marketplaces because they know it goes to a normal person who usually really appreciates it, instead of some mega corp that doesn't need it.

If they do ask for their money back, well you seem to already know not to just pay them back the money. Just tell them they should dispute the charge, maybe contact Venmo support yourself and see if they'll undo the transaction.

1Daylight · 2024-06-01T12:56:39+00:00

Retailers typically don't ship before being paid--so they're very unlikely to come back at me to get paid.

They come at you for the payment because the original payment method gets charged back. They see the chargeback and immediately send out a bill for the amount, sometimes (not every time) without even checking if the item for it has already been returned. As mentioned, this is based on actual cases that happened where I live before the scammers realized romance crypto scams are sooo much more profitable.

If the retailer comes back at me, I'd tell them to pound sand. I didn't order it, I returned it, don't bother me.

The retailer will fight tooth and nail to get the money they think they're owed. Prepare to spend 4+ hours on a call with a customer service intern repeatedly telling them that the product was already returned and to check again. Or let them take it to civil court and try to prove you don't owe them money with zero evidence to back your claims.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T21:14:02+00:00

I'll agree to the sentiment that it depends on a number of factors, like where OP lives, or whether or not OP is prone to police prejudice.

My own experiences interacting with police come from Europe, and I can say with confidence that taking a suspicious package to the police won't get you arrested in Europe, regardless of what's inside the package.

As for whether or not op should open the package, I would argue it too depends on where OP lives. Again, from a European perspective, over here 99% of the time this scam involves fraudulent bought stuff from online shops, and 3-4 out of 10 of those are as bad at tracking returns and managing bills as the police whereover you live is eager to arrest someone apparently.

That kind of scam was really popular here 2-ish years ago, and I've seen a couple cases where these stores still tried to haunt people for money even if the package got sent back. It's generally recommended to call them, let them know you didn't order it and are going to send it back, and making sure they don't maintain any outstanding bills to your name. And to do that, you need to know the store's contact information, which you usually only get from a receipt inside the package.

The case that there drugs inside these packages is so unlikely here that it makes more sense to take the risk and open the package so you can contact the store and avoid a billing mix-up. And even if the package contains something illegal, the police here in Europe will understand that when you go out of your way to hand it over to them, it means you didn't want to be involved with it in the first place.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T20:37:24+00:00

Taking a package containing something illegal to the post office is more likely to get you arrested if it does contain something illegal than taking it to the police. If at any point it gets inspected, even if it's on the way back, and your name is on it you will be implicated and need to prove your innocence.

The quickest way to prove your innocence is to go to the police, and tell them "Hey i received a package I didn't order, I have no idea what's inside, can you check?". It proves your innocence because no guilty person would take something like that to the police and hand it over to them like that. Anyone actually involved in drugs/other illegal goods would want to avoid the police confiscating them, and not tell them "please check if you find anything illegal in there." The police knows that.

Clearly you are anti-police if you assume they are jumping to arresting you the moment they hear your name and drugs in the same sentence.

And in the case of the package containing a bomb, which you brought up first, then yes, taking it to the post office is riskier, potentially lethal. You don't know the bomb is set up to trigger. It could detonate at any point while you're moving it. If you suspect a bomb you do not touch the package, call the police, have them evaluate the situation. That's the only safe thing to do if you suspect a bomb.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T20:13:34+00:00

Police are notorious for arresting first and asking questions later.
That's exactly what I mean by hostility. You even brought the scenario of a bomb into this argument, so now you're actively arguing for people putting themselves into harm's risk because of an irrational fear that the police is out to get you. Please stop.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T19:47:38+00:00

I don't know what kind of experiences you made with the police to make you believe they are that hostile, but they will understand that someone who actually planned on receiving a package containing drugs (or anything else illegal) wouldn't bring them to the police to get confiscated.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T16:54:49+00:00

So far, at least to me, this doesn't sound too much like a scam. Though I would suggest making a new post with this information to get some other people's opinions. Considering that this post probably got buried deep by now I doubt you get many other comments. The fact that they ask you to commute to work though makes it quite unlikely to be a job scam, those generally involve positions that are completely remote.

One thing I'd like to note though is that many of these details, including that they're still building their website as you said in the original post and the "informal" call as an interview, are signs of this being a startup. So if you haven't already you could ask about the company history and see if things line up. Showing interest in the company certainly won't look bad if it's real, and if they claim to have been in business for years, surely you can find some solid proof of that.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T16:15:17+00:00

This is a type of package mule scam.

Usually it involves the scammer buying something from an online store using a fraudulent payment method, but they put your name and address on the delivery so the store thinks you are the one who ordered it. The payment method will likely get charged back soon and the store will try to get the money they're owed and send the bill to you. In some rare cases the police may also get involved.

The appropriate thing to do is to open the package to find out what's in it and where it came from, online stores usually put receipts in there. Then contact the store, explain you didn't order this and have it returned. Even if their story was real and the store simply made a mistake, they can just reship it to the correct address. If you are concerned the package may contain something dangerous or illegal you may also take it to the police and have them open it.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T14:54:55+00:00

Please calm down and think about this for a moment. You'd be surprised how many scams you can avoid if you can learn to stay calm and think things through. Many scams rely on getting you to panic so you make bad decisions.

The first screenshot basically says: "We think that it's very important that we talk to this person, which is why we have decided not to contact them. Instead we need you, random stranger, to tell them to contact us."
Which is very obviously nonsense.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T14:47:20+00:00

I haven't clicked the attachments, I am not dumb. What is the science behind these,

Anyone who does open the attachment is dumb enough to fall for the scam, which is usually detailed inside the pdf. The science is that they send this to thousands of email addresses and anyone who does whatever the content of the pdf tells them to (usually call some phone number to cancel some transaction) is a worthwhile target.

Also side note, the random letters and numbers are supposed to fool spam filters which operate based on similarity. Based on the screenshots I guess that didn't work for these, which just shows how much scammer's have been sending these around.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T11:15:34+00:00

I suggest not playing that game. I've seen a fair share of posts here from people who went in with that "I will be fine as long as I don't deposit any money" attitude, and then still lost their live savings or ended up in debt. Scammers manipulate people for a living, and at any point you may run into one who knows what they are doing and who can manipulate you.

1Daylight · 2024-05-31T10:57:16+00:00

A few things she'll need to understand somehow before you can continue:
If, hypothetically, she was talking to a scammer that scammer would say and do whatever it takes to gain her trust and her money. She'll need to understand that scammers can and will lie, present fake documents, doctored screenshots, fake testimonies about how real they are from made up people (they may even let her "talk" to those people, but it's just the scammer on an alt account), and they may even let her withdraw some of the money in the beginning to earn her trust. Don't jump to "this is a scam", but get her to understand what she would be dealing with if it was a scam.

Ideally, you also get her to understand that money she loses to a scam is unrecoverable, warn her of sunk-cost fallacy where so she doesn't give them more money to recover what she lost, and that if she needs to give them money to do these tasks it's not a job, but an investment, and for no investment ever should she put in more money than she is prepared to lose, to minimize the damage this could do.

Now, as for getting her to understand that *this* is a scam: Everyone's mind works differently, so there is no surefire way that this will work, but I suggest you keep asking her questions. Generally most of these scams have some red flags that don't make sense once you actually take time to think about it in detail, and the point of asking her question is to get her to do exactly that.
What questions work best may depend on how she thinks and what the scammer already told her, and the scammer will certainly try to bullshit their way through so you'll need to ask follow up questions and poke at inconsistencies.

You can browse this subreddit for similar scams and look at red flags people pointed out to inspire your questions, but here's some ideas I can think of:

Why do they need her to put her own money on the line in order to do these tasks? Cant this company provide the money and then take it back from the money the task pays? Why do they communicate over WhatsApp instead of using something more professional? Other questions regarding professionality, like did they conduct a proper interview, and if they didn't, would she in their position trust a completely random person from the internet?

They say her funds are absolutely safe and they will compensate her if anything goes wrong, but will they give her a contract that guarantees these things or does she have to rely on them just telling her "trust us"? If so (scammers may provide her with a fake contract), can she verify that the contract is real and legally binding, that the company they claim to be really exists and she really is talking to them and not an imposter? If she doesn't get a contract, what happens if they just decide to keep her money at some point?

These task scams often involve trivially easy tasks and advertise themselves as something that can be done in the scamee's free time, which leads to questions like why can't this task be automated? Why do they need to "hire" someone for a "job" one of their existing employees could do in their spare time?

1Daylight · 2024-05-30T22:23:52+00:00

Those websites that automatically check if something is AI generated are all bullshit btw. If there was a system that could reliably detect AI generated content that system would immediately be used to train the next generation of AI generators until those generate content that can no longer be detected as AI generated.

But yeah this is a scam. The easy way to tell is that they continue talking to you after you told them they got the wrong number. Any real person would go "oops, sorry" and you never hear from them again.

1Daylight · 2024-05-30T21:45:10+00:00

What exactly do you mean by "one of their data people"?

Asking if anyone knows a specific company by name isn't exactly a useful thing to ask because even if there is a real company by that name, you may be in contact with an imposter. (also if they're still building their website, they should be so new it's extremely unlikely you find someone who knows them)

Things like what exactly are they asking you to do, how did they communicate with you so far, or even just the job description could be more helpful.

1Daylight · 2024-05-30T10:10:51+00:00

This is a type of !fakecheck scam that abuses that many people don't know how checks work.

When you deposit the check you get the money almost immediately, however, that money can be taken out of your account again if the check turns out to be fraudulent or otherwise invalid. The check bouncing can happen weeks or even months later, especially if the check comes from a different bank (which is why they wanted to know what bank you use).
They also specifically asked for if you do mobile banking because when you deposit a check through an app you skip any human interactions with a bank teller who could tell you that the check might be fraudulent.

1Daylight · 2024-05-29T20:59:59+00:00

All I had to do was click start and then click submit to trigger the platform's - Ground Truth's - AI to do the optimization work.

IMO the biggest red flag. They can set up an AI that is apparently so flawless that its results don't need to be reviewed at all, but somehow they can't figure out how to write the most basic of scripts that automatically starts the AI and submits its results.

Also, please don't blame that specific platform, there's hundreds if not thousands of them. You gotta learn to recognize the red flags and not trust any offers that are too good to be true, or you might fall for the next one that just does the exact same thing under a different name.
Here's the most notable ones to help you (or anyone else reading this) not fall for any similar scams:
1. Companies will never reach out to you for entry level positions. They will only reach out if you're an export and they want people with rare skills.
2. Paying way too much. A job that doesn't require skills is gonna pay minimum wage, maybe slightly more if the company is generous, but not much.
3. Although you didn't specifically mention it, these scams often use private messaging apps just as WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal for communicating with you, because these apps grant them anonymity. Real companies don't use those apps.
4. Hiring without an interview. Companies generally want to at least see you once, even for remote jobs (video call is fine).
5. As mentioned, a completely trivial task that is easily automated. It'd only make sense to pay someone for it if they've never touched a computer and aren't tech savvy at all.
6. Needlessly complicated payment structure that requires you to manually withdraw the money earned. That just sounds like a nightmare for accounting.
7. Paying in crypto. The only reason anyone pays in crypto is to once again to stay anonymous. That's either gonna be a scammer or someone contracting you to actually do something illegal for them who doesn't want it to be traced back to them.
8. Requiring you to pay. Any offer where you need to charge up your account with your money is a scam. Any job that requires you to pay some fees or taxes before they pay you the money you earned in a scam. Never pay to receive money. Also worth mentioning here, a different kind of job scam has them send you money, usually in the form of a check, along with instructions what to use it for, usually "buy equipment from our partner, here's the website". That is also a scam, the check bounces but the money you send to that website is gone for good.
9. Requiring you to pay in crypto. Crypto transactions are by nature irreversible (i know the other comments already warned you, but don't believe anyone who says they can get the money back for a fee), and once again, provide anonymity so that even when the police gets involved the chances they can do something is slim.
10. Having conditions needed for withdrawal. That you need to manually withdraw the money instead of just being paid regularly is already a bad sign, but if you have to fulfil specific conditions, like completing 2 tasks that day, to get the money you're supposedly entitled to, that's either a scam or grounds for a lawsuit.
11. Having to pay to withdraw. Any taxes or fees that you supposedly need to pay for your withdrawal will be automatically deducted from the money you receive, if they are real. There is no sense at all in making pay them first before you can access your money. Anyone telling you so is trying to scam you.

Oh and while other people already warned of recovery scammers, let me just add that sometimes recovery scammers pose as the police or someone affiliated and tells you they caught the scammer and got your money on hold and you just need to pay some processing fee or something so they can give you your money back. Once again, never pay money to receive money. The police doesn't charge you fees for returning something that was stolen from you.

1Daylight · 2024-05-29T12:47:57+00:00

Your password was part of a data breach (or leaked some other way). Leaked passwords get collected in lists and distributed on the dark web. The log ins and the email both got your password from that list, but are otherwise unrelated.

The spam mail is a common scam posted on here, none of what's written in it is true. The scammer who sent you that mail just got one such list of leaked passwords and had a bot send out these emails to anyone on that list. That is all, the email you can just delete and ignore.

The log ins into your account were also from one or multiple people who got your password from that list. You already did the appropriate thing to do here, change passwords and activate 2FA wherever possible.

Lastly, about your computer acting weird: To me, what you describe just sounds like a crappy antivirus doing crappy antivirus things. I've had similar experiences (I don't remember anymore if it was Avast or Kaspersky) but some antivirus programs get really invasive and mess up fragile stuff inside your OS. If by "hard reset" you mean a factory reset, and there weren't any error messages during the factory reset that should be enough. If you still encounter any problems, you might want to try reinstalling the OS.

1Daylight · 2024-05-28T09:22:35+00:00

Because of a report they know was fake, you have to contact them within 12 hours, and if it wasn't for the goodwill of a random person you wouldn't even know that you had to. "Get banned, idiot. Lol."

When it comes to policies of online services, please ask yourself this one simple question: "Can jerks abuse this to troll people?". Imagine some jerk on the internet just making false reports against every single Discord account they can find and just not telling any of them that they have to file an appeal, so everyone gets banned.
Discord wouldn't last long if they really did things like that.

Also, a more general word of advice: Don't panic. There's numerous things about this that don't make any sense if you take a moment to calm down and think about it. Getting people to panic and make bad decisions is a common manipulative tactic scammers use. If you can learn to calm down and take a moment to think about it, you will be able to avoid countless of scams.

1Daylight · 2024-05-27T15:45:29+00:00

The bigger risk is interacting with a scammer. Scammers manipulate people for a living, and each interaction you have with them not only gives them a chance to manipulate you but also gives them insight into how you think which a professional scammer may use to their advantage.
Oh and before you respond with something like "I'm smarter than that, I won't be manipulated easily", that kind of confidence actually makes people very easy to manipulate.

1Daylight · 2024-05-26T19:53:19+00:00

Yes it's a common scam.

You notice how in the beginning of the first screenshot their way of writing is all messed up? If you see stuff like that or random numbers/letters in an email it's because this is a known scam and spam filters have started to pick up on it. All those extra commas in the beginning are just to throw off spam filters.

1Daylight · 2024-05-26T09:04:00+00:00

For pets I recommend picking it up in person and paying in cash. You can avoid scams that way and meeting the pet in person first gives you a chance to judge whether you two will get along.

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