 Destroying the scammer, was the most glorifying feeling I have ever rejoiced. You found the best place for your vengeful needs. Most people are willing to pull their own weight, and provide for their families in an honest way. In this episode, we'll talk about those who don't, and they'll scheme, plot and scam, to part you from your hard-earned coins. We start off with an pyramid scheme scammer who promises the world, but requires your soul as a startup fee. He ends up paying more. By a board employee, who puts on his hero's cape to make sure a hotel scammer loses his job, and is put behind bars. Next, a con man's fairytale, in which he tries to rip of his client, by never finishing a project after stealing the materials. Too bad a client found out about his fake license, and tells the local news. Lastly, print shop artist doesn't believe in copyright, and certainly not in sharing the profits he made off of other people's work. But this is why he lost all that's dear to him. Probably the art, that's not even his. Little side note before we start. There are some things pizza can't fix. But after repeatedly smashing the like button, we might as well offer it a piece as an apology for all the bad moments it had on this channel. Naturally, viewer discretion is advised. These true revenge stories, might be disturbing to scammers. About six or seven years ago, I was trying to enlist into the military. I ended up not joining but that's a story for another time. At this point, I was led to believe I was about four months away from leaving for boot camp. I was running out of savings, and needing a part time job for some spending cash while I waited around. So I did what any enterprising 20 something would do, and searched craigslist for jobs. I normally hate sales jobs, especially those based on commissions, but figured it would be a great way to earn some extra cash short term. Found a few job listings that look promising, and put out some applications. A few days later, I received a call from David. He was opening up a new store and needed associates. He liked my resume and asked if I'd be available for an interview on Friday morning. I was very upfront with him, and let him know that the distance was a bit more than I'd normally drive for a retail job, and asked what he was offering for an hourly rate, to see if it was worth the drive. He told me that they were planning on offering an hourly rate in the mid teens, along with commission. Seemed like an okay deal, so I agreed to be there Friday at 8am. Today arrives as a cold rainy day. I wear a nice shirt and tie, and drive in heavy traffic to the address David provided. I knew the area from a previous job, and eventually found the strip mall I was looking for. However, I'm not seeing any signage for the company name that was listed. There is however, one empty space with no signage and two people inside. Okay, maybe they haven't gotten the store set up yet. No big deal. I had arrived early, knowing how bad traffic can be in that area. While in my car, I witnessed a young lady in business casual dress remove a sign from the window stating, Retail space for rent, with phone number added. Okay, a little weird but maybe it's the first day in the space. I walk in about 5 minutes early, and immediately my BS meter goes from yellow to the highest level. The tables are all simple plastic folding tables. The kind college kids would buy for beer pong while on a shopping trip to target. The walls are plastered with laminated charts featuring tons of dollar signs, smiling faces from stock photos, and an organizational chart showing an all too familiar shape. A pyramid. God damn it. All right, might as well have fun for a while to wait out traffic going home. The young lady in the dress approaches me, introducing herself as Cindy. She welcomed me to the company, and asked me to have a seat. She sat at her desk, another plastic table, and pretended to go through paperwork. However, she was really just shuffling papers around. We get to chatting, and I ask her how long she's worked for David. She says she's been his secretary for about 6 months and that I'm going to love it here. Eventually, a guy walks out of the back office. Early 30s, clean cut, wearing an ill fitting suit from JC Penney's. As he is walking over, all smiles, Cindy says. Dennis. Our newest recruit is here. The guy stops in his tracks and gives her a cold stare. It's David, Cindy. We've been over this. He turns back to me and gives me his brightest, hard to find good help these days smile. David sits me down and welcomes me, saying they are going to start with a group interview and has me sit down in a circle of chairs. Eventually more people come in and sit down. David gets up and begins to thank us all for coming. He tells us about an exciting new opportunity from Cutco. He pulls out a set of knives, and explains how with his company we can make as much money as we want, all while setting our own hours. He even pulls out a textbook, saying about how this company's revolutionary tactics have even been featured in college textbooks. He opened to a page, his hand covering parts of it, making sure we can all clearly see the words Cutco. In large letters on the page. Sad to say, a lot of the other interviewees were very impressed by this. One pregnant girl seemed very excited that she could work around her pregnancy and upcoming birth. David was going on and on about how much money he's made and how hard workers will rise to the top quickly. At this point, David said he needed to take a quick phone call, and gave us five minutes to have some coffee, chit chat, whatever. As he stepped away, he left his college textbook behind. Oopsie. So I pick it up, find the earmarked page, and read. As I thought, it was all about pyramid schemes and it had Cutco as one of the largest examples. It goes on to talk about how these are essentially scams, not economically viable, etc. I decide to share this all with a group. I explain how pyramid schemes work, and how he's just scamming us. They seemed incredulous, so I said when David gets back, to ask them about what we need to pay to get started. That finally got everyone to realize what was going on. David walks in a few minutes later, and one of the girls in the group asked David what we need to get started. Well, all you need is your first set of knives to demonstrate. You can sell those directly or have them order one and keep that as your demo kit. Doesn't matter. Just have to pay the start-up fees for it. And that's when all hell broke loose. One kid stands up and tells him to go frick himself, saying he's wasting our time and he's in prick for trying to pull this crap. The pregnant girl is crying, because she thought she found a place that would allow her to work despite being pregnant. David is clearly confused and flustered, and asking who told them all this. When it becomes apparent I'm the wrench in the machine, David gets upset and starts telling me to leave. People are yelling at David, David is yelling at me, Cindy is trying to tell everyone she never met David before today and didn't know what this was about. Eventually, we all walk out leaving David behind. As I'm walking to the door, I see, leaning against the wall, the sign that was in the window before. As I get into my car I dial the number. Eventually I get through to a person, and ask about the property for rent at the location of David's company. The nice lady on the phone apologized, saying they had just leased that property out. I asked if she knew how long the lease was for, as I was really interested in the property. She said she wasn't sure, they hadn't done the official paperwork yet. They were on their way to the space to sign everything with the leaseholder in a few hours. I told her everything that had just happened to me, and about David using the space for a pyramid scheme. She got extremely upset, saying that this stuff happens all the time in the industry. They would go to sign but last minute, the leaseholder will decide to opt out, after using it for some fly-by-night operation. She thanked me for the info, and I thought that was the end of that. Or so I thought. A few weeks later, I received an email from David. Telling me how I ruined his life. About how the property management found out what was going on, and weren't refunding his down payment on the space. Saying he violated a clause in the paperwork he signed to hold the property. How he knew I was the one who called, because I'm a terrible human being. Now he was out thousands for the space and supplies, how he only wanted to give us jobs and help us. It was a long, very angry email, with several things said about me and my mother. So I called the number again, spoke with the same lady I did before, and she was very interested in an email from David, where he essentially admitted to what he was trying to do. Said it would help them all in the legal proceedings. And don't you know I was more than happy to send that email along to her. Her lawyer said it should be an open and shut case at that point. I like to think, I'm a helper. I worked the night shift as a receptionist at a hotel in Norway, and most nights are spent watching Netflix or playing games. Last summer was really slow and I also worked a lot extra, so I ran out of stuff to watch and games to play. One night I got a mail from someone named, Scooter. He wanted to book a room for almost 20 days. I just had to send him the price and confirmation that we had rooms available, and he would then send me his credit card info for me to pre-charge. Normally we just delete these kinds of mail, but I was bored out of my mind, so I responded with an offer for around $2K for the entire stay. Also made sure to inform him that he could cancel for free up until the day of arrival. This is probably the most common fraud attempt in the hotel-slash-travel industry. Unlike most businesses, we are able to charge credit or debit cards with only the card number and expiring date. No need for a pin coat, CVC or other authentication methods. Our software also allow us deposit money directly to local and international bank accounts by using the card number. Because of this, scummy scammers like Scooter will try to pre-pay with stolen slash skimmed cards, but then cancel the booking and asking us to refund the amount to a different card. A couple of hours after sending him the offer, he responded with a visa number and told me to charge him as soon as possible. If validation succeeds, it will return with the card owner's name 90% of the time. I checked the card with our validation software, and to my big surprise, it didn't belong to a Scooter. I sent him a new mail stating that the card was declined because of insufficient funds. He quickly replied and gave me a new card to try. Guess what, this one didn't belong to Scooter either. Wasn't even the same person as the first card. By checking the bin codes, six first digits, I found which banks had issued the cards. Not even issued in the same country. My plan was to just call the banks and inform them of the attempted scam, but there were still several hours before I could go home, so I decided to mess with Scooter a bit more. Sent him a reply that the second card went through, and also the reference number for his stay at our hotel. As expected, a couple hours later Scooter sent a mail cancelling the order and asked if we could refund the money to a different card, as he had lost his wallet and deactivated the card he paid with. This card was issued from a Polish bank. Not sure why, but Polish bank accounts are often used by people who want to launder money from bitcoins or narcotics. You can buy a legit card for around $500 that is registered to some guy or girl in Poland from the dark web. At this point, Scooter was probably pretty happy about the $2k he soon would receive. I replied that it was no problem for me to transfer the dollars to a different card, as long as it was valid. How fun would it be, to cancel his own card, so that he had to spend $500 for a new one? Not fun enough, but I still went through. In the last mail, I wrote that he could send me the card number, but that our email server would go down for maintenance in a few minutes, so my boss would do it on Monday. It was now Saturday morning, so enough time for the charged bank to call us and reverse the transfer. If he needed the money right away, I told him to call the hotel before I ended my shift at 7 o'clock. He called almost immediately, and I wrote down the card number and his phone number. Told him I transferred the money, and that it would be in his account by 12 o'clock. My shift ended, and I went home with all the info Scooter had provided. Wanted to see if I could find out who he was, and of course, this scammy bum had an open Facebook profile that I found using his phone number. He even listed his address and employer. Looked a bit like the Arta Scooter, but with a more distorted face and spiked hair full of gel. He lived somewhere outside of London, in an area I would describe as a British trailer park. Houses that were nice at some point, but where the owners had spent £0 on maintenance since it was built. Thrash everywhere, and broken windows that were boarded up or fixed by sealing the holes with garbage. Now to the fun part. According to his Facebook profile, Scooter worked at a hotel. This meant that he would have access to card information from guests that booked through sites like Booking.com. I called the manager of the hotel, and told him there was a reason to believe that one of his employees was trying to commit credit card fraud, and that the card numbers could belong to their guests. He gave him the name of the people who own the card Scooter tried to pay with, and to no surprise, both had stayed at the hotel. Told him it was Scooter, and the manager just exploded in anger. Not 100% sure what he said because he was screaming so loud, but I think Scooter wasn't a normal employee. He worked there through some kind of government training program or something. After talking to the manager, I called both Visa and Mastercard International and told them about Scooter's little business venture. Apparently it's pretty easy to check if there are more cards that have been involved in fraud, where the cards also have been used at Hotel Scooter. With his Polish deposit account info, they would also be able to pin it on Scooter if he had been successful in scamming anyone, and sue him for the amount stolen. The police called me later to get a statement regarding the whole situation, so I know that the manager reported it to the police. Not sure what happened to Scooter, but according to his Facebook profile, he no longer works at the hotel. Or anywhere else as far as I can see. Years ago shortly after I moved out, my dad decided he wanted to remodel his bathroom and hired a local contractor to do it, named Teddy. My dad was extremely skeptical of contractors from the start and didn't want to get scammed, so after they agreed on the price for labor, my dad asked him for an invoice for the cost of all the materials. He took said invoice to one of his coworkers, who's a plumber or in construction or something, to look over the list of materials and see if the quote was fair. Right off the bat, Teddy was trying to do a 50% markup on the materials. So instead of paying Teddy's invoice, my dad just bought all the materials himself saying, he knows a guy who gives him amazing discounts. So Teddy doesn't get suspicious that my dad was on to his game. The bathroom is not even close to being done after three months, despite Teddy telling him it would take two months tops. My dad had to travel for work and would be gone a week, so he asked me to house sit and make sure Teddy shows up to work and doesn't steal anything. From the start Teddy tries to become buddy buddy with me, but I didn't like him and brushed it off, by asking how the bathroom project was developing. Over the course of the week, he tried to upsell me on a bunch of things he said he needed to finish the bathroom, most of it was electrical work which he didn't have a license for. My dad filled me in before he left about what was quoted in the labor, and there was no electrical work quoted. So I told him no, to just stick to the original quote. Once my dad comes back I filled him in on all the additional charges Teddy tried to tack on. He also didn't show up for three days, saying he hurt his shoulder while tripping over his cat. Then he tried to install the new ceiling light, which he was not asked to install because we had an electrician coming to install it. After a heated discussion between Teddy and I, he stopped installing the ceiling light and started laying tiles, during which he broke a quarter of the tiles. After this debacle, my dad did some investigating and looked up Teddy's license and found out that not only was the license expired, it didn't even belong to Teddy. So my dad asked my brother and I to come over and accompany him, while he was going to confront Teddy on lying about his license. A very heated argument broke out, when my dad refused to let Teddy enter the house to collect his tools and said we would bring the tools out to him. Teddy then threatens to press charges against me for assault when I accidentally brushed his shoulder when I was passing him in the hallway and I refused to apologize. After the cops showed up, Teddy quickly tried to play the victim but the cops told Teddy to collect his tools and leave. The bathroom still unfinished, but my dad did not have to pay Teddy for his three months of labor and use that money to hire real contractors to finish the bathroom, it only took them a week and a half to finish. After this, my dad contacted the local news to tell them about Teddy being a con man. A few months later, the news did an investigation story about him and they found other people that were scammed by him. His way of scamming people was the same everywhere. Teddy would start to work on their bathroom but once he got paid, he would cut and run leaving the bathroom unfinished after stealing all the materials. The news then set up a sting for Teddy and exposed him for being a con man. He was arrested not long after the news story aired. I'm an online artist and this took place when I was in my early 20s. There was a popular artist who calls himself a professional and works in the industry. I actually used to look up to him. Let's call him Zack. Lately, I noticed how Zack's art looked eerily too familiar to a piece of media I've seen before. So I looked up the images and found it too matched up to his art. He was directly referencing official art and profiting off of it, by selling it on his print shops online. He didn't make any effort to make the reference detaches from the original piece. I confronted him about it, sending a detailed message not to do that and the possible consequences. I have seen artists in real life who are sued for over $100,000 and to the extent to going to jail, for doing what they did. Instead of being professional and mature about it, he lashed out at me and took it to social media telling me how wrong I was to falsely accuse him, since artists use references and how I could get sued for defamation. I was dumbfounded at how clueless he was, not even comprehending what I was talking about. He included my username and my blog, which had links to my contacts, my emails, Facebook page, art accounts and Instagram. His fans including his group of friends joined in sending me downright horrific messages. I had panic attacks resulting from the pure backlash of his enormous fan base. I constantly received hate mail, telling me how horrible I am as a person, how shitty my art was, and to the extent of death threats for almost an entire month. The last straw that broke the camel's back, was when he directly referenced off of my art, and made money off of it. I didn't know how to find a lawyer and I felt hopeless and angry that I couldn't do anything about it. Later it hit me, if I can't do it, then maybe another artist can or anyone who holds the copyright. The last time I remember, Zack never credits any of these artists for his references. I looked into the art he referenced and examined each official company matching Zack's art. I used Google search to find anyone working for said company and voila. I found a staff member for a branch in a different continent. Let's call him Cody. I contacted Cody's Facebook and tipped him about Zack's activity through Messenger. I uploaded and sent a copy of their art and Zack's art for comparison. He just simply replied. We'll contact our legal team, thanks for the notice. Another week passes by and during this time, he constantly posts on every damn thing I post about in my art blog. But then it happened, silence. I checked his print shop, and saw that it was removed. His response to my message was taken down from his social media. He stopped talking to his friends publicly. Days later, a fan was asking about him and he responded how he is no longer friends with them cause their toxic hypocrites. One of his former group of friends contacted my friend and cried about how awful of a bully he was. Of course, my friend didn't care. It was the most glorifying feeling I've ever rejoiced. This would have been avoided if he at least heeded my warnings. How he handled the situation was not professional at all. About five years later I had been informed that apparently, he has a tough time getting back into the industry after there were allegations of his past copyright infringement. The biggest one, was having a lawsuit with the big company Cody worked for. You stay till the end, which means you're the one I make these episodes for. I want to take this moment, to thank you, I really appreciate you, because you bring me a great amount of joy. Subscribe for future uploads and show your vengeful devotion, by tickling the like button, without mercy. Do you have any experiences surrounding the topic of this episode? Share yours below, I'll join the conversation. And I'll be seeing you, in the next one.