Tech News & Discussion

My boyfriend just pulled up to CVS in Florida. A man approached him in the parking lot trying to sell him an iPhone 15. He accidentally hadn’t hung up the phone yet, and I heard the guy initially say $1k and it was dropped down to $300 (of course). There was an ATM right near by. He saw I was still on the phone and I was like “dude, what’re you doing? Why are you buying something in a parking lot? No”. He said “I’ll tell you later, damn”. Okay, fuck me then. He went to the ATM, bought the phone, called me back. I was like “did you take a picture of his ID? Get his license plate? Literally anything? That phone probably doesn’t even work. You just fell for a scam. Some dude just approached you in a parking lot next to an ATM and went from $1k to $300. A normal person would sell that shit on Craigslist or something”. He says no, he didn’t get any info, looks at the phone, says the screen is weird and it’s fake. Like, cmon.

He’s calling the non-emergency police line now. Any other advice?

Update: cops aren’t doing anything. Also, my boyfriend didn’t think it was stolen. I just asked and he said the scammer said he won it in a raffle.

Oh! Another edit! The phone was in a fresh, usual iPhone box with a USB C cord and all.

This is a follow-up to my post about my mom getting scammed by a fake Willie Nelson out of $200k.

Well, we found out last weekend that she still thinks she is in a relationship with Willie Nelson. Not the original one that scammed her, but the new "real" one who came in for the rescue and wanted her to sell her house and give him the money so she could live in the new place he was buying in Austin Tx.

After hearing this, my wife and I were really disappointed for obvious reasons. I started asking her questions about why no video chats and things like that. She said that he can't video chat because he is under contract and his phone is monitored. If he does a video chat he gets in trouble. Obvious bullshit, but she believes it. We told her this is BS and that no one has that stipulation, and she said "how do you know? Are you a celebrity?". She says that he has until the middle of June to come visit her, and if he doesn't she will know it is a scam and cut it off. I know that no one will ever come visit and there will just be excuses and this person will probably be successful in stringing her along beyond that point.

We can all see how silly this is and at some point began to laugh at how ridiculous it is. This set her off and she stormed out of the house. I texted her to apologize for hurting her feelings, and she responded with a long rant and how this is an emotional topic for her, etc. She also said that if he turns out to be real, that we can't tell anyone about it as this would cause problems for him and her. OMFG.

I am looking into conservatorships at this point and also thinking about some type of an intervention. Does anyone know of 3rd parties that can help with an intervention for something like this or know of any that have been successful? I really don't know what to do with her at this point.