#scam posts

Oh wow, you just can't catch a break, can you? This is, what, your sixth cat in need of desperate medical attention? Now it's poor Zoe after Poochi and Koppi and Kuppa and Ashel and that weird cat/dog Rico.

Idk man at this point I think you need to stop having cats, you're clearly not very good for them :'(

🚨 THIS IS A SCAM - BEWARE 🚨

Blog is only about an hour old, already soliciting donations and sending out asks to random users after reblogging about 30 posts to make it look like it's an established blog. However, I've got timestamps turned on and can see the oldest post is less than an hour old. Beyond that, a quick search of the name for the paypal returns a string of blogs with desperately sick cats soliciting donations. Asker requests I reply privately to keep their activity hidden.

Me: Okay, yeah I agree.

The Post: [lists multiple pieces of legislation that can and should be protested against]

Me: All good. All fine.

The Post: So anyway Rasha’s kickstarter is at 400€ and if she doesn’t make 35,000 she’s considering killing her children so if you part with even-

Recently over the past few weeks, I occasionally get asks for donations or sharing donation posts. While I'm happy to help, I begin to feel odd about some of these asks, especially if other users claim that they are scams in the notes.

The most recent one is this from @/superbpatrolprincess:

There were people in the search who tried investigating this user and other possible scammers who send these kinds of asks. The user @kyra45 had tried contacting them about the validity of their claims, along with the fact that the ask was suspiciously similar to another ask made by @/aniasiasstuff.

By a suggestion from another user, I tried contacting the user about their donation post. But they blocked me shortly after. The pinned donation post on their blog was posted on July 10th. I failed to get a screenshot of that before they blocked me, but the earliest post in the search for superbpatrolprincess was made on the same day that post was made where the scammer contacted another user through asks.

Update, I used my alt to find their blog, here's their post:

Due to this, I'm not going to share any future donation/mutual aid posts if the user sends me an ask and if their account was made very recently.

furryreviewearthquake/Alice Simatei is a documented scammer profiting off of the genocide. they have stolen a paragraph from this gofundme https://www.gofundme.com/f/uk8x8q-help-my-family-leave-gaza and instead link to their own paypal account.

https://www.tumblr.com/kyra45/763448973538246656/hi-there-sorry-to-bother-but-hoping-for-a-second

they’ve been running this scam for months now, every time they are terminated they just make a new blog and spam send the exact same ask, and every time their paypal account is reported they make a new one under a new name. 

here is an archived previous version of their post where they link to a paypal account under the name Akinyi Salome: https://archive.ph/hdpgx

and here is a version where the paypal account name is Samantha Yeges: https://archive.ph/yNO6Q

would you mind deleting their scam from your blog, or clearly labeling it as a scam so it doesn't spread to others? in the future, please remember you can use the tumblr search box to search the username/paypal account name/text used by people asking for money to check if they’ve been proven to be a scammer

Scammers are getting smarter and in light of the recent “help my cat” scam posts going around which @meluvcheese22 has a pretty detailed post on here I just thought that this might be a good time to help people know what to look for.

Those message requests that come through your askbox that look similar to this:

[image id: a screenshot of a tumblr ask from user catgirlmacaroni that says:

catgirlmacaroni asked a question

“Heeeeey im really sorry, I know you might find this a bit strange but I really do have a huge favor to ask but im so embarrassed to ask for it but I guess there’s no harm on trying, right? Can you consider boosting/sharing the post I pinned for my cat please? We’re in desperately need of help rn. Im so sorry for coming across your inbox like this. Please also consider answering this privately or send me a msg instead! Wishing you well and I hope that you’ll have an amazing year ahead of you (hear emojis)”

end image id]

Posts like this are almost always a scam. Especially if they’re coming from someone you don’t know.

@you-reblogged-a-scam​ has a great post on this

How can you spot a scam?

Go to the user’s profile and type [their username].tumblr.com/archive you can see that they have only been posting on tumblr for a couple of months before they made their crowdsourcing request for their cat. That should be a red flag as they’re only giving the illusion of being a tumblr user. (This is also a good way to vet for bots that aren’t just empty blogs.)

The fact that they weren’t using a Crowdfunding platform was suspicious to me, especially because those platforms crack down on scammers and afaik, offer protection to people who have donated if they discover it’s a scam. This isn’t failproof as I know a lot of people do use just P*aypal or V*nmo but this should still be a red flag.

 Search the P*ypal account user’s name through Google to see if they’ve done anything like this before. As you can see here, and here this user has posted VERY SIMILAR cat stories under different tumblr accounts but they all go back to the same P*ypal. You can also reverse image search included images or search parts of the text they’ve written to see if it appears as “original posts” under different Tumblr users’ accounts (or whatever other social media you use)

The notes being turned off was also suspicious as you can see that some people got the word in and the scammer realized their mistake.

[image id: a screenshot of the cat post’s notes with the tumblr message stating that Replies have been turned off for this post and Some replies may have been hidden, blocked, or removed.

tumblr user eatingcroutons writes: “Weird how this person had a different cat in a different state needing money for a different treatment just a week ago: http://www.tumblr.com/axellhere/705044183042392064/pay-axell-cruz-apuyan-using-paypalme”

tumblr user hoodiedeer writes: @ eatingcroutons and the oldest posts on their account are a bunch of reblogs a day before this post lol”

end image id]

If you notice something’s a scam, please please say something in the notes and try to spread the word. Please report it to tumblr and report it to P*aypal or whichever cash transfer source they’re using. Make a Tumblr post about it, just get the word out.

Please be careful out there. I know we all want to help, but please make sure your money is actually going to people who need it, and not people like this.