These games are also used in random steam key bundles that promise to give you only positive rated games. 99% of these bundles are filled with these games.
I've gotten a few bad games from them but I've also got some good ones too. Usually when they bundled them and I felt like gamba for 5 bucks for 5-6 games or whatever.
Where exactly do these happen? Because if you're talking about the likes of Fanatical, that's above board but also filled largely with cheaper lower rated products. Which might make it appealing to try and get your asset flip into that pipeline, but the system itself is perfectly legit (beyond how you feel about it acting as a lottery).
@@GrandHighGamer I know G2A offers random key packages and I'd imagine some of the other grey market sites do the same. I've seen them advertised in the past with an average key value which was horribly inflated because of these stupidly marked up games that aren't normally purchased at full price.
One thing that I wish Valve would do that could defeat these scams, start taking reviews of key redeemers into account when generating the game's review rating. Currently, it's only those who bought the game.
They tried to pull that bail scam on my grandfather. But they tried to make it seem like I reached out to him because I wouldn't want to tell my parents, but was okay with him knowing. He was like "Yeah, I am not who he would reach out to, this isn't real". LOL. Okay Papa...you are right...but WOW.
Happened to my aunt as well. She was on to them pretty much from the start, but she played along for a bit to see what kind of story they would spin. They told her that I was in a traffic accident, that I got into a fight with the person who I was in the accident with, and got charged with assault, and that I needed bail money. She just told them no, then called me up to tell me about it. It was very strange that they pretended to be me and not one of her actual children, but who knows what goes through these scammers brains.
That exact scam happened to my coworker earlier this year. Her adult son is in the navy and someone called my coworker's mother and said that her grandson killed someone in a car accident and that he was arrested and needed 10 grand sent to his 'lawyer' right now. She called my coworker and she was panicking, but luckily another coworker and I were able to calm her down enough to get her to call the son before doing anything else. We spent the hour it took to reach the son telling her that no emergency needs payment immediately and they are counting on her and her mother to panic. Not only was the son fine, he was on a boat when this all happened and even if he was in port, his truck was broke down so no driving anyways. These scams prey on emotion and when you take a moment to think things through they tend to fall apart.
1. That’s horrible but I’m glad she was stopped before she made that mistake. 2. I am so sorry, but it’s worth: “another coworker and I were able to clam her down” clam lol
Nope. Bribery is super illegal. Just ask former senator Menendez about that. The legal version is called speaking fees or the advance on all those books that get ghost written by the politician, or the cushy position on some executive board or thinktank when the politician leaves office.
@@ObadiahtheSlim Getting a position on a board of some council that no-one has ever heard of with a baffling salary is a common practice. Like some " Lower New Jersey Water Sanitation Cultural Impact Study Board" type shenanigans
@@Greaseman762 noo not a bribe, a gratuity after the fact, totally legit. Even if promised before the act was done, but not paid till after the fact, all good.
This happens on black Friday as well. They hike the price up weeks before, then black Friday comes around and are able to sell it for the same price they were selling it previously as a "deal"
That one happens all the time on Amazon as well. There'll be a major site wide sale going on, but most of the items "on sale" are actually at their original price, and they simply raised the base price before using the sale to bring it back down.
@@randinho8872 not only that, but stores also use a similar technique to say the sale is "up to 80% off". They'll mark down a bunch of random accessories to 80% off but then anything of value lucky to get more than 15% off.
Hence why I wishlist stuff I want and watch the price. If they jack it up I know that company is full of shit and I find a different company selling it to buy from.
@@andretimpa I use Keepa for Amazon which tracks how much products were before and during any sort of Amazon special days and Steamdb to find out where the cheapest country is to feasibly buy games cheaper from 🤣
This almost happened with my Grandma too. Except they pretended to be me in jail, and told her to ship it cash via FedEx to my "lawyer". My grandma had actually gave FedEx the package and drove home. Luckily my older brother was there for lunch and called me and drove her back there and they hadn't shipped it out yet and they were able to get it back. Then I got to have a lovely conversation with the scammer over the phone and definitely didn't use any hacking skills I had acquired at any point in time.
Scammers can also rely on convenient timing or insiders working for an associate of the targeted person. My dad was asked for additional money to complete a shipment, which just happened to be around the time he was expecting a large, expensive tractor implement. The scammer wasn't able to answer simple questions like the weight, delivery address, or cost of the item, but the situation almost seemed reasonable before those questions were posed.
True but also keep in mind it can happen to everyone. Everyone has sometimes a laps in judgement or moments when they aren't careful enough. Thinking that it can only happen to stupid people is the 1st step to getting scammed one day.
@@louieberg2942 Yeah, all those bot comments are full of typos for instance. A person of average awareness is going to see through it immediately, and that's not their target demographic. They're using the typos, and other methods, to clear out everybody but vulnerable potential marks. Incredibly predatory.
Reminds me of that one time I got called to be notified that I had gotten into an accident and had to pay for operating fees... all because my own number was my emergency contact during an event.
2:40 precision in language is so important and feels lost these days, especially when people will casually say stuff like "i got hacked." no, you were probably a victim of social engineering and freely gave away what information was required for you to be "hacked." if you're not precise in defining the problem or what's happening, it just serves to obfuscate the problem more.
it really bugs me that steam allows the fact that all publishers (including AAA) can say "games on sale UP TO 90%!" and its always for games that i dont care about and buried with games i want.
I'm so glad Thor is always warning against jumping to conclusions. It is so common nowadays especially online for people to just instantly label something without any proof.
Like that time when he said everyone complaining about AC: Shadows were all just racists who were angry about having a black protagonist? I guarantee not a single person has ever said that to him or anyone else. Yet there he went happily spouting journalist-tier slop. No issue jumping to conclusions there, but woe is me for potentially misusing the phrase "money laundering" cuz yeah that'd be such a tragedy omg 🙄🙄🙄
Money laundering was a right pain in the arse when I worked at the bookies. Used to get people come in, put couple grand in a betting machine then print the ticket off without making a bet, you then hand them back the clean money.
"How Much Money Can We Launder In A Day?" by Boy Boy on UA-cam showed this to a tee. A lot of the bookies there straight up didn't care that they were doing this.
very refreshing to see someone use the phrase "copyright strike" instead of "copystrike" lol does this bother anyone else or do i need to end it all asap via my 2004 toyota avalon?
I saved a neighbor from a similar scam. Scammer called him, said they were a sheriff and they had an arrest warrant for him, give them 5k in itunes gift cards to pay it off and it'll go away. His wife was terminally ill and he couldn't afford to be 5 minutes from her side, let alone the threat of being in jail. So, I saw him running around frantically, asked him what was going on. When he told me, I told him pretty much the same thing: It's a scam, if you had a legit arrest warrant they would have been kicking down your door, not wanting itunes gift cards. Go report it, go to your bank, lock everything down, etc.
Worth noting the scammers you talk about often ask for something stranger than a simple wire transfer, like a prepaid debit card from walmart or a gift card. Bank tellers are more likely to recognize these scams and have more obligation to prevent people from getting owned by them than a walmart employee. For a lot of people this would be an obvious sign this isn't official, but if you're an elderly person who's already behind the times regarding technology and money, that's a different story.
Here's something interesting. In some places, if you refuse to sell someone gift cards, you can lose your job. Not many jobs allow you to refuse service to someone. So if you work at say, Walmart, or Kroger's, or a dollar store. You have no choice but to sell these $400 worth of gift cards to old mawmaw.
@@RedCyberLizzie I don't know if that's true anywhere, but it's definitely not true at Walmart. Regular cashiers are specifically not allowed to sell gift cards over a certain amount or large numbers of them, and the service desk people who _are_ allowed to are told to check for those scams and refuse the sale if it sounds off.
There is a fairly straightforward rule you can teach your relatives to deal with this. There is no legitimate entity in the universe who will accept a gift card as payment for any good or service, except for the company that issued it. Anyone who asks for gift cards as payment, for anything, is a scammer or some other kind of criminal, unless their logo is on the gift card. (Technical exception: There are a few small businesses who will barter off-brand gift cards for goods and services, if the customer is unable to afford a necessary product such as food. They do not call people and ask for gift cards, and it is certainly not their preferred form of payment.) For that matter, anyone who calls and asks you to pay them right now is probably a scammer or a collections agent. Legitimate creditors will send you a bill or paperwork of some kind, and will generally expect payment within some number of business days, not "right now."
@@grimwolf9988Saw this happen yesterday actually. Lady in front of me troed to buy a $500 apple card and a $50 one, but there is a maximum of $500 per customer per day. Caused a whole situation with managers asking if she was buying them as gifts or cause someone told her too.
From having seen Kitboga the last year, the scammers have upped their game. They are actually using wire transfers now, they just go out of their way to make sure their target shares as little info as possible.
My sponsor had this happen to her using A.I. voice to manipulate her thinking it was her son. She kinda knew it could be a scam but she was so afraid, panic and felt like she didn't want to risk it... she lost $10k so please beware of A.I. too.
My elderly mom just got mail that said her house insurance was about to expire, and she is approved for 3 year home insurance from what looked like her credit union. I told her it was a scam, and not to contact them. I hate these scammers with a passion.
There was an interesting scam going around, people received letters about pirating some show and if they didn't pay up x amount they'd take them to court. "We got all the IP logs" ect. it was 100% targeted at parents or just plain gullible people. I got like 3 different letters trying to get money from me, and I've never watched any of them and never even heard of 2 of them. I think my mom got one too and called me to ask what this meant since she's lived alone for years and years. I told her to used it as tinder and tell all the people she knows to do the same. What I remember they bought some info from ISP brokers and carpet bombed everyone on their lists with those letters whenever they did anything or not.
Small point of reference, it's only money laundering if both parties are aware that it's money laundering. If for example someone offers someone else $1000 to give them $700 back, is it suspicious? Of course, but unless the second party knows it's criminal there is no crime being perpetrated on their end. It's called plausible deniability. And this goes back to the way the legal system works. In order to prove that money laundering occurred one of the elements you have to prove is INTENT. Without intent, there is no crime. So as much as the legal authorities may hate it, they can't actually charge an unwilling party with money laundering and secure a conviction. Which is why in a vast majority of the cases they try to scare the party into a plea deal.
@@louieberg2942 no, because it isn't a contractual obligation. The only way there's due diligence is if there's a written contract. Generally when it's a person to person transaction it's never required. Most of the time you'll see it only in giant business transactions between companies or property.
@@siqsteen Lets be honest here, as shocking as it may be, EVERY company is about making money, hell even non-profit companies need to manage and procure funds from somewhere, but Steam, whether they are greedy or not, is still one of the companies that is trying to provide a good service, precisely because they want people to keep using it so they can make more money. So yeah, it's baffling that scammers can operate on the platform so openly and for a long period of time, because it makes Steam look bad, which in turn erodes the trust and confidence of potential customers.
I work for a regional bank in the US and I see scams like these alarmingly often. I have seen threats of cp, hurt or jailed family members, romantic partners, even fake jobs with REAL paperwork and forms. It is truly terrible, and the amount of paranoia we have to walk around with in our day-to-day jobs is rather disheartening. Please stay vigilant and ask "why" to everything.
My Grandma got targeted by the same scam. If not for the fact that I never get in trouble like that they might’ve got her. I’m terrified of how these scams will evolve due to AI.
Can you imagine almost scamming a nice old lady out of $10k and then finding out later that was Thor's grandmother? That's like running over a dog in a getaway from a bank heist and then later finding out that dog belonged to John Wick.
My favorite money laundering trick, is when you have made fake bills. You used to in ancient times, actually launder it to roughen it up a bit. Because crisp bills are super sketch apparanrly
a couple of weeks ago in germany there was this elderly guy who countered a scammer and made him meetup at the bank - with a police parade - though in this kind of scenario, the young scammer was (probably) only a tool for a bigger ring. A couple of weeks beforehand, an elderly couple elongated the phone conversation with the scammers, so while she was talking with the scammers, her husband called the police to counteract.
Yeah, I love that point about not jumping to conclusions. Something involving money can be bad without being a scam. People throw that word around way too easily.
My local grocery store runs this same scam. A dozen donuts is $18.99 but if I use the Frequent Shopper card they are $6.99! Obviously the real price is $6.99 but I have to sign up for their stupid card in order to pay that price.
My grandma got a similar scam call about my cousin in jail. She knew it was probably a scam, but wanted to be sure, so she asked to hear his voice. They hung up.
My dad almost got scammed of everything in his bank account before. We were talking and his phone rang. Apparently it was "America Bank". I thought nothing of it at first, so I left. As soon as I stepped foot in my room, I knew I was missing something very important. I managed to sprint back and convince my dad to hang up. It took nearly 4-5 minutes of me questioning when my dad finally asked what bank the caller was from and realized that America Bank is not a bank we are affiliated with.
Holy crap, that exact thing happened to my Grandma. She hung up on them to go get the money and then "called me back" to ask a question. She called my actual phone, though, so I was able to help her calm down and see what was happening. I have never in my life been so enraged. I don't like violence, but I would have 100% undone those people if they were in front of me at any time that day.
Common one like with your grandma is the "It's me" scam. They call up older people and say "Hey grandma it's me." and grandma will go "Jimmy?" or "Johnny" or whatever and let the older person fill in who they think is calling them. After that it's usually a "I'm in jail and need bail money" or something along those lines.
It's like cold reading, à la mediums and psychics. The other party fills in the gaps for you if you prime them to do it. If the scammed person doesn't play ball, they move on. Sick, sick game.
Why does steam not have measures against stuff like this? I mean.. They could easily scan their library for unusual prices and discounts and then put someone there to check them manually.
Well scanning for discounts on a platform notoriously known for having 70-90% discounts regularly, won't work. Unusually priced items is subjective. There are things that do sell for that price, so you can't flag anything over x dollar as then nothing can be sold for that. That's why the scam works, as dumb as it looks it is easy to just hide in plain sight. The normal person will just avoid it. I mean let's be real steam let garbage games for steam green light go for YEARS without QA'ing the process, that was just asset flips. This is that just in a different shell. But that's why you look for actual good publishers and avoid crap like this. I do agree SOMETHING should be done, but it is a hard thing to automate. Not impossible, I am sure you go do analytics to find the proper combination to flag this publisher and set of games. But price and discount is not it, the bundle of several dozens games and only a fraction of games discounted, would probably be my go to. Or of a bundle of x games is great than y, as 20 games shouldn't be 10000.
@@thekaxmax Then saying they are not "happy about it" is absolut bullshit from their side. Just a nice little lie to make them look like they're the good ones.
I just witnessed this, when I was buying the Judgement/Judgement 2 Bundle. They had the games reduced to a certain amount on the store, but when I added it to my cart, the total miraculously changed and did not reflect the store page cost.
4:37 Someone called my grandpa claiming to be “his oldest grandson” and tried scamming him with this fake bail nonsense. I’m his only grandson. He laughed, told them to call someone else, and hung up. Now whenever I call him I always say “it’s your oldest grandson” and we both laugh
Wenever I want to get a new game, I go through the reviews, the not recommending ones, to see what they about it. If their critics are relevant to me, if the same stuff comes back again and again, etc...
Years ago my grandparents were almost the victims of the "your grandson is injured in a foreign country" scams. Fortunately, they did think to call my parents to see if I was alright before sending anything.
Same issue you had with your Grandma happened to one of my tenants in low income housing. Lady was emotional and crying when she came down the elevator. She told me what happened, but was very reluctant to do so. I called the police to my office and had her explain the situation and give over as much information as possible for them to identify the caller. I do not know if anything ever came of it. I remember that lady thinking she would never see your grown daughter again. I had to almost force her to call the daughter, there is something about shame and fear that allows this scam to happen and should be explained to older parents. At some point when your parents become incapable of making good decisions is when many sons and daughters start taking over accounts and explaining these scams, I warn you: "It is never soon enough".
A lot of dirty tricks like that. Like when someone distressed calls you and just says "I have been in a car accident. I wrecked someone else's car and they demand to be immediately payed for damages or they are gonna have me arrested, please send me a thousand bucks."
I watched a guy on youtube a while back that made video essays on stuff like this. He was on a bad game binge around 2015, the same year Steam Greenlight was born, his viewers and fans kept sending him bad games because uh... to be fair I got no clue, but it made for entertaining videos at least. He said if it looked like if it would cause him physical pain or disgust him beyond belief, they would send it his way. "You want bad games? I got them. You want Steam Greenlight asset flips? I got them. You want games so awful you can't even buy them on Steam anymore? Well, I got them." Love that guy. RIP to his sanity but by damn I learned a lot from him, not just as a guy playing the games but as a critic. I base a lot of my creative projects around his negative critiques as a "do's and dont's" sort of thing.
I'm not surprised that the publisher of these $200 game is Hede. I was literally half expecting Thor to show Hede "games" Hede used to be on my steam discovery queue at least once every refresh for awhile until I went into their profile and ignored every game they have pumped out
I'm astounded Rockstar seems to be doing something similar, although decidedly less shady, red dead 2's price just jumped up to $100 but it's "discounted" by a large percent, so it looks like a better deal even though it's been cheaper the last 3 years
My grandma actually got scammed out of $7000 dollars in gift cards because a person called her saying her grandson (my brother) was in jail and they needed a bail. Scary part is someone came to her house and told her about it too.
"People are saying this could be money laundering because they don't know how money laundering works!" "So actually it could be money laundering you just don't know" 🙄
Also my dad nearly fell for an in person scam! a few years ago someone wanted to upgrade our electricity or something, and me and my sis were there. i told him to hang up on the call and call my sister, and she talked him down from saying yes to the person!
it really doesn't. it isn't really a scam either. it's definitely sketchy and for sure a scheme, but there isn't any proof that there's any money laundering happening from what i've seen, and from my understanding of the steam marketplace unlike counter-strike skins you cannot launder money through the banana items. at least not in a way where you can guarantee who the money goes to
@@scbtripwire no it does not. the banana items are commodities while the CS skins are not. this means that you can buy specific skins from specific people, but with the banana items you cannot. i don't remember exactly how the commodities so i'm not gonna go into any details i might be remembering wrong but that's the gist of it. also even if it there is some roundabout way to make it work, you'd still need any sort of proof that it's actually being used for it. just because something is possible doesn't necessarily mean it is what's happening
My Grandma told us about those bail scams, someone tried calling her pretending to be my uncle, luckily she knew about these things and mostly just fucked with the person on the line, but yeah this shit is so horrible.
A word of advice about scammers in general: don't you ever dare to think that you're too smart/informed to be scammed by anyone. Scammers are always inventing new and nuanced ways to trick people. Always have your guard up/question things.
one thing you also forgot to mention about these high priced scam games, they price these games that high not only for sales. They price them that high so they can be used in those Steam Key bundles where you buy a bunch of random steam keys for like $5-$100 and so the lottery/gotcha of it is that youre getting a game that says its worth a shit ton more than what it is. I did this once and one of the games i got was valued at $72 and the whole game was 5 seconds long in play time and you picked 3 blueberries and it was over.
if someone approaches me with this "1000$ in bits, 700 back" thing and I agree but then never give them the 700, would I still commit a crime? maybe some breach of contract thing. but they would need to sue, and that would probably reveal their money laundering
ya i reported this entire thing on thors discord from Hede, talked about it last month a bunch land laughed at the whole thing as a meme, glad he picked up my convo and made sure people are aware of this issue and to never buy it!
When Thor talks about them having only discounted a couple of the games, I think he misspoke. The bundle discount is applied on top of the discounts on individual games. The bundle price is obviously lower than the total price of its contents, even with some of them already discounted. Not saying the obvious scam isn't a scam, just clarifying something that confused me initially.
Yes, that is how Steam Bundles really work. Hard to credit it to it being misspoken though when that is his core point. Just an example that people shouldn't blindly believe everything said with confidence. Everyone can be wrong at times.
Perfect explanation of how money laundering works, especially the twitch situation. It's pretty sad that an unaware and unexperienced teen could be "party B" without even knowing they are in a money laundering scheme.
Just gonna be pedantic on one thing - the entire bundle can be put on a discount that the individual items are not. You can have three full-priced games, and still have a bundle containing those games be 90% off, and if you do the math, it really is 90% off of the listed price of the bundle. Them choosing to separately discount individual items as well in the bundle does not make it a scam. That bundle really IS 92% off of its full price. Just looking at the price of the bundle vs the games proves it - the bundle at the 92% sale price is $890. Just five of those games at full price brings you to $1000. If you were paying full price for all of those games, you would be paying far more than $890. You are NOT only getting the 92% on a few specific items. The 92% off is not a scam, as that would be an issue with the Steam store. All of that said, though, them claiming those games are worth $200 at full price IS ABSOLUTELY a scam. Those games are NOT worth even the bundle price, much less that ridiculous full price.
Talking about money laundering usually involves the 3 stages of ML. Placement, Layering and Integration. Placement is when one introduces "dirty" money into financial system. Layering is mixing said money with "clean" money. Integration is the final stage when "dirty" money are completely integrated into the financial system. So, in order for something to be ML, at least one of these stages needs to be identified with certainty.
Hair dressers and barbers shops make great money laundring business's as you're not selling physical items, you could stay closed for the day and just put on the books you did 100 cuts.
Those figures are wrong though. It says you're saving several thousands, but they did not discount that much money. Is there an exploit in how steam shows the calculated numbers?
As far as I can tell, they're just working with the discount percentages from inside the bundle. As far as I can tell, it's likely just a poorly architected system where that big green number is calculated by doing through the bundle, looking for other big green numbers, and going with the average of all of those. Since so many games just don't have numbers, either the array they were given is too small, or the logic doesn't count zeros in the average, likely due to a guard clause ("division by zero could theoretically crash the app, which is bad, so why not just throw them out?" -some Steam dev, probably).
The worst part about it is that it's not just one messed up individual running these scams. It's groups usually run just like a legitimate business. To them, it's just another way to make a living. And it's not uncommon. There's a large portion of the worlds population who could care less how their actions effect others. As long as they are getting paid, it's okay.
This is why I said Steam tries to force price parity on games. Nothing stops someone from pricing their games at $1000 on Steam and selling offsite for a reasonable price. This lets them not pay Steam anything at all and still using all the Steam features and use the Steampage as a billboard. There are still ways around the rule and as long as you're not egregious you aren't going to get in trouble. That's how there are so many great deals around that are better than Steam even with Steam keys.
The "only done 92% off on a few games" is not how bundles work. Those ones that are 92% off are 99.4% off and everything else is 92% off. Since each individual game is $200 and the total is $900 there's no way that's full price on all the games. The scam is the base price vs the quality of the games.
0:41 "Steam is not going to be happy when they find this" - how could they not already know? Surely they have simple analytics and alerts to pick this stuff up, they have all the data.
This is why Valve should have never gotten rid of the greenlight system. Steam was refined and had genuinely good games. Now it is 90% filled with this and other forms of slop.
With digital purchases, I forgot about like stolen cards. Typically, for money laundering as most people thing of it, stuff already in the banking system doesn’t need to be laundered. Instead, it’s to provide reasonable explanations for large deposits of cash to avoid police investigations, since banks have to report cash deposits if they add up to enough (mostly for tax reasons). Even just spending the cash, you do that enough and someone will notice. Money in the banks is just more useful.
Money Laundering doesn't require a second party, just a single person and a business through which to wash your cash. It CAN involve two or more parties, but its most commonly just someone using a (typically personally owned) legitimate business to disperse their illicit funds into legitimate funds, making it impossible to determine which is which.
These games are also used in random steam key bundles that promise to give you only positive rated games. 99% of these bundles are filled with these games.
Good to know. I always assumed those mystery bundles would give me garbage games.
I've gotten a few bad games from them but I've also got some good ones too. Usually when they bundled them and I felt like gamba for 5 bucks for 5-6 games or whatever.
Where exactly do these happen? Because if you're talking about the likes of Fanatical, that's above board but also filled largely with cheaper lower rated products. Which might make it appealing to try and get your asset flip into that pipeline, but the system itself is perfectly legit (beyond how you feel about it acting as a lottery).
@@GrandHighGamer I know G2A offers random key packages and I'd imagine some of the other grey market sites do the same. I've seen them advertised in the past with an average key value which was horribly inflated because of these stupidly marked up games that aren't normally purchased at full price.
One thing that I wish Valve would do that could defeat these scams, start taking reviews of key redeemers into account when generating the game's review rating. Currently, it's only those who bought the game.
They tried to pull that bail scam on my grandfather. But they tried to make it seem like I reached out to him because I wouldn't want to tell my parents, but was okay with him knowing. He was like "Yeah, I am not who he would reach out to, this isn't real". LOL. Okay Papa...you are right...but WOW.
Papas smart it’s common especially with AI now
Seems like your grandpa isn’t one to spare the rod huh
Happened to my aunt as well. She was on to them pretty much from the start, but she played along for a bit to see what kind of story they would spin. They told her that I was in a traffic accident, that I got into a fight with the person who I was in the accident with, and got charged with assault, and that I needed bail money. She just told them no, then called me up to tell me about it. It was very strange that they pretended to be me and not one of her actual children, but who knows what goes through these scammers brains.
@@uncleanexecutionit’s because they’re hoping that there’s just enough separation that they can spin their story and get away with it.
They tried it on my Grandma and her response was "Why are you calling me? Call your father." And hung up.
That exact scam happened to my coworker earlier this year. Her adult son is in the navy and someone called my coworker's mother and said that her grandson killed someone in a car accident and that he was arrested and needed 10 grand sent to his 'lawyer' right now. She called my coworker and she was panicking, but luckily another coworker and I were able to calm her down enough to get her to call the son before doing anything else. We spent the hour it took to reach the son telling her that no emergency needs payment immediately and they are counting on her and her mother to panic.
Not only was the son fine, he was on a boat when this all happened and even if he was in port, his truck was broke down so no driving anyways. These scams prey on emotion and when you take a moment to think things through they tend to fall apart.
1. That’s horrible but I’m glad she was stopped before she made that mistake.
2. I am so sorry, but it’s worth: “another coworker and I were able to clam her down” clam lol
@@setster007 lol Spelling errors strike at the worst moments
"Give me 10k or he goes to jail forever." "Good, might shake him up a bit. See ya. " That would be my mom, probably.
Will you keep him longer if I give you 20k?
Dont money launder, its very illegal! instead, bribe a politician its baked in as legal.
Nope. Bribery is super illegal. Just ask former senator Menendez about that.
The legal version is called speaking fees or the advance on all those books that get ghost written by the politician, or the cushy position on some executive board or thinktank when the politician leaves office.
@@ObadiahtheSlim Getting a position on a board of some council that no-one has ever heard of with a baffling salary is a common practice. Like some " Lower New Jersey Water Sanitation Cultural Impact Study Board" type shenanigans
Politicians, the greatest criminals the earth has seen
@@ObadiahtheSlim Legal bribery of politicians is called "lobbying".
@@Greaseman762 noo not a bribe, a gratuity after the fact, totally legit. Even if promised before the act was done, but not paid till after the fact, all good.
"Oh he's not gonna explain this with a box?... oh wait yup, there's the box"
5:40 this scammer came so close to becoming thors vilian origin story
The neighbor saved the scammer as well as his grand-mother.
IIRC that or something similar is why KitBoga (namedropped in the video) does what he does.
This is basically the plot of _The Beekeeper_ (2024)
of course the plot is a contrivance for Jason Statham to beat up everyone. still a good movie.
@@sigstackfault The writing for that movie was so bad, but I was entertained watching Jason Statham be Jason Statham
@@dakat5131 Yup, this is part of Kitboga's motivation. He's seen it happen in his own private circle.
This happens on black Friday as well. They hike the price up weeks before, then black Friday comes around and are able to sell it for the same price they were selling it previously as a "deal"
That one happens all the time on Amazon as well.
There'll be a major site wide sale going on, but most of the items "on sale" are actually at their original price, and they simply raised the base price before using the sale to bring it back down.
@@randinho8872 not only that, but stores also use a similar technique to say the sale is "up to 80% off". They'll mark down a bunch of random accessories to 80% off but then anything of value lucky to get more than 15% off.
Steamdb is your friend on these times 😉
Hence why I wishlist stuff I want and watch the price. If they jack it up I know that company is full of shit and I find a different company selling it to buy from.
@@andretimpa I use Keepa for Amazon which tracks how much products were before and during any sort of Amazon special days and Steamdb to find out where the cheapest country is to feasibly buy games cheaper from 🤣
This almost happened with my Grandma too. Except they pretended to be me in jail, and told her to ship it cash via FedEx to my "lawyer". My grandma had actually gave FedEx the package and drove home. Luckily my older brother was there for lunch and called me and drove her back there and they hadn't shipped it out yet and they were able to get it back.
Then I got to have a lovely conversation with the scammer over the phone and definitely didn't use any hacking skills I had acquired at any point in time.
Malicious Compliance.
actual goat neighbor saved thors grandma.
Scammers can also rely on convenient timing or insiders working for an associate of the targeted person. My dad was asked for additional money to complete a shipment, which just happened to be around the time he was expecting a large, expensive tractor implement. The scammer wasn't able to answer simple questions like the weight, delivery address, or cost of the item, but the situation almost seemed reasonable before those questions were posed.
Those are often brute force, people are expecting a package or shipment fairly often, so send enough of them and the timing will be right often enough
And that's why you ask questions
I'm glad you made the clarification about money laundering. I've seen it being thrown around far too loosely in the last few years.
A lot of random internet people go like "only stupid people get scammed".
The scam is not aimed at you, buddy.
From what I understand, they even build in things to weed out people who are not sufficiently susceptible to their ploys.
True but also keep in mind it can happen to everyone. Everyone has sometimes a laps in judgement or moments when they aren't careful enough. Thinking that it can only happen to stupid people is the 1st step to getting scammed one day.
@@louieberg2942 Yeah, all those bot comments are full of typos for instance. A person of average awareness is going to see through it immediately, and that's not their target demographic. They're using the typos, and other methods, to clear out everybody but vulnerable potential marks. Incredibly predatory.
@@needycatproductions6830 Precisely.
Reminds me of that one time I got called to be notified that I had gotten into an accident and had to pay for operating fees... all because my own number was my emergency contact during an event.
You werent put behind the bars?
2:40 precision in language is so important and feels lost these days, especially when people will casually say stuff like "i got hacked." no, you were probably a victim of social engineering and freely gave away what information was required for you to be "hacked." if you're not precise in defining the problem or what's happening, it just serves to obfuscate the problem more.
it really bugs me that steam allows the fact that all publishers (including AAA) can say "games on sale UP TO 90%!" and its always for games that i dont care about and buried with games i want.
Yea, that -90% is for some MTX thing that costs $3 to begin with.
steam doesn't know what games you care about, put a game you care about on a wishlist and it will tell you when it goes on sale
I'm so glad Thor is always warning against jumping to conclusions. It is so common nowadays especially online for people to just instantly label something without any proof.
Like that time when he said everyone complaining about AC: Shadows were all just racists who were angry about having a black protagonist? I guarantee not a single person has ever said that to him or anyone else. Yet there he went happily spouting journalist-tier slop. No issue jumping to conclusions there, but woe is me for potentially misusing the phrase "money laundering" cuz yeah that'd be such a tragedy omg 🙄🙄🙄
@@armandoalvarado5840 youtube users understand nuance challenge: impossible
Money laundering was a right pain in the arse when I worked at the bookies. Used to get people come in, put couple grand in a betting machine then print the ticket off without making a bet, you then hand them back the clean money.
"How Much Money Can We Launder In A Day?" by Boy Boy on UA-cam showed this to a tee. A lot of the bookies there straight up didn't care that they were doing this.
I'd suggest a 2 hour video talking about this problem, but it got copyright striked by some greedy bastard.
Fireborn eh?
@@krispy_kornflake Yep.
very refreshing to see someone use the phrase "copyright strike" instead of "copystrike" lol does this bother anyone else or do i need to end it all asap via my 2004 toyota avalon?
@@hueybaloney8429I'm sorry but I have never seen anyone say copystrike
@@hueybaloney8429 I will copystrike your comment
I saved a neighbor from a similar scam. Scammer called him, said they were a sheriff and they had an arrest warrant for him, give them 5k in itunes gift cards to pay it off and it'll go away. His wife was terminally ill and he couldn't afford to be 5 minutes from her side, let alone the threat of being in jail. So, I saw him running around frantically, asked him what was going on. When he told me, I told him pretty much the same thing: It's a scam, if you had a legit arrest warrant they would have been kicking down your door, not wanting itunes gift cards. Go report it, go to your bank, lock everything down, etc.
Worth noting the scammers you talk about often ask for something stranger than a simple wire transfer, like a prepaid debit card from walmart or a gift card. Bank tellers are more likely to recognize these scams and have more obligation to prevent people from getting owned by them than a walmart employee. For a lot of people this would be an obvious sign this isn't official, but if you're an elderly person who's already behind the times regarding technology and money, that's a different story.
Here's something interesting. In some places, if you refuse to sell someone gift cards, you can lose your job. Not many jobs allow you to refuse service to someone. So if you work at say, Walmart, or Kroger's, or a dollar store. You have no choice but to sell these $400 worth of gift cards to old mawmaw.
@@RedCyberLizzie I don't know if that's true anywhere, but it's definitely not true at Walmart.
Regular cashiers are specifically not allowed to sell gift cards over a certain amount or large numbers of them, and the service desk people who _are_ allowed to are told to check for those scams and refuse the sale if it sounds off.
There is a fairly straightforward rule you can teach your relatives to deal with this. There is no legitimate entity in the universe who will accept a gift card as payment for any good or service, except for the company that issued it. Anyone who asks for gift cards as payment, for anything, is a scammer or some other kind of criminal, unless their logo is on the gift card.
(Technical exception: There are a few small businesses who will barter off-brand gift cards for goods and services, if the customer is unable to afford a necessary product such as food. They do not call people and ask for gift cards, and it is certainly not their preferred form of payment.)
For that matter, anyone who calls and asks you to pay them right now is probably a scammer or a collections agent. Legitimate creditors will send you a bill or paperwork of some kind, and will generally expect payment within some number of business days, not "right now."
@@grimwolf9988Saw this happen yesterday actually. Lady in front of me troed to buy a $500 apple card and a $50 one, but there is a maximum of $500 per customer per day. Caused a whole situation with managers asking if she was buying them as gifts or cause someone told her too.
From having seen Kitboga the last year, the scammers have upped their game. They are actually using wire transfers now, they just go out of their way to make sure their target shares as little info as possible.
My sponsor had this happen to her using A.I. voice to manipulate her thinking it was her son. She kinda knew it could be a scam but she was so afraid, panic and felt like she didn't want to risk it... she lost $10k so please beware of A.I. too.
My elderly mom just got mail that said her house insurance was about to expire, and she is approved for 3 year home insurance from what looked like her credit union. I told her it was a scam, and not to contact them. I hate these scammers with a passion.
There was an interesting scam going around, people received letters about pirating some show and if they didn't pay up x amount they'd take them to court. "We got all the IP logs" ect. it was 100% targeted at parents or just plain gullible people. I got like 3 different letters trying to get money from me, and I've never watched any of them and never even heard of 2 of them. I think my mom got one too and called me to ask what this meant since she's lived alone for years and years. I told her to used it as tinder and tell all the people she knows to do the same. What I remember they bought some info from ISP brokers and carpet bombed everyone on their lists with those letters whenever they did anything or not.
I just got the same sort of letter yesterday, claiming to be from my bank.
That's like the "most expensive games on steam" bundle.
Nah, it's the cheapest games on steam, rebadged
@@thekaxmax no, I'm talking about a bundle titled "the most expensive games on steam" that is a pack of overpriced shovelware.
Small point of reference, it's only money laundering if both parties are aware that it's money laundering. If for example someone offers someone else $1000 to give them $700 back, is it suspicious? Of course, but unless the second party knows it's criminal there is no crime being perpetrated on their end. It's called plausible deniability. And this goes back to the way the legal system works. In order to prove that money laundering occurred one of the elements you have to prove is INTENT. Without intent, there is no crime. So as much as the legal authorities may hate it, they can't actually charge an unwilling party with money laundering and secure a conviction. Which is why in a vast majority of the cases they try to scare the party into a plea deal.
Is there no duty on the recipient's side for some due diligence?
@@louieberg2942 no, because it isn't a contractual obligation. The only way there's due diligence is if there's a written contract. Generally when it's a person to person transaction it's never required. Most of the time you'll see it only in giant business transactions between companies or property.
Politicians: "Money laundering? You mean lobbying and smart investments."
Every day i get phone calls telling me i owe the sherrifs department hundreds of dollars
Actually baffling to me that this kind of trash is still up on Steam.
the greedy company steam? you're that baffled? cmon
They unfortunately can't see everything. So a lot slips through.
@@siqsteen "greedy"
@@siqsteen Lets be honest here, as shocking as it may be, EVERY company is about making money, hell even non-profit companies need to manage and procure funds from somewhere, but Steam, whether they are greedy or not, is still one of the companies that is trying to provide a good service, precisely because they want people to keep using it so they can make more money.
So yeah, it's baffling that scammers can operate on the platform so openly and for a long period of time, because it makes Steam look bad, which in turn erodes the trust and confidence of potential customers.
I work for a regional bank in the US and I see scams like these alarmingly often. I have seen threats of cp, hurt or jailed family members, romantic partners, even fake jobs with REAL paperwork and forms. It is truly terrible, and the amount of paranoia we have to walk around with in our day-to-day jobs is rather disheartening. Please stay vigilant and ask "why" to everything.
luckily, I never even drill down in steam to even see these types of games. If it isn't on a recommend or the front page, I don't see it.
My Grandma got targeted by the same scam. If not for the fact that I never get in trouble like that they might’ve got her. I’m terrified of how these scams will evolve due to AI.
Can you imagine almost scamming a nice old lady out of $10k and then finding out later that was Thor's grandmother?
That's like running over a dog in a getaway from a bank heist and then later finding out that dog belonged to John Wick.
My favorite money laundering trick, is when you have made fake bills. You used to in ancient times, actually launder it to roughen it up a bit. Because crisp bills are super sketch apparanrly
a couple of weeks ago in germany there was this elderly guy who countered a scammer and made him meetup at the bank - with a police parade - though in this kind of scenario, the young scammer was (probably) only a tool for a bigger ring.
A couple of weeks beforehand, an elderly couple elongated the phone conversation with the scammers, so while she was talking with the scammers, her husband called the police to counteract.
3:15 “more like this” the Sims is first.
GOTTEM LMAOOOOOO
Yeah, I love that point about not jumping to conclusions. Something involving money can be bad without being a scam. People throw that word around way too easily.
Not jumping to conclusions is a concept with a universal adapter on it. Never a bad idea.
My local grocery store runs this same scam. A dozen donuts is $18.99 but if I use the Frequent Shopper card they are $6.99! Obviously the real price is $6.99 but I have to sign up for their stupid card in order to pay that price.
My grandma got a similar scam call about my cousin in jail. She knew it was probably a scam, but wanted to be sure, so she asked to hear his voice. They hung up.
My dad almost got scammed of everything in his bank account before.
We were talking and his phone rang. Apparently it was "America Bank". I thought nothing of it at first, so I left. As soon as I stepped foot in my room, I knew I was missing something very important. I managed to sprint back and convince my dad to hang up. It took nearly 4-5 minutes of me questioning when my dad finally asked what bank the caller was from and realized that America Bank is not a bank we are affiliated with.
Holy crap, that exact thing happened to my Grandma. She hung up on them to go get the money and then "called me back" to ask a question. She called my actual phone, though, so I was able to help her calm down and see what was happening.
I have never in my life been so enraged. I don't like violence, but I would have 100% undone those people if they were in front of me at any time that day.
Common one like with your grandma is the "It's me" scam. They call up older people and say "Hey grandma it's me." and grandma will go "Jimmy?" or "Johnny" or whatever and let the older person fill in who they think is calling them. After that it's usually a "I'm in jail and need bail money" or something along those lines.
It's like cold reading, à la mediums and psychics. The other party fills in the gaps for you if you prime them to do it. If the scammed person doesn't play ball, they move on. Sick, sick game.
Why does steam not have measures against stuff like this? I mean.. They could easily scan their library for unusual prices and discounts and then put someone there to check them manually.
Well scanning for discounts on a platform notoriously known for having 70-90% discounts regularly, won't work. Unusually priced items is subjective. There are things that do sell for that price, so you can't flag anything over x dollar as then nothing can be sold for that. That's why the scam works, as dumb as it looks it is easy to just hide in plain sight. The normal person will just avoid it.
I mean let's be real steam let garbage games for steam green light go for YEARS without QA'ing the process, that was just asset flips. This is that just in a different shell. But that's why you look for actual good publishers and avoid crap like this.
I do agree SOMETHING should be done, but it is a hard thing to automate. Not impossible, I am sure you go do analytics to find the proper combination to flag this publisher and set of games. But price and discount is not it, the bundle of several dozens games and only a fraction of games discounted, would probably be my go to. Or of a bundle of x games is great than y, as 20 games shouldn't be 10000.
But that costs money that could go to an exec's harem
@@thekaxmax Then saying they are not "happy about it" is absolut bullshit from their side. Just a nice little lie to make them look like they're the good ones.
"M-Money laundering!"
Same people who think "Still Water" will melt you like acid.
I just witnessed this, when I was buying the Judgement/Judgement 2 Bundle. They had the games reduced to a certain amount on the store, but when I added it to my cart, the total miraculously changed and did not reflect the store page cost.
4:37 Someone called my grandpa claiming to be “his oldest grandson” and tried scamming him with this fake bail nonsense. I’m his only grandson. He laughed, told them to call someone else, and hung up.
Now whenever I call him I always say “it’s your oldest grandson” and we both laugh
Wenever I want to get a new game, I go through the reviews, the not recommending ones, to see what they about it. If their critics are relevant to me, if the same stuff comes back again and again, etc...
Years ago my grandparents were almost the victims of the "your grandson is injured in a foreign country" scams. Fortunately, they did think to call my parents to see if I was alright before sending anything.
I had the exact "your grandson is in jail" scam happen to my grandmother as well. That's wild.
"This scam won't work on me cause I don't *have* $900 to blow on Steam games!"
Same issue you had with your Grandma happened to one of my tenants in low income housing. Lady was emotional and crying when she came down the elevator. She told me what happened, but was very reluctant to do so. I called the police to my office and had her explain the situation and give over as much information as possible for them to identify the caller. I do not know if anything ever came of it. I remember that lady thinking she would never see your grown daughter again. I had to almost force her to call the daughter, there is something about shame and fear that allows this scam to happen and should be explained to older parents. At some point when your parents become incapable of making good decisions is when many sons and daughters start taking over accounts and explaining these scams, I warn you: "It is never soon enough".
"To clean... no... to wash... here it is... to conceal the source of money as by channeling it through an intermediary"
Good ol' Office Space.
"My grandma almost got owned by a scam"
A lot of dirty tricks like that.
Like when someone distressed calls you and just says "I have been in a car accident. I wrecked someone else's car and they demand to be immediately payed for damages or they are gonna have me arrested, please send me a thousand bucks."
I have several of these random positive games in my steam library.. thank you bundles xD. .. but that price is ridiculous
SAme. Maybe upwards to 10, because buying the bundle is like 1-2 bucks cheaper than buying the actual game I wanted to buy.
I watched a guy on youtube a while back that made video essays on stuff like this. He was on a bad game binge around 2015, the same year Steam Greenlight was born, his viewers and fans kept sending him bad games because uh... to be fair I got no clue, but it made for entertaining videos at least. He said if it looked like if it would cause him physical pain or disgust him beyond belief, they would send it his way.
"You want bad games? I got them. You want Steam Greenlight asset flips? I got them. You want games so awful you can't even buy them on Steam anymore? Well, I got them."
Love that guy. RIP to his sanity but by damn I learned a lot from him, not just as a guy playing the games but as a critic. I base a lot of my creative projects around his negative critiques as a "do's and dont's" sort of thing.
I'm not surprised that the publisher of these $200 game is Hede. I was literally half expecting Thor to show Hede "games"
Hede used to be on my steam discovery queue at least once every refresh for awhile until I went into their profile and ignored every game they have pumped out
I choose to believe the police used the word "owned."
I'm astounded Rockstar seems to be doing something similar, although decidedly less shady, red dead 2's price just jumped up to $100 but it's "discounted" by a large percent, so it looks like a better deal even though it's been cheaper the last 3 years
My grandma actually got scammed out of $7000 dollars in gift cards because a person called her saying her grandson (my brother) was in jail and they needed a bail. Scary part is someone came to her house and told her about it too.
Thor casually teaching us how to money launder lmao
"People are saying this could be money laundering because they don't know how money laundering works!"
"So actually it could be money laundering you just don't know"
🙄
Thor casually teaching people on stream how to launder money X'D
YESS thanks for making a video on this!! DOWN WITH HEDE. He does have great ideas though.
Also my dad nearly fell for an in person scam! a few years ago someone wanted to upgrade our electricity or something, and me and my sis were there. i told him to hang up on the call and call my sister, and she talked him down from saying yes to the person!
That Banana game fits this description of money laundering with their manufactured tradable Steam items.
it really doesn't. it isn't really a scam either. it's definitely sketchy and for sure a scheme, but there isn't any proof that there's any money laundering happening from what i've seen, and from my understanding of the steam marketplace unlike counter-strike skins you cannot launder money through the banana items. at least not in a way where you can guarantee who the money goes to
@@madguy228 But the banana game generates the same type of tradeable steam item as CS. They just aren't skins.
@@scbtripwire no it does not. the banana items are commodities while the CS skins are not. this means that you can buy specific skins from specific people, but with the banana items you cannot. i don't remember exactly how the commodities so i'm not gonna go into any details i might be remembering wrong but that's the gist of it. also even if it there is some roundabout way to make it work, you'd still need any sort of proof that it's actually being used for it. just because something is possible doesn't necessarily mean it is what's happening
We need a beekeeper to go find the scammers
My Grandma told us about those bail scams, someone tried calling her pretending to be my uncle, luckily she knew about these things and mostly just fucked with the person on the line, but yeah this shit is so horrible.
Black friday in Brazil works like that since forever.
A word of advice about scammers in general: don't you ever dare to think that you're too smart/informed to be scammed by anyone. Scammers are always inventing new and nuanced ways to trick people. Always have your guard up/question things.
one thing you also forgot to mention about these high priced scam games, they price these games that high not only for sales. They price them that high so they can be used in those Steam Key bundles where you buy a bunch of random steam keys for like $5-$100 and so the lottery/gotcha of it is that youre getting a game that says its worth a shit ton more than what it is. I did this once and one of the games i got was valued at $72 and the whole game was 5 seconds long in play time and you picked 3 blueberries and it was over.
I miss when Steam Greenlight was a thing. Occasionally it didn't work, but it stopped bullshit like this. Now they're just abusing the platform
if someone approaches me with this "1000$ in bits, 700 back" thing and I agree but then never give them the 700, would I still commit a crime?
maybe some breach of contract thing. but they would need to sue, and that would probably reveal their money laundering
the urge to start money laundry rn is insane
ya i reported this entire thing on thors discord from Hede, talked about it last month a bunch land laughed at the whole thing as a meme, glad he picked up my convo and made sure people are aware of this issue and to never buy it!
I’m so glad your Grandma called you next and both of you are OK.
Dang scammers suck for making your grandma cry and scamming other ppl.
When Thor talks about them having only discounted a couple of the games, I think he misspoke. The bundle discount is applied on top of the discounts on individual games. The bundle price is obviously lower than the total price of its contents, even with some of them already discounted.
Not saying the obvious scam isn't a scam, just clarifying something that confused me initially.
Yes, that is how Steam Bundles really work. Hard to credit it to it being misspoken though when that is his core point. Just an example that people shouldn't blindly believe everything said with confidence. Everyone can be wrong at times.
Perfect explanation of how money laundering works, especially the twitch situation. It's pretty sad that an unaware and unexperienced teen could be "party B" without even knowing they are in a money laundering scheme.
Just gonna be pedantic on one thing - the entire bundle can be put on a discount that the individual items are not. You can have three full-priced games, and still have a bundle containing those games be 90% off, and if you do the math, it really is 90% off of the listed price of the bundle. Them choosing to separately discount individual items as well in the bundle does not make it a scam.
That bundle really IS 92% off of its full price. Just looking at the price of the bundle vs the games proves it - the bundle at the 92% sale price is $890. Just five of those games at full price brings you to $1000. If you were paying full price for all of those games, you would be paying far more than $890. You are NOT only getting the 92% on a few specific items.
The 92% off is not a scam, as that would be an issue with the Steam store.
All of that said, though, them claiming those games are worth $200 at full price IS ABSOLUTELY a scam. Those games are NOT worth even the bundle price, much less that ridiculous full price.
Talking about money laundering usually involves the 3 stages of ML. Placement, Layering and Integration.
Placement is when one introduces "dirty" money into financial system. Layering is mixing said money with "clean" money. Integration is the final stage when "dirty" money are completely integrated into the financial system. So, in order for something to be ML, at least one of these stages needs to be identified with certainty.
Hair dressers and barbers shops make great money laundring business's as you're not selling physical items, you could stay closed for the day and just put on the books you did 100 cuts.
Dude this meme is older than 99% of Thor's audience
I feel old for rememberimg this shit, good job pal
Those figures are wrong though. It says you're saving several thousands, but they did not discount that much money. Is there an exploit in how steam shows the calculated numbers?
Base price is 10k
@@birthdayzrock1426 But they did not discount 8k. They discounted about 1600
As far as I can tell, they're just working with the discount percentages from inside the bundle. As far as I can tell, it's likely just a poorly architected system where that big green number is calculated by doing through the bundle, looking for other big green numbers, and going with the average of all of those. Since so many games just don't have numbers, either the array they were given is too small, or the logic doesn't count zeros in the average, likely due to a guard clause ("division by zero could theoretically crash the app, which is bad, so why not just throw them out?" -some Steam dev, probably).
"If it seems too good to be true, it absolutely is."
The worst part about it is that it's not just one messed up individual running these scams. It's groups usually run just like a legitimate business. To them, it's just another way to make a living. And it's not uncommon. There's a large portion of the worlds population who could care less how their actions effect others. As long as they are getting paid, it's okay.
It takes an offensive security specialist to tell us not to assume the attention of other people
Woah wait! No Thor! You have JUST talked about paying taxes, why is the next video about tax evasion… jesus christ 😂
Sorry I meant money laundering- still processing coffee
@@animuspsycho6973 if only UA-cam allowed you to edit comments....
@@Ael666 aye… if only there was an edit function for comments
@@animuspsycho6973not sure if u know that if u click the 3 dots next to your comment….
This is why I said Steam tries to force price parity on games. Nothing stops someone from pricing their games at $1000 on Steam and selling offsite for a reasonable price. This lets them not pay Steam anything at all and still using all the Steam features and use the Steampage as a billboard. There are still ways around the rule and as long as you're not egregious you aren't going to get in trouble. That's how there are so many great deals around that are better than Steam even with Steam keys.
The "only done 92% off on a few games" is not how bundles work. Those ones that are 92% off are 99.4% off and everything else is 92% off. Since each individual game is $200 and the total is $900 there's no way that's full price on all the games.
The scam is the base price vs the quality of the games.
0:41 "Steam is not going to be happy when they find this" - how could they not already know? Surely they have simple analytics and alerts to pick this stuff up, they have all the data.
Keep in mind that just when you think you're too smart to get scammed is the precise moment you're most vulnerable to a scam.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is currently priced at $35 AND "65% off"...
3D PUZZLE . Pirates just for $199.99? Thats a steal! :D
Not only illegal money is used but also tax money (so-called aid).
Stated on zero evidence but lots of paranoia
This is why Valve should have never gotten rid of the greenlight system. Steam was refined and had genuinely good games. Now it is 90% filled with this and other forms of slop.
With digital purchases, I forgot about like stolen cards. Typically, for money laundering as most people thing of it, stuff already in the banking system doesn’t need to be laundered. Instead, it’s to provide reasonable explanations for large deposits of cash to avoid police investigations, since banks have to report cash deposits if they add up to enough (mostly for tax reasons). Even just spending the cash, you do that enough and someone will notice. Money in the banks is just more useful.
Money Laundering doesn't require a second party, just a single person and a business through which to wash your cash. It CAN involve two or more parties, but its most commonly just someone using a (typically personally owned) legitimate business to disperse their illicit funds into legitimate funds, making it impossible to determine which is which.
expected to see a steam scam, ended up learning how to launder money. Gotta love Pirate Software.
That is why most scams have typos and grammar mistakes, they don't want smart people.