Life Lesson #1... NEVER GIVE YOUR MONEY TO STRANGERS WITHOUT PROOF OF PURCHASE!!!

People, never just blindly shell out coin. I learned that the hard way. Thankfully I learned early. Damn Columbia House.

A Gift

"I had a visa gift card for $100 I got for my birthday, and wanted to check the balance after a few purchases online. I look up "check visa gift card balance" and clicked on the first thing i saw."

- throwaway74274380

Room for Rent

"I put a room up for rent once. Someone applied and said they would be moving in at the first of the month. They said they were military and switching bases. This person said they were going to go ahead and ship their car out and fly in. The car arrived and was offloaded by truck. A few days later the car was gone. The person never arrived. A month or so later the police knocked and asked about the car."

"Ended up being that the car was stolen by whoever this person was that shipped it and the person who picked it up was a buyer who thought it was legit. Apparently he had a set of keys mailed to him and a fake title. Idk if it ever got sorted but they initially assumed that I was a part of it."

- BLACKMACH1NE

$20

"At the start of college one year when everyone was moving into houses in the usual sh*tty but affordable part of a college town, a guy walked up to us and said he can get us free HBO, he'd just take $20, he knew a guy. We're like cool, he takes out his cell phone, walks a few steps away out of earshot, says check our TV, we go, and lo and behold, HBO! We give him $20 and he walks away. A week later, it was gone. The dude just called HBO for some free trial week. He must have hit up every college kid moving in that day and made bank."

- StoolToad9

The Best 'Actually, You're Speaking To The Boss' Experience | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

Cousins

"Ohhh boy, I still cringe about that. Back in the late 90s, early 00s when chatrooms were popular, I met this guy there and we ended up chatting pretty much daily. He had an unusual name for the region, that should have been the first clue. We chatted and sent letters to each other (by actual post)... tried to meet up with him so many times, but he always had something come up. One night on new year's eve when we were supposed to meet finally, HIS COUSIN shows up and said yea he'll come soon, he told me to wait here with you."

"Pretended to call him several times to ask where he was, an hour or so later I just went back home and never talked to the guy again. Turned out the "cousin" was the guy I was chatting with and he had made a deal with another guy to see how long I would believe all this. I can't believe I fell for it. Keep in mind I was 16 something back then."

- Finewhatever1

Live and in Color

"In the late 50s or early 60s, some guy came into my grandpas shop selling color TVs out of the back of a truck."

"The family had never had a color tv, and the price was way less than what a store charged, so he bought one. He excitedly brought it home, plugged it in and turned it on. Black and White. He played with the knobs and antenna, nothing. No color. The guy took a bunch of old black and white TVs, slapped a rainbow sticker on them, and sold them as color. Brilliant."

- Jealous-Network-8852

I've never trusted gift cards. If you love me, give me cash. And I have seen way too many movies and read too many stories about crazy renters. Buy, flip and sell. It's a much saner purchase.

Travel Fail

"A website faked itself as official passport department I filled the forms for passport update there made payment and all and in the end realized... It was fake. Never got the money back!"

- cheeseslicee

Ruined

"I traded this guy my Full Rune armor because he said he could trim it for me."

- WhodieWhodie

"I met a dude in the game while chilling at the GE and we talked for awhile. Became friends, did bossing and stuff together. Then after like a year plus of chilling and stuff he asked for money for a bond. I gave him 100m just to be nice and he called me a loser, blocked me and logged out."

- RTLadNumber4

I'm Dumb

"Not exactly elaborate but this girl in my fifth grade class brought soy sauce in a coke bottle once. Then she proceeded to "share" it with me and I being the dumb butt that I was straight up open the bottle and chugged it down before even smelling it. That was a bad day."

- elysianyuri

The Grift

"I don't know if it's necessarily the most elaborate scam of all time, but there are a range of fake sites online that offer ESTA visa for entry into the US. The funny thing about the sites is that they actually process your visa, but they just do it by sending your details to the official site and charging you a hundred dollars or so of idiot tax. I got caught a few years back and I wasn't even really mad. It was such an amazingly set-up grift, and what made it even better was that you really had no recourse because they were actually giving you what you paid for."

- dougieburrows

Beware y'all.

Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.