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.
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.
It's also an incredibly arrogant, cruel and rather ableist thing to say. First, people don't choose how intelligent they are, nor do they choose their place of education in their formative years. Acting like you're somehow better for being smarter is completely absurd. You got lucky, stfu. You may well be intelligent, but the only trait you have that you had any actual choice in is being an a**hole. Second, many scams are specifically targeted at the vulnerable, the deteriorating, or the mentally impaired. These actors rely in part on ableism - this attitude of "oh well, it doesn't affect me, so I won't share any thought for the victims because I'm smort" - to continue their operations unimpeded by the people who can stop it.
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 🤣
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, my grandparents were saved by the fact they are always friendly with their bank teller who told them it was probably a scam and they should check on it before they do anything. Still boils my blood to this day that someone almost got thousands of dollars out of them using my name. Not only that but my grandma was confused enough that she was convinced that I had tried to scam her out of money, more than likely she passed away believing that.
Yeah...but at the same time he basically all but confirmed it is. Even though it's jumping to conclusions. It's jumping to conclusions in the same way as if you find your child with chocolate all over their face, it's jumping to conclusions to determine that they have been eating their Halloween candy without permission. Because they could have been eating their sisters candy...
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 lets not act like all racist on twitter didn t jump on the occasion to rant about AC shadow. Like you can t ignore the people that spammed the picture of a monkey in samurai armor.
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 RU-vid showed this to a tee. A lot of the bookies there straight up didn't care that they were doing this.
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
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.
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.
If you think about it though, they're right. They got hacked, as in their human self got hacked, rather than their computer system or account getting hacked.
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 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 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.
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?
@@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.
Steam is one of the less greedy companies out there lol. A 30% cut for reputation, customer service, payment / refund handler, foruns, gift system, controller support, etc is a fair cut.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 mum is one of those people. Luckily I told her a while back to ask me if she thinks anything is a scam or she gets an unexpected text etc. Now she can recognise them herself and ignores them.
I work at a CPA firm and I want to say that what Thor is referring to is converting credit card money into clean money so it's not traceable, but it is not how we would define laundering. Laundering absolutely can and often is owned by the individuals who commit crimes, it is about taking money already untraceable and in your posession and funneling it through a legal business as "paying customers" so that tax can be paid on it and deposited in the bank accounts as legally earned money. Two different things.
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 $700 back, is it suspicious? Of course, but unless the second party knows it's criminal there is no crime being perpetrated on their end. It's called plausible deniability. And this goes back to the way the legal system works. In order to prove that money laundering occurred one of the elements you have to prove is INTENT. Without intent, there is no crime. So as much as the legal authorities may hate it, they can't actually charge an unwilling party with money laundering and secure a conviction. Which is why in a vast majority of the cases they try to scare the party into a plea deal.
@@louieberg2942 no, because it isn't a contractual obligation. The only way there's due diligence is if there's a written contract. Generally when it's a person to person transaction it's never required. Most of the time you'll see it only in giant business transactions between companies or property.
No, you should automatically assume something is wrong, why would someone give you 1k for you to sent 700$ back, there no other choice then cleaning money. There is really no suspicion to have its quite clear. You should never accept this kind of transaction, because none of these kind of transactions would be legitimate
@@siyano suspicion is not proof. And that's the point. The legal system is clear about this, you have plausible deniability until they can prove you don't.
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.
It's kind of mind-blowing to think there are whole office spaces dedicated to these sorts of schemes. Makes you wonder how many people must fall for it if they're investing that much money.
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.
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.
4:30 this happened to my grandparents to. The exact same scam. I walked in the door 5 minutes after they paid the person and I gotta say I've never seen a man go from worried to pissed at themselves so fast before or since.
Man I've had to tell likely over a 1000 people "Sorry mate I'm afraid you have been scammed, please contact your bank and the police." Comes in waves and yes heartbreakingly it's all to often the elderly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I worked in retail and the amount of older men buying $500 worth of Amazon gift cards for a "fiancé" they've never met seemed way higher than you'd expect. I'd ask them if they were sure about this, if they actually met the other person, etc., but the more you implied that they might be getting scammed the more defensive they'd get so we'd let them complete the transaction to avoid causing a scene but it always felt bad. We also had scammers calling the store directly posing as our IT department and trying to get gift card codes over the phone. My coworker went as far as to activate hundreds of dollars in Apple gift cards before he realized something wasn't right, but thankfully he refused to read codes over the phone.
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 $6.99 but I have to sign up for their stupid card in order to pay that price.
Id assume yes because it's still illegally acquired money, if the streamer is unaware and just wanted to keep the money they probably would have it confiscated
Even outside of it. Even Amazon has plenty of products that are perennially marked at 20% or something. We with our monkey brains see the "discount" and we are compelled to purchase it because it seems like a good deal.
Talking about money laundering usually involves the 3 stages of ML. Placement, Layering and Integration. Placement is when one introduces "dirty" money into financial system. Layering is mixing said money with "clean" money. Integration is the final stage when "dirty" money are completely integrated into the financial system. So, in order for something to be ML, at least one of these stages needs to be identified with certainty.
There are also the G2A gatcha like keys that give you those 199$ games that are bullshit games, so you buy a "only expensive games key" and get one of those
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".
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.
I have been searching for a job for over a year after graduating college and there are SOOOO many scam job postings out there that will literally lead you through very legit seeming recruitment procedures and wastes hours to days of your time only to then demand thousands of dollars to "finish" the process. Absolutely crazy out there right now.
An insidious one is the “you’ve just been scammed. Let me help you get your money back.” Then you get called over and over as you’ve proven you’re a sucker.
A hint that they might be used for money laundering is that as they are under $200 you don't need to keep any receipt for that purchase according to US law.
Related scam on Steam: Where a company marks a game up *just before* a major sale, and sets a "deep" discount price that's not nearly as deep a discount. 02:00 That's a Twitch version of an old cheque scam. Most often the cheque you send 'back' is good, but the cheque you were sent? That bounces.
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.
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!
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 remember showing someone this and telling them "it COULD be money laundering", and from then on, to them, "it IS money laundering" and I just facepalmed so hard. How is it so difficult to make the distinction?
Eh, i do the same. I genuinely don't care what is their goal, and money laundering is the easy answer, so i just assume "probably money laundering" and move on.
4:31 how sophisticated. I had something like that happen to my mom a few years ago down here. Only the scammers were saying they had kidnapped my sister, and they'd do terrible things to her if my mom didn't pay up. They even put a girl on the phone, which my mom thought sounded like my sister, which caused her to panic, all while threatening her to not go to the police. They also threatened my mom when they heard my voice, as I was talking to her. Luckily, I was able to call my dad (retired cop), and he was able to get ahold of my sister and confirm that she had indeed not been kidnapped. Turns out my dad had encountered a distressed old man outside of a bank dealing with the same thing a few months prior. He was panicking because he didn't have the amount the scammers (who claimed they had kidnapped his daughter) were demanding. He and my dad ended up being able to get ahold of his daughter, who also turned out to be fine and unkidnapped. My other sister was also targeted by that same kind of scam, only they said they had kidnapped her child... she didn't have children at the time, so she just mocked them. I hope there's a special place in hell for scammers.
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
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."
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!
My grandpa sent me a text during class one day and asked if I was okay. I obviously said yea I'm in class right now. He got a call from "me" saying that I was in New York and needed to be bailed out. It's so messed up that people do that.
The Bundle doesn't just have "a couple games reduced by 92%", otherwise it would still cost much more than $900, since that's only 5 games tops. The Bundle reduces all 50 of them by 92%, but it still costs $900 by the end of the day.
Grandparent who considered himself fairly technologically savvy got scammed by one of those 'claiming to be windows' scammers And they absolutely destroyed his old but still functional Windows 98 computer. We had to replace it, And he was lamenting the loss of the decades of emails that he had lost. He'd mailed them a check too
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.
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.
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.
i get literally hundreds of scam attempts thrown at me every week, nothing like this but it's always some sort of fake blackmail and it's starting to get boring lol
My sister nearly fell for a similar scam discussed at the end of the video. Almost got $3000 from her. If not for the fact she called our mom to take care of her kid, she would be out $3000.
I understand this in theory, but I don't understand how anyone is going to buy a $900 game bundle like this. I could understand these scam packs being sold at less than $100 because people think they're buying many games for the price of one, but $900 probably prices all of those people out, even if they perceive it as a good deal.