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Middleman Scams and Lawn Care Professionals · I Hate Talking

• 0:30
  I Hate Talking: Welcome to episode 110 of I Hate Talking.
• 0:33
  I Hate Talking: Hi everyone.
• 0:33
  I Hate Talking: So we'll jump right into our word or phrase of the episode, and that is the phrase middleman scam.
• 0:41
  I Hate Talking: Middleman scam.
• 0:44
  I Hate Talking: Yes, is that politically incorrect?
• 0:46
  I Hate Talking: Should it be middle person scam?
• 0:48
  I Hate Talking: No, it just sounds like a tongue twister, so I was making sure I understood it.
• 0:52
  I Hate Talking: Middleman, middleman scam.
• 0:55
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, see how hard that is to say?
• 0:58
  I Hate Talking: Say it 5 times fast.
• 1:00
  I Hate Talking: Middleman scam, middleman scam, middleman scam, middleman scam, middleman scam.
• 1:05
  I Hate Talking: OK, good.
• 1:06
  I Hate Talking: I couldn't do it.
• 1:08
  I Hate Talking: I can't even do it once.
• 1:09
  I Hate Talking: So, a middleman scam, according to our favorite duck go AI or at least my favorite duck go AI.
• 1:20
  I Hate Talking: is described as a scam that involves a scammer acting as an intermediary between a buyer and seller.
• 1:28
  I Hate Talking: It goes on that this can often include using spoofed usernames or fake accounts to deceive their victims.
• 1:37
  I Hate Talking: Mhm So apparently middleman scams have been around for a long time.
• 1:46
  I Hate Talking: It's basically any time that there's somebody in the middle of a buyer and seller could potentially act as both the buyer and seller to legitimate buyer and sellers.
• 1:57
  I Hate Talking: Or Basically pretend to be a seller.
• 2:03
  I Hate Talking: That is selling a legitimate item, pretend to be that seller, collect money from the unsuspecting buyer, and then when the buyer tries to collect their item or whatever the case may be, they will go to the legitimate person and say, hey, I paid you this money.
• 2:18
  I Hate Talking: I need my stuff, but that legitimate seller was also taken advantage of because they were not the ones that interacted with said buyer.
• 2:28
  I Hate Talking: So.
• 2:29
  I Hate Talking: There's one party that's not acted in good faith.
• 2:33
  I Hate Talking: And then there's two other separate parties that are acting in good faith.
• 2:40
  I Hate Talking: Correct.
• 2:41
  I Hate Talking: Mhm.
• 2:42
  I Hate Talking: In the middle man.
• 2:44
  I Hate Talking: be acting in bad faith also, or is he always a victim?
• 2:49
  I Hate Talking: -- The -- middleman is a bad person.
• 2:52
  I Hate Talking: Huh OK.
• 2:55
  I Hate Talking: I feel like the middleman is the innocent victim that gets put between the bad person and then the main person.
• 3:03
  I Hate Talking: Now, the middleman is the middle person that is in between the buyer and the seller, acting as one or both of the legitimate parties, pretending to be one or both of the legitimate parties.
• 3:17
  I Hate Talking: What do you mean by one or both?
• 3:18
  I Hate Talking: So it could be.
• 3:20
  I Hate Talking: Both.
• 3:21
  I Hate Talking: The An old man scammer is acting as both the buyer and the seller.
• 3:27
  I Hate Talking: Or it could be Just one, typically acting as the seller, it seems.
• 3:34
  I Hate Talking: But if he's acting as both buyer and seller, who's he talking to?
• 3:38
  I Hate Talking: Well, we'll get to that.
• 3:39
  I Hate Talking: So, probably the more simple one and The one that's been around longer is the middleman scam where typically the person is acting as the seller.
• 3:55
  I Hate Talking: So this apparently has come about more recently than I thought with perhaps the rise of the internet age.
• 4:03
  I Hate Talking: So some of the classic examples that are given here is that the Nigerian prince email scam is an example of a middleman scam where There will really be a Nigerian prince, and there really will be somebody that wants to collect money, but there's this person acting in between that is pretending to be the Nigerian prince to say that they need X, Y, Z done and then they'll pay certain money or whatever they need to move the money around.
• 4:32
  I Hate Talking: So can they send some money to establish a Bank account routing number so that they can send the money to them.
• 4:41
  I Hate Talking: And then online selling is also apparently prone to this as well, where again, the middleman scammer will act as a legitimate seller.
• 4:54
  I Hate Talking: So there could be a real seller that has a real listing online on like an eBay type site or Facebook Marketplace or something like that.
• 5:04
  I Hate Talking: And the middleman person will pretend to be that legitimate seller and Perhaps create a fake listing or somehow contact a potential buyer, and they will think that this is the real person that's selling this real item.
• 5:22
  I Hate Talking: And then pay this scammer the money, and then when they go to collect the listing that they think that they just paid for.
• 5:30
  I Hate Talking: The legitimate seller does not have any record of this because they did not interact with this potential buyer.
• 5:38
  I Hate Talking: So like, a super practical way would be, say, I post something on Facebook Marketplace.
• 5:45
  I Hate Talking: And a scammer sees that.
• 5:48
  I Hate Talking: And makes a fake profile, takes the photos I posted.
• 5:54
  I Hate Talking: And uploads their own listing.
• 5:57
  I Hate Talking: Maybe this mama who wants a baby carrier that I'm selling, likes the post or comments on it.
• 6:07
  I Hate Talking: The scammer sees that, and the scammer directly messages her, like, hey, I'll sell it to you for 10% off if and hold it for you if you Venmo me right now.
• 6:20
  I Hate Talking: So then that mama is like, that's a great deal, sure.
• 6:24
  I Hate Talking: And so she Venmos the money.
• 6:26
  I Hate Talking: And then she messages me trying to get pick up or something.
• 6:32
  I Hate Talking: Correct.
• 6:32
  I Hate Talking: Mm.
• 6:34
  I Hate Talking: All right, yeah, I can picture that.
• 6:36
  I Hate Talking: Luckily that's never happened to me, but I can picture it.
• 6:40
  I Hate Talking: Exactly, so, and this probably happens less frequently now with perhaps more of the security processes in place with Facebook Marketplace where there's not really a public chat per se.
• 6:54
  I Hate Talking: But it's more through direct messaging and everything if you're trying to buy something.
• 7:00
  I Hate Talking: So that makes sure that you're actually interacting with the person.
• 7:05
  I Hate Talking: That has the posting, so it's not like they can spoof the username with like public chats or like names that look similar or if they steal your profile picture and things like that.
• 7:16
  I Hate Talking: So that's The example of a middleman scam where they are functioning as just one party, typically the seller.
• 7:25
  I Hate Talking: So then there's also the middleman scam where they function as both the seller and the buyer.
• 7:32
  I Hate Talking: OK, explain that one because that one makes, I don't understand who the victim is in that.
• 7:37
  I Hate Talking: Well, we are the victims.
• 7:38
  I Hate Talking: We were a victim of the middleman scam.
• 7:41
  I Hate Talking: I know we were, but he wasn't.
• 7:43
  I Hate Talking: Doing 2 parties, he was, there were 3 parties involved, us, someone else, I was a victim also.
• 7:51
  I Hate Talking: And then that guy or entity.
• 7:54
  I Hate Talking: Right, so there was us The legitimate lawn care professional, and then the third party is the scammer, and the scammer theoretically was functioning as both the buyer and seller.
• 8:08
  I Hate Talking: How So To give a little bit of background on this, basically, there is a known middleman scam, particularly in lawn care, for whatever reason, I guess it's perhaps one that's a little bit easier for a scammer to take advantage of with perhaps parties that are not going to see each other face to face or they're going to communicate through digital means and Not necessarily have a lot of readily available personal information to identify themselves back and forth.
• 8:43
  I Hate Talking: And you don't have to, with lawn care, like versus a tangible item.
• 8:48
  I Hate Talking: The lawn care can just show up and do their work and leave, versus somebody who's buying an item is gonna be expecting that item.
• 8:57
  I Hate Talking: Right.
• 8:58
  I Hate Talking: There's also no barriers in terms of like access to property or something like that.
• 9:04
  I Hate Talking: You can just, like you said, show up, do the work, and then Go about collecting payment.
• 9:09
  I Hate Talking: So, We Basically have.
• 9:16
  I Hate Talking: Some property that we're working on selling and that particular property.
• 9:23
  I Hate Talking: I Has a lawn and does need lawn care.
• 9:29
  I Hate Talking: So essentially what happened was that there was a scammer.
• 9:34
  I Hate Talking: Uh, for all intents and purposes that we can tell, was scamming potentially, I guess mainly us and the person.
• 9:44
  I Hate Talking: I don't know.
• 9:44
  I Hate Talking: I think both parties would be victim, depending on how it shakes out.
• 9:48
  I Hate Talking: But essentially, the scammer contacted a lawn care professional and said that they needed work done at this property, pretending to be us, and that was through a series of text messages.
• 10:05
  I Hate Talking: Where that particular scammer asked for service at the property and wanted to get a quote and it was actually interesting to note that the lawn care professional was very professional and wanted to know exactly where the property lines were and if there was any additional work needed and making sure that it could be done in a timely fashion and This should have been a red flag to a lawn care professional person, but they didn't catch it, though they did after the fact say that they were suspicious, but the scammer did not respond with any information about property lines.
• 10:47
  I Hate Talking: They just basically said, I need it done really quickly, and that was enough for the lawn care professional to take the job.
• 10:54
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, and got out there like that day or the next day, right, -- and got it all -- done, right?
• 10:58
  I Hate Talking: So the lawn care professional gave the quote of a few $100.
• 11:02
  I Hate Talking: And proceeded with the work and got it done quickly.
• 11:07
  I Hate Talking: And Then There were additional text messages with some really odd stuff, but we'll get into that in perhaps a moment because I think it Maybe it takes us off course from the middleman scam.
• 11:20
  I Hate Talking: So Scammer Solicited services from the lawn care professional.
• 11:27
  I Hate Talking: Lawn care professional did the work, and we didn't know, and we have not known about any of this up to this point, and we would not have had any clue because we actually have a lawn care guy who was coming later that week.
• 11:39
  I Hate Talking: So we would have just thought, oh, he came a couple of days earlier.
• 11:44
  I Hate Talking: Cool.
• 11:45
  I Hate Talking: And little did we know that our lawn care guy noticed and thought that we replaced him.
• 11:50
  I Hate Talking: Correct.
• 11:52
  I Hate Talking: So then we got this information on basically the lawn care professional reaching out to.
• 12:03
  I Hate Talking: One of our additional service people that they had their phone number of and we're asking how to get a hold of us for payment because I guess at this point, perhaps the The scammer had ghosted him.
• 12:19
  I Hate Talking: I'm not exactly sure what happened, but We got all this information that Quote unquote, we had requested these professional services for the lawn care and now owed money.
• 12:32
  I Hate Talking: Right, and I, when I got that phone call from our friend.
• 12:36
  I Hate Talking: I I was like, oh no, so and so is mowing our yard.
• 12:41
  I Hate Talking: I think this guy's scamming you.
• 12:43
  I Hate Talking: Don't do anything.
• 12:44
  I Hate Talking: So then I had to call our lawn guy, because I thought, oh, he's just trying to take advantage or something.
• 12:51
  I Hate Talking: And our long guy was like, that's when I found out.
• 12:54
  I Hate Talking: He's like, no, I, I went over and I noticed it was done already.
• 12:57
  I Hate Talking: I thought you got someone else.
• 12:58
  I Hate Talking: OK, so somebody did do the work.
• 13:02
  I Hate Talking: Both parties saw it, and both our friend and lawn care guy, they both said he did a great job.
• 13:08
  I Hate Talking: So, kudos to him.
• 13:10
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, so then we had to start saying, why would he mow our yard?
• 13:15
  I Hate Talking: And then try to get money, like, Who is sending him to our yard?
• 13:22
  I Hate Talking: Correct.
• 13:23
  I Hate Talking: Well, the scammer sent him to our yard because the typical outcome in this middleman scam is for the scammer to then invoice.
• 13:33
  I Hate Talking: The legitimate party that would have.
• 13:37
  I Hate Talking: Than the ones that quote unquote requested the service.
• 13:40
  I Hate Talking: So, -- so -- he should have asked us for money and we would have paid the scammer.
• 13:44
  I Hate Talking: Correct, yes.
• 13:46
  I Hate Talking: So, this would typically happen in a Expeditious fashion where the scammer is going to invoice the person that owns the property or uh would have had the lawn care service done.
• 14:05
  I Hate Talking: And request that money and then us or the property owner thinking that this is A legitimate scenario where you know this person work got done so we'll pay the money.
• 14:20
  I Hate Talking: So that has not happened up to this point, and that's perhaps because Neither of us answer spam calls and maybe they attempted to contact us or Something like that, but we never received any particular written invoices or Texts or phone calls.
• 14:43
  I Hate Talking: So maybe you are thinking that you may have received a phone call now.
• 14:46
  I Hate Talking: Well, I didn't know, you're right, I don't answer them, so I don't know, but I get spam texts and calls several times a day, and I just ignore them.
• 14:57
  I Hate Talking: And I was just thinking like, oh, I should go back because the lawn care guy who did a good job that we didn't hire sent us all their texts and I think his phone number is probably on there that I should probably go through my log.
• 15:12
  I Hate Talking: And see if any of them line up just out of curiosity.
• 15:16
  I Hate Talking: Well, there you go.
• 15:17
  I Hate Talking: So this is still going too.
• 15:18
  I Hate Talking: This happened a week ago, so we're still playing catch up.
• 15:22
  I Hate Talking: Things could change, I guess.
• 15:24
  I Hate Talking: OK, so go on, so.
• 15:26
  I Hate Talking: You're talking about Uh, he might have tried to contact us, we don't know.
• 15:33
  I Hate Talking: Right, so that would be the normal.
• 15:35
  I Hate Talking: The outcome for this particular scam is that the scammer would invoice the property owner before getting invoiced by the legitimate lawn care professional.
• 15:46
  I Hate Talking: But I think because this lawn care professional is like a small business, they don't necessarily invoice people on like a monthly basis or something.
• 15:54
  I Hate Talking: He's basically asking for payment immediately upon completion of the work that He was the first one to actually get a hold of us.
• 16:05
  I Hate Talking: And so we sorted all this out.
• 16:09
  I Hate Talking: I actually text him to try to confirm if he was a legitimate lawn care, and he has, you know, like a Facebook page and a Yelp listing and the phone number is associated with the actual business name and everything like that.
• 16:24
  I Hate Talking: So, it does from all appearances seem to be legitimate.
• 16:28
  I Hate Talking: So we did pay him.
• 16:30
  I Hate Talking: Some money.
• 16:32
  I Hate Talking: Right, yeah, we basically just, again, again, I'm, you know, I can only say good things about this guy.
• 16:39
  I Hate Talking: At first I was really skeptical, like, I think he's trying to scam us, but like you said, he did seem legit.
• 16:46
  I Hate Talking: We actually had, when we searched him on the internet.
• 16:49
  I Hate Talking: Mutual Our acquaintances, you know, like, live in the same town, know the same people, it's like, OK, I think he is a real person.
• 17:00
  I Hate Talking: Um, and he just, I mean, he was so nice.
• 17:04
  I Hate Talking: He was like, I'm, I messed up, I should have done my due diligence, like, don't worry about it, for payment.
• 17:10
  I Hate Talking: But we told, you know, we were already gonna pay our lawn guy.
• 17:14
  I Hate Talking: So we told our.
• 17:17
  I Hate Talking: You know, just apologize to our lawn guy.
• 17:20
  I Hate Talking: We offered him a little bit of like, hey, you know, you banked on this.
• 17:24
  I Hate Talking: And he declined it, he refused to accept any little like gift, and we just said, we'll use you in two weeks again.
• 17:32
  I Hate Talking: But the one guy who did a great job, the new guy, we paid him basically what we were gonna pay the other guy.
• 17:40
  I Hate Talking: We definitely still wanted to pay, he did the work, and I think this is, like he said, a life lesson now for him.
• 17:48
  I Hate Talking: Correct, yes.
• 17:50
  I Hate Talking: It's possible that he It is like a semi scammer.
• 17:56
  I Hate Talking: Like he just wanted a job.
• 17:59
  I Hate Talking: I mean, well, it's possible that the person that we paid is the middleman scammer and we haven't been invoiced by the legitimate company.
• 18:06
  I Hate Talking: I don't think that's true because of all the text message, screenshots and all the research that we did on the business and the phone numbers and Actually interacting with him that -- he seems like the legitimate party in this scenario -- because he would have had to go, yeah, because again, when you looked him up and we saw that we had mutual acquaintances and stuff, that like, you really have to deep dive like.
• 18:31
  I Hate Talking: For a couple $100.
• 18:32
  I Hate Talking: I mean, this is a big.
• 18:34
  I Hate Talking: Uh, investment of time and work for him for $200.
• 18:40
  I Hate Talking: Correct.
• 18:41
  I Hate Talking: And then the, the timetable lined up exactly with when the work was done.
• 18:46
  I Hate Talking: So it's unlikely that a scammer would know that detail of information in terms of like the work was done, plus we had, you know, our neighbors that are checking on this and everything lined up.
• 18:57
  I Hate Talking: So that is what led us to pay the money to what we perceive as a legitimate party.
• 19:03
  I Hate Talking: We still don't know that for 100% sure though.
• 19:06
  I Hate Talking: We could be contacted tomorrow from a different lawn care company and say, hey, I did this work.
• 19:11
  I Hate Talking: And I need to get paid.
• 19:12
  I Hate Talking: Sorry it took me so long to invoice you.
• 19:13
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I'm more worried that he's gonna be hiring more work.
• 19:17
  I Hate Talking: Because we needed that job done.
• 19:21
  I Hate Talking: So, I mean, just basically our guy was out of a job for two weeks, but aside from that, um, You know, we needed the job done.
• 19:31
  I Hate Talking: I don't want him like hiring window washers or I don't know, gravel or, you know.
• 19:39
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 19:40
  I Hate Talking: That scares me.
• 19:42
  I Hate Talking: I hope he's not trying to put our jobs on our house.
• 19:46
  I Hate Talking: Or what if it's the person?
• 19:50
  I Hate Talking: Here's a conspiracy.
• 19:51
  I Hate Talking: What if this person wants to buy the property, but they want us to upgrade stuff, so then they're gonna systematically hire people off and we're gonna pay it off, then they get the property upgraded.
• 20:04
  I Hate Talking: That would be a reach, but I guess it's a far-fetched possibility.
• 20:10
  I Hate Talking: The other thing it could be is that.
• 20:13
  I Hate Talking: This legitimate lawn care professional just wants to grow his business, and this is how he's doing it by just like.
• 20:18
  I Hate Talking: Pretending to have a fake conversation with a person that doesn't exist and saying that they were hired by this unknown entity when in fact it was themselves that hired themselves, did the actual work, and then got paid so that they could perhaps grow their business, right, because he, he did a good job.
• 20:36
  I Hate Talking: So like, hey, if we didn't already have a guy, I'd probably be like, you want to just keep going.
• 20:39
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 20:40
  I Hate Talking: So, -- there -- you go.
• 20:43
  I Hate Talking: That's a a really risky, but interesting.
• 20:47
  I Hate Talking: Job, um.
• 20:49
  I Hate Talking: -- Market or what's it called -- like a business growth strategy, yeah, business growth strategy, an interesting one, yep.
• 20:56
  I Hate Talking: So that is how the middleman scammer can be both parties.
• 21:02
  I Hate Talking: They are functioning as a property owner.
• 21:05
  I Hate Talking: They're basically pretending to be the property owner -- requesting legitimate services -- because the lawn guy thought that he was a property owner, correct?
• 21:13
  I Hate Talking: OK.
• 21:14
  I Hate Talking: And then if the scammer contacted us, they would be pretending to be the legitimate lawn care professional trying to collect payment he didn't do.
• 21:22
  I Hate Talking: And hopefully it won't happen and may not happen because of the final thing that was even more odd and maybe the actual end goal of the scammer and that they don't really care about the lawn care and the few $100 is because they requested the lawn care professional.
• 21:42
  I Hate Talking: Do some additional.
• 21:45
  I Hate Talking: He asked for them, where the scammer said that they had people coming to do some appliance work and that They needed to be paid at the time of the job being done, but the scammer did not have enough money.
• 22:03
  I Hate Talking: So if the person could please pay the appliance people.
• 22:09
  I Hate Talking: So he's asking the lawn care company to give said appliance people.
• 22:16
  I Hate Talking: It was over 2000 bucks, right?
• 22:19
  I Hate Talking: It was.
• 22:19
  I Hate Talking: 2500.
• 22:22
  I Hate Talking: -- $60 I -- believe.
• 22:24
  I Hate Talking: So if he can pay them for him while he's there anyways.
• 22:29
  I Hate Talking: And then he will pay him back right with with interest and extra.
• 22:36
  I Hate Talking: So basically the scammer said you pay the appliance people $2560 you're gonna be there anyways.
• 22:42
  I Hate Talking: You'll be there anyways, and then the scammer will then pay the lawn care professional $2960.
• 22:50
  I Hate Talking: To reimburse them for their $2560 plus the Interest in fees of doing that particular task, which I still don't quite understand how that would work because I don't know if like they were planning on having him pay through some like online portal or like PayPal or something, this money or more worrisome is like there would actually be the scammer show up and pretend to be the appliance people to collect the cash or something.
• 23:18
  I Hate Talking: That's what I thought he was going to do.
• 23:19
  I Hate Talking: I don't, yeah, I don't know how it would work otherwise, so I'm not sure exactly, but I guess if the scammer is going to all this trouble, maybe they set up a fake payment portal to like a fake appliance company, and that would be how they would collect the money electronically or something.
• 23:36
  I Hate Talking: So.
• 23:37
  I Hate Talking: Crazy.
• 23:38
  I Hate Talking: So maybe that was their end goal is to lure the lawn care professional in so that they are on site on the property and could quote unquote be there to do this appliance job payment thing and that would be their end goal is actually to collect the $2560.
• 23:55
  I Hate Talking: Right, cause that's, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, $200 is probably not a big deal to them.
• 24:00
  I Hate Talking: They want to go after.
• 24:02
  I Hate Talking: Uh, big money, the 2500, and then maybe they would just call it a wash and walk away.
• 24:09
  I Hate Talking: I guess, but luckily, the lawn care guy was like, well, that's shady.
• 24:14
  I Hate Talking: Not doing that.
• 24:16
  I Hate Talking: So we we did confirm that he did not pay, right, because then.
• 24:22
  I Hate Talking: As property owners, right, then I think there would be Some sort of issue, right?
• 24:28
  I Hate Talking: Because the lawn care professionals out this money and we're a victim as well, but I don't know how that would work.
• 24:35
  I Hate Talking: I don't think I would pay that money.
• 24:38
  I Hate Talking: I'd be like, sorry, I'll pay you for your services rendered, but the rest is on you for falling for a scam.
• 24:45
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I mean, again, we weren't upset because even if he was very quick to be like, oh, don't even pay anything.
• 24:50
  I Hate Talking: It was my bad.
• 24:51
  I Hate Talking: We're like, no, like, you did work, you did good work, we're gonna pay you for your job.
• 24:56
  I Hate Talking: But yeah, I would have had a hard time paying 20 like reimbursing him, because that was an obvious error on his part, just like you have to.
• 25:05
  I Hate Talking: Go to your bank and fight that, you know, that's because our bank isn't gonna let us reimburse someone and then fight it, you know, so he has a better chance of recouping his money, but that's where the whole conspiracy I had earlier was when he was talking about appliances being delivered and I was like, oh no, what if he, this man is doing all this stuff to our house.
• 25:29
  I Hate Talking: Oh man.
• 25:30
  I Hate Talking: So yeah, what if he's doing all this stuff to our property?
• 25:33
  I Hate Talking: This is uh really stressful.
• 25:35
  I Hate Talking: It doesn't seem like anything else is happening, but I am a little uneasy.
• 25:41
  I Hate Talking: I, I don't understand.
• 25:43
  I Hate Talking: I guess I'll just read this verbatim because we have the, the text message screenshots because I don't still understand exactly -- how -- we can be one person and I'll be the other one.
• 25:53
  I Hate Talking: No, I just wanna read the, I, I guess, I don't know.
• 25:56
  I Hate Talking: Perhaps our listeners would enjoy that.
• 25:57
  I Hate Talking: You have the, do you wanna be good bad guy or bad guy?
• 26:00
  I Hate Talking: I'll be the bad guy because, yeah, it's, it would be fun to read, I suppose.
• 26:06
  I Hate Talking: So this is scammer Michael and then you will be the lawn care professional.
• 26:14
  I Hate Talking: So we have Michael the scammer and Lawrence the lawn care professional.
• 26:18
  I Hate Talking: OK, OK, so here we go.
• 26:20
  I Hate Talking: This is fun.
• 26:21
  I Hate Talking: This is like story time.
• 26:22
  I Hate Talking: All right, so me as Michael the scammer.
• 26:26
  I Hate Talking: Hello, are you available for lawn care service?
• 26:29
  I Hate Talking: Which area do you service?
• 26:31
  I Hate Talking: Yes, we service the area you're in.
• 26:34
  I Hate Talking: Ah, I am located at this address.
• 26:37
  I Hate Talking: Please go ahead and make estimate and get back to me weekly mowing.
• 26:41
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, and as he's reading that, that's how it's written, without punctuation, without capitals, without Proper grammar.
• 26:50
  I Hate Talking: So there you go.
• 26:51
  I Hate Talking: All right, it's back to Lawrence, he says, how far does the property go behind the back fence?
• 26:57
  I Hate Talking: Also, is it both sides of the driveway?
• 27:00
  I Hate Talking: Yes.
• 27:01
  I Hate Talking: Could you take a screenshot of the property on maps and outline what you want cut?
• 27:07
  I Hate Talking: Please go and make estimate.
• 27:09
  I Hate Talking: I need you to start the mowing anytime soon.
• 27:12
  I Hate Talking: That's, that's how it's written.
• 27:15
  I Hate Talking: I am working on it right now.
• 27:19
  I Hate Talking: What is your first and last name?
• 27:21
  I Hate Talking: Michael.
• 27:21
  I Hate Talking: And then I sent, Lawrence sent the portal, client portal.
• 27:27
  I Hate Talking: When will you be able to start?
• 27:30
  I Hate Talking: Tomorrow.
• 27:31
  I Hate Talking: OK, perfect.
• 27:32
  I Hate Talking: I will be making 2 months upfront payment through check.
• 27:37
  I Hate Talking: Hello, there is one more thing I want you to do for me.
• 27:42
  I Hate Talking: What's that?
• 27:43
  I Hate Talking: A company will deliver and fix some electrical appliances in the house in a couple of days, but I can only redirect my paycheck to only one person.
• 27:52
  I Hate Talking: So I will add some money with your payment so that you can help me pay them.
• 27:56
  I Hate Talking: I know this can affect your time and working schedule, so I will pay you $200 to help me pay for the orders.
• 28:02
  I Hate Talking: The check payment I am sending is $2560 and you will remove your payment and the $200 extra, then make the remaining payment.
• 28:10
  I Hate Talking: Hello, are you there?
• 28:13
  I Hate Talking: Yes, that's perfect.
• 28:15
  I Hate Talking: And that's the documentation that we have in the text message exchange.
• 28:19
  I Hate Talking: This is, yes, that's perfect.
• 28:21
  I Hate Talking: It's an interesting um result that happened.
• 28:24
  I Hate Talking: Like 5 hours after that very complicated money discussion.
• 28:30
  I Hate Talking: So, I don't know if there's other discussions in there.
• 28:33
  I Hate Talking: He does have the portal.
• 28:34
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, I, I don't know.
• 28:36
  I Hate Talking: I don't understand the last part of the scam on what exactly they would even try to do.
• 28:41
  I Hate Talking: Like send a check to this person or try to get them to pay for it out of pocket and then say they're going to reimburse it.
• 28:48
  I Hate Talking: I don't know.
• 28:49
  I Hate Talking: It's very strange.
• 28:50
  I Hate Talking: It is also strange that he replied, yes, that's perfect.
• 28:53
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, that's what I'm saying that was weird.
• 28:55
  I Hate Talking: What was he saying?
• 28:57
  I Hate Talking: Yes, that's perfect too.
• 28:58
  I Hate Talking: I don't know, it's, that's weird.
• 29:01
  I Hate Talking: That was like the one thing that made me think, maybe.
• 29:04
  I Hate Talking: Right.
• 29:05
  I Hate Talking: This is A double middleman scam and like, The lawn care person is pretending to be the scammer too.
• 29:14
  I Hate Talking: I'm not sure.
• 29:14
  I Hate Talking: OK, so, but the work got done, so we paid somebody and the work to get done.
• 29:21
  I Hate Talking: So hopefully we don't get an invoice from another party that says, hey, I actually did this work, right?
• 29:26
  I Hate Talking: I did pay on Venmo and actually usually my Venmo is set to private.
• 29:31
  I Hate Talking: Um, I just, I like to sometimes scroll Venmo and see what other people are buying, and who they're Venmoing.
• 29:39
  I Hate Talking: I think it's, uh, kind of fun to see, but I don't like it on mine, so I try to keep mine private.
• 29:47
  I Hate Talking: Uh, I just think the person, the friend usually or whatnot, and me are the only people that need to know that I paid, but I did make that one public.
• 29:56
  I Hate Talking: Because I wanted to have some kind of more validation, like more.
• 30:01
  I Hate Talking: Eyes to see, yes, I paid this individual this much money on this time.
• 30:05
  I Hate Talking: Well, there you go.
• 30:07
  I Hate Talking: So, at least we can, you know, fight it.
• 30:11
  I Hate Talking: Hopefully this long haired guy.
• 30:14
  I Hate Talking: Was legitimately taken advantage of and learned his lesson and hopefully nothing else happens to the property.
• 30:22
  I Hate Talking: Before we sell it.
• 30:25
  I Hate Talking: That's true.
• 30:26
  I Hate Talking: So that is.
• 30:28
  I Hate Talking: Our experience with a middleman scam, as well as a little bit about the definition and some examples and how that came about as a particular phrase in the modern lexicon.
• 30:41
  I Hate Talking: So you can always like, share and subscribe, perhaps share this with a friend that may be susceptible to the middleman scam, they can be informed or perhaps you yourself have been impacted by a middleman scam, you can always let us know by leaving a comment, sending us an email or a text message.
• 31:01
  I Hate Talking: And you can feel free to let us know what you would have done.
• 31:05
  I Hate Talking: Would you have paid what appears to be the legitimate lawn care professional, or would you have refrained from doing so?
• 31:12
  I Hate Talking: Yeah, Yeah.
• 31:15
  I Hate Talking: I'm just really worried that our saga is not over.
• 31:21
  I Hate Talking: But I hope it is, and I.
• 31:24
  I Hate Talking: Hope that we were wise through it all, like I don't wanna get scammed.
• 31:29
  I Hate Talking: That really bums me out.
• 31:30
  I Hate Talking: So We'll see We'll see.
• 31:35
  I Hate Talking: So hopefully our middleman scam saga has come to an end, but our podcasting saga has not come to an end.
• 31:42
  I Hate Talking: So this is episode 110, and we'll be back next time.
• 31:46
  I Hate Talking: Sounds good.
• 31:47
  I Hate Talking: So from your friends at I Hate Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.