I helped when a needy mum begged me to buy her baby food – then she tried to scam me out of £600 with a ‘bait & switch’
HE was just trying to be a good Samaritan.
But one man’s kind gesture backfired when he was almost scammed out of £600.
Adryan was at the supermarket when he says he was approached by a woman who asked him if he could help buy baby food for her granddaughter, as she was “really in need”.
He then agreed, and the original woman picked up some formula and what appeared to be a cereal-type product from the baby aisle.
But things took a turn when she was joined by a woman claiming to be her daughter.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I heard about the baby!’ and she was like ‘yes, thank you so much, thank you for helping, like you don’t understand I’ll pay you back, I’ll pray for you,’.”
The ‘daughter’ then asked if he would be okay to buy her another item, to which he once again agreed.
“She goes to an aisle that was not the baby food aisle, but it was still in the baby section, the baby area,” he continued his TikTok video.
Adryan added that the woman knew “exactly where the items were”, calling it “suspicious”.
The ‘mother’ then came back with even more items in the basket, and they headed over to the till.
And it was at this point that the woman who had identified herself as the baby’s mother to “distract” him as the total added up.
But she did so by reciting the “exact same speech” he’d already heard from her own “mother”, leading Adryan to become even more worried that he’d been targeted.
“Ya’ll, tell me why when they’re done scanning, the price is $800 (£606),” he said.
“Ma’am, you must take me for a fool. You must.
“You must’ve thought I was gonna be an easy target”.
Adryan pretended to take an emergency phone call, and hotfooted it out of the store with the things he’d bought – at which point the daughter had the “nerve” to tell him he’d forgotten to pay for their shopping.
As Adryan ran out of the Super Target store in Texas he then saw the two women who’d claimed to be mother and daughter leaving with a group of other women.
“They scanned baby clothes, they done technology,” he concluded.
How to protect yourself from scams
BY keeping these tips in mind, you can avoid getting caught up in a scam:
- Firstly, remember that if something seems too good to be true, it normally is.
- Check brands are “verified” on Facebook and Twitter pages – this means the company will have a blue tick on its profile.
- Look for grammatical and spelling errors; fraudsters are notoriously bad at writing proper English. If you receive a message from a “friend” informing you of a freebie, consider whether it’s written in your friend’s normal style.
- If you’re invited to click on a URL, hover over the link to see the address it will take you to – does it look genuine?
- To be on the really safe side, don’t click on unsolicited links in messages, even if they appear to come from a trusted contact.
- Be careful when opening email attachments too. Fraudsters are increasingly attaching files, usually PDFs or spreadsheets, which contain dangerous malware.
- If you receive a suspicious message then report it to the company, block the sender and delete it.
- If you think you’ve fallen for a scam, report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use its online fraud reporting tool.
“I said baby food, ya’ll tried to do a bait-and-switch. Warning!”
And in the comments section, people revealed the second part of the scam, as one wrote that they then take the receipt back to the till after he’d left to get a refund and leave with the cash.
“They bring it back to refund,” one wrote.
“Heard this on a few TikToks.”
“Oh wow. I was late to the game,” Adryan replied.
“The best part of the scam is when they ask for the receipt once you pay,” another added.
“But that’s so they can bring it back & get the money.”
“See and if and I mean IF I ended up paying, I was going to take the receipt!” Adryan insisted.
As a third commented: “They got my brother like this in Walmart.
“Asked for the receipt and all!”