Yep... It was me. I'm smarter now. Contractor's really piss me off. For example... I hire you to do a job for me. There's no contract stating anything then getting the job done for this amount of money. You hire a subcontractor to do this job at a cheaper price and he drags the job out doing poor quality of work. The contractor tells me I need to take it up with the subcontractor. Get a lawyer to draft a contract prior to signing the dotted line...

I know of one who went to a meeting that was to be rewarded with a place to stay and a good dinner at a high end resort. He wasted his trip and got nothing in return. I went to a resort in Kauai, and they wanted to sell time shares. I received a call saying I was supposed to go to one of their meetings. I said "OK", but I unplugged my phone, and never heard from them again. I saw the the poor fuckers who were listening to the very long presentation, and just smiled. I missed the sales pitch factor.

Long ago when I got back from the military (almost 13 years ago now) I wanted a motorcycle, so I looked on ebay and found a beautiful Kawasaki Katana heavy bike going for about 2400. Now the price wasn't unbelievable, but it was pretty good, and when I won the bike I was super excited. The terms were to put 1000 dollars down immediately, and the remainder of the bid within 7 business days.

When you leave the military you can do whats called "terminal leave" Which basically allows you to get out early, and still be paid for all the time you have saved in vacation. So at this point I had 3 more payments coming into my account, and would have the remaining 1300 in four days. I sent off the $1,000 dollars to the happy seller using the oh so reliable method of western union, and waited happy as a clam till I could send the remaining 13.

I received a call 2 days after sending my first 1000. It was from a Western Union investigator who informed me that the number I had sent the money to had been reported as a scam, and that I might not want to send any more. Thus I lost most of my trust in people, and these days I assume that anything im told on the phone from someone I don't know is probably a lie unless proven otherwise.

yes many, mostly from banks, ir internet provider fakes, claiming your computer is infected and so on,
once people hand over a credit card number,
they are shot,
multiple charges continuing until the card is stopped.

2,000,000,000 Christians fall victim to the Jesus scam.
1,800,000,000 Muslims fall victim to the Muhammad scam.

Aside from my parents falling victim to fundamentalist and hyper-spiritual forms of Christianity? Not very much, no.

My brother tried to get Apple care for his phone some time after purchasing it. He googled Apple care and one of the first links that popped up looked like a legit Apple page with all the logos and other design cues. He ended up signing up for Apple care for both his and my sister in law’s phone and ended up paying somewhere close to $180.00 after speaking to somebody on the phone. Not too long after that he cracked his screen and went to Apple. His warranty didn’t show up in the system. The Apple tech asked him to pull up the website and they both figured out on the spot that my brother had gotten duped out of 200$. The website name did resemble Apple but it had some extra characters and it did not have anything to do with the actual Apple company.

I once believed in a "You've MAY have won $10000!" scams through the post - back in the early 90s. It was the first time I received that sort of post in the mail, so I was naive and excited. But I never did fill out and return their form.

I don't know of anyone falling for any of the online scams. We've received some, but we've always been suspicious of them. I'm the "guy" for anything techie, so I'm directed to deal with these sorts of things.

A friend from high school's family several years ago got taken by a woman who claimed she was a lawyer who had money she needed to part with for some tax reason and was going to give them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I met her once, after the process was supposedly under way, and I wasn't impressed (figuring such a successful lawyer would be much better spoken and have better hygiene). It turns out she managed to get into my friends' bank accounts and clear them out. It was a few thousand dollars, I guess, but my friends didn't have much to spare.

Almost myself as I was selling stuff on Craigslist. Back in 2005 when I first began to sell items I was unaware of the money order and travelers check scam. My first item was a used high-end pizza box server that I got from work (google pizza box servers for a description). Because I work in data centers we get to keep old IT gear for personal use or resell. I acquired a few of these old servers and decided to sell a few to make a few bucks. I placed one for sale on Craigslist and got a few emails asking the usual questions. Well after a few messages with one potential buyer he/she wanted my address so they could send me a money order. OK so I gave my work address and I received mail form the buyer a few days later with a Money Gram money order. I had already received like six or so emails from this person asking me if I had cashed the money order. This made me suspicious as why are they so impatient for me to cash this?
Being cautious I took the MO to a local kiosk and had them run a check. Apparently, someone bought this for 1 cent and took it home and altered it with their own machine. I was schooled by the teller as this was a common scam.
The second and last time was almost the same method of selling an item. Instead of a money order I was sent traveler checks from Bank of America. Being BoA was my bank I took the checks to the teller and she paused as trying not to laugh. BoA doesn’t issue travelers checks I was told. Almost scammed again. Now when I sell stuff online it’s cash only, locals only and no texting or emails. If you want this item then call me. This system hasn’t failed yet me yet as it weeds out scum bags and thieves.
PS - I still have the money order and travels checks. I keep them for conversation pieces.

Not yet.