Recently, multiple suspicious user accounts were created on Less Wrong. These accounts don't post any content in the forum. Instead, they are used only to send private messages to the existing users.
Many users have received a copy of the same message, but different variants exist, too. Here are the examples I know about. If you have received a different variant, please post it in a comment below this article:
Hi good day. My boss is interested on donating to MIRI's project and he is wondering if he could send money through you and you donate to miri through your company and thus accelertaing the value created. He wants to use "match donations" as a way of donating thats why he is looking for people in companies like you. I want to discuss more about this so if you could see this message please give me a reply. Thank you!
I don't know yet about anyone who replied and got scammed, so this is all based on indirect evidence. If you got scammed, please tell me. If you are ashamed, I can publish your story anonymously. Your story could help other potential victims.
Most likely, the scheme is the following:
- The scammer will send you money.
- Then they will ask some of the money back because they changed their mind, or they mistakenly sent you more than they wanted, or their financial situation suddenly changed, or whatever.
- After receiving the money from you, they will flag the original transaction as a fraud, so they get back the money they originally sent you, plus the money you sent them back. Then they disappear, or it will turn out they used a stolen identity, etc.
(Thanks to
If you replied to the original message and now you are already in the middle of the process, please inform your bank as soon as possible! Even if the step 2 didn't happen yet, so you can still get out without losing money, warning your bank about the scammer could help other potential victims.
Warning: If you have already received a check or a payment confirmation, and someone is asking you to send the overpayment back quickly, do not send anything. The check or the payment confirmation is fake, and the goal is to make you send money before you find out. (Thanks to
"act publicly, especially when it includes asking members to participate in financial transactions." why should i ask publicly when asking personal questions about personal decisions?
"It is your insisting to work behind the courtains that seems fishy to me. You try to make the recipients of your messages feel special, yet you and your associate copy/paste the same messages to multiple people." im insisting to work behind the curtains? when did i insist, and why should i ask publicly? so i could copy my message and try to find some suitable person that way? how do i try to make the recipients feel special? why would i change a message that i wrote as perfectly as i could? does the other people know i copypasted it? and would they then feel worse about it because of that? would there even be a logical reason to eel worse?
" If your goal is to provide free education, you could have posted the first lesson publicly." its my goal to provide free education to as smart a person as possible with as good priorities as possible to get as much money into as vauemaximizing things as possible. i dont know if i have "lessons" ready and i doubt it would be good to post them publicly. this is a fake name too.
"For now, it seems like your priority is to send money through someone else, because reasons ("accelerating the value created"). Everything else seems like a cover story to make people cooperate. I suspect that the promised free education is also supposed to only happen after the person participated in the transaction." my priorities are to as fast as possible get someone intelligent with the right priorities educated as well as donate current money the most effecient way possible. and if one can freaking double the money donated then it feels like a disaster to donate normally, so i asked that guy to look into how doable this is. feels like a cover story to make people cooperate? so my plan is to get people free education then donate through them? "I suspect that the promised free education is also supposed to only happen after the person participated in the transaction."" and then i can rob them you mean? as i said, i can prove everything i said to vaniver, i can prove donations ive made to miri, but my grand plan is this elaborate heist of a rationalist forum that are among the smartest groups on the internet?
"describing why exactly do you need to send money through someone else, and describe the specific steps in this transaction." shouldnt it be obvious to anyone? how do people keep repeating these things? its all there in two words- donation matching. the question should be, why would i donate the normal way if there were ways to DOUBLE value created? have you read the astronomical waste paper? the amount of value a donation match would do. then of course one would have to ponder the cost of that, the likelihood of companies withdrawing their service and value lost that way or the odds of hitting a bad person that steals the monies. i asked my helper to look into it at least. so its realistic to do this publicly on the forum?