rSlash - r/Scams Grandma Lost $750,000 in a Romance Scam

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

0:00 Intro 0:24 Feet 4:52 Comment 5:16 750K 9:19 Jetski 11:59 12k 15:20 Comment Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to rslash scams, where OP gets scammed into sending free feet pics. So I wasn't sure if I was going to record another r slash scams video. So I went to the subreddit and was clicking around and I found this post and I thought, okay, I have got to make a video about this. OP got a random DM on Instagram that starts with this. Hey, babe. Sorry, it's random and I don't know you, hope you're okay. Basically I do psychic readings that tell your future.

Would you like me to read you for free? I'm offering someone a random free reading just as a random act of kindness and I've chosen you. Basically I just chose you from the likes of random Instagram posts. I clicked the first thing on my feed and chose someone random for the likes. Ever since COVID, I moved everything online, and I do them all through here, just through messages, so no phone calls or anything. And this is real, I'm not a robot or anything. I can't wait to get this done for you. Let me know if you have any questions! Hope to hear from you soon. Just try to reply as soon as possible so I can get your results for you.

If you don't reply straight away, it's okay. I can book you another time. So if you see this late, don't worry. OP replies, ooh, sounds interesting. How do we do this? Smiley face. Aw, amazing. So a bit more about the reading.

First off, it's like a family tradition. I've been learning for years and it looks at future events, both short term, up to a year, and long term, any time over a year. There are over 15 different parts to it, ranging from friends, family, love, health, money, luck, career, etc. But yeah, just need a couple of things from you, then I need some time to write it all up, which is why I normally charge. Haha! Sounds awesome! What things do you need from me?

Oh, I'll explain in just a sec. Even more on it first, so I wasn't allowed to start charging until I got my license. I needed at least an 80% success rate of what I predict to get it, which I achieved a couple of years ago. So I do a free reading once every six months as a random act of kindness, and I chose you randomly. Thank you, I appreciate it. Aw, so welcome! I'm just glad you replied quick, as I've got a really busy week next week, so if you replied later, my replies might have been bad. Okay, so first I need your age, height, and star sign. I'm 24, 5'6", Sagittarius. Okay, I'm gonna skip the next

couple of replies because it's just the scammer asking a bunch of pointless questions and OP answering them. We're gonna get to the good part. Okay, okay. Okay, next I need a couple of pictures of your face and a picture of the bottoms of your feet. Oh, and don't worry, I'm not here to judge your feet at all. It's just the way the reading works. I look at the contrast between the shape, size, color, and texture of your face and feet. Sorry if I explained that badly.

I completely understand if it's a bit weird at first. I'll explain it in a bit more depth. So in this diagram, it shows the different areas of the foot that are linked to different parts of your body, according to reflexology. At the toes and just under the toes is where facial features are linked. For example, by applying pressure to that part of the foot, your ears, eyes, and nose are impacted directly. Sorry if it sounds really boring, I tried to keep it short and sweet.

Hope that all makes sense. And then this scammer links a fancy diagram thing of a foot. This is probably the weirdest thing I've ever done. Sorry if the feet pictures are a bit weird at first. So with the feet part, your feet are portals to your physique. They respond instantly to your thoughts, and it works the same other way around as well. Energy goes out through them and also back in. And your footprint is unique to you, a bit like your hands. Hands look more at spirituality if you've heard of that before. The reading's really specific to my family tree and goes back generations. They only teach

the oldest grandchild of each generation, so I got lucky learning it as it's really rare. I normally charge 45 pounds. Also, it's only me who sees the pictures. They don't even leave this chat. Heart. All good. And then OP sends pictures of her feet. After that, OP posted on Reddit explaining the situation and saying, She seemed really nice and had a reasonable following and was coincidentally around the same age and from the same city as me. She made me feel at ease throughout the whole process. But after I sent her the last picture of my face and feet, she stopped replying and her

red receipt wasn't appearing under my message. What do I do? Did someone just pretend to be a psychic to get free feet pictures from me? I'm so confused. Not a lot of sympathy down in the comments. People are blasting OP. Tpoke says, the hell? Yeah, you gave them free feet pictures.

What part of psychic reading from looking at your foot did you think was legit? I think the big warning sign from me was that she got a license? She is a licensed future teller? What government agency is handing out licenses to be a foot psychic? Our next Reddit post is from GovNorsey. Trigger warning, s***side attempt, romance scam. I wanted to vent and share the experience of my family friend and former neighbor. She's an older woman, and 11 months ago,

she met a man named Frank on a dating site for widows. And they're in love texting and calling every day. Over the course of the past 11 months, he's claimed to be stuck in Canada after being stopped by customs for carrying cash across the border, being charged, convicted and imprisoned in California. Needing money to pay every possible person involved, being charged, convicted, and imprisoned in California. Needing money to pay every possible person involved, having a heart attack, needing money to pay taxes on that illegally moved cash, being refused airline tickets, everything.

She's ignored every red flag because he loves her. Five months in, she had willingly given him upwards of $500,000, including the entirety of her IRA Roth and retirement accounts. She lied to us and said that it was all stolen from her bank account via a customer service pop-up scam, but she eventually came clean. Frank has claimed to be arriving in town by a flight every few days for the past 11 months. If you send me this money, I can pay the taxes on the cash, I can pay the airline, I can pay the legal fines, and I'll finally be with you.

She's believed him every time, completely disregarding our strong feedback that he's a scammer. A background check of his name lines up with his story, and she felt that was enough to validate that he was real. Her multiple credit cards are maxed out, she took out a loan with her car as collateral. She's gotten $60,000 in personal loans from other friends. This week, she says the very last $250k in her bank has been wiped out, including the recent loan. Someone contacted her bank and disputed the past five months of phone bills.

So the phone company is shutting down her phone service. She says the bank told her she doesn't need to do anything or change passwords or close the account. Likely these are more scammers. She has no money for rent next week, no money to afford more insulin. We gave her a $3,000 check before we found out that she lied to us, and we know any more money

we give her will be useless, despite the guilt of wondering if we can help cover rent or medicine. One of her other friends called Adult Protective Services on her, which pissed her off, and she lied to the agent. We have to assume that she's given Frank full access to her bank and credit cards. Her family is also suing her over a bogus issue with her sister's will. She finally seemed

to understand what was happening and called the cops yesterday to file a report. And she texted my mom today to say that she was going to commit suicide. We called the 911 crisis line and they responded. She hadn't done anything and was furious. She texted my mom saying that we're out of her life now and that she can take care of herself. She's refused every person who's tried to help her and we don't know what will become of her. She might get taken in by some friends from her old city.

It's an awful series of events that have happened to her, and it's taken up a lot of emotional and mental energy on our end. Everyone else in her life has already cut her off. I hope the evil, effing degenerate scum of the earth people who scammed her and ruined her life get what they deserve. But we'll never know. Listen. Listen to your loved ones when they tell you you're being scammed.

Don't ignore the red flags. Don't give money to a person you've never met. Don't let your entire life rest on the arrival of one person who isn't coming. Be very cautious using dating sites aimed at vulnerable widows and older folks. A dating site for widows has to be like a scammers' playground. I'd bet you probably 90% of the accounts

on a site like that is all just scammers. You know what, actually, I wonder if scammers playground. I bet you probably 90% of the accounts on a site like that is all just scammers. You know what, actually, I wonder if scammers have some sort of code phrase that they say to other scammers to just be like, hey, let's stop wasting each other's time. You know, we're scammers, let's go find targets elsewhere. Our next Reddit post is from couldiwoodishoudi. Don't rent jet skis in Thailand. We were scammed out of 800 bucks and almost died. We were in Phuket just last week, staying at Patong Beach. We were scammed out of 800 bucks and almost died. We were in Phuket just last week, staying at Patong Beach. We wanted to rent a jet ski, and this guy came

to us, barely explained a thing, and let us take it. It was just two of us. About 7 to 8 minutes in, I was done and told my partner to turn around so we could go back. They turned around, nothing sharp or anything, but we lost balance and the jet ski overturned. We were in the sea holding onto that thing for 15 minutes before someone came to rescue us. Once back on shore, the guy said that we had broken the jet ski and demanded we pay 85,000 baht for it. For context, that comes out to about 2,500 USD.

Insane, I know. We have no idea if it was even broken. The jet ski is insured. It seemed okay, but we had signed a flimsy waiver, but a waiver nonetheless. The owner of the jet ski called the local police, who started translating the conversation for us on his phone translator. Turns out the cop was the jet ski owner's grandfather. Now I know Thailand is freaking corrupt,

but this was another level. We got in touch with the embassy, another useless endeavor. We called the tourist police, who were extremely unhelpful and told us to just pay without even coming there. Ultimately, we were taken to the police station and then to the police headquarters in Phu Thong and just wasted time.

We were negotiating this entire time. The police also get their cut or commission from these scams, so we weren't expecting anything. They pretended to make a report. Long story short, we ended up paying 31,000 baht, a little over 800 bucks. We rented the jet ski at 5.15pm and got done with this at 11.30pm. We go to Thailand every year, but never rented anything except a car from the airport. I think we'll be sticking to that. Find proper resources

to rent from and stay away from these family rental places that operate on the beach. You might pay a couple hundred baht extra, but you won't be scammed, and that's saying a lot. Also, according to the local shopkeepers, the wider you are, the more you'll pay. Shrug. We met people who had been scammed out of $5,000, some for over $10,000. So $800 didn't seem like that large a den, but it was a waste and absolutely not worth almost drowning in the sea. Down in the comments, people are saying that this is one of the most notorious scams in all of Thailand. It actually has a name, the Jet Ski scam.

So I guess if you're ever visiting a location, do a search for scams in that location. Our next reddit post is from Rio Amakawa. In the beginning, someone reached out to me saying that I could make money quickly. At first I was suspicious and I investigated. I asked if they had a website and what they do. But that still didn't stop me from being suspicious. So I entertained them a little by playing along. So they started messaging me through WhatsApp and walked me through the process of making

money through the website. They helped me create a crypto account. Once I finished, we got started. They asked me to put $100 into the account to do these data clicks that help the apps get more exposure. So I put in $100. After completing all my tasks, I'd be able to withdraw my profits, along with the $100 that I put in. That day, I made 214 bucks, minus the 100 that I put in. So I profited 114 bucks. I was like, whoa, this is actually legit?

I can't believe I made money this quickly! This got me to actually trust them, and I was blinded. So then, the next day, I did my commissions as usual, and I profited from it. Then, on my third day, there was an event celebrating the company's 100,000 users. And from that, they gave a 30% bonus to the amount that you put into your asset balance. And I was like, hey, if I put in 2000 bucks, I can get 600 bucks back. That's when it went downhill. There's this thing where as you're clicking the data, there's a chance that you'll encounter a lucky data.

Lucky data turned your asset into a negative and you would have to deposit the negative amount that's in your asset balance. And in turn, you'll get 10 times the amount that you profit from that single app. So I did, and then I encountered three more lucky datas. By that point, I have no money in my bank account. I managed to complete all my daily tasks.

But then, when I tried to withdraw, I couldn't. Because I have to be a certain VIP to be able to withdraw a large sum. I was at VIP level 1, and VIP level 1 through 3 can only withdraw a maximum of $3,000. VIP level 4 can withdraw an unlimited amount. To activate VIP level 4, I have to deposit another $5,000, which at that point I no longer have. So now, here I am. I've just lost 12,000 USD, which I've been saving for months. I can't get it back. I've fallen into the sunk cost fallacy by being in too deep to turn back and get my money back.

I'm ashamed to say this. I really am stupid for falling for this scam. I should have never entertained the idea to play along. I've learned a lesson never trust anyone that reaches out to you online regarding passive income I'm so stupid. I saved up that money so I could go on a trip with my friends But now I guess it's no longer going to happen Please feel free to tell me that I was stupid and feel free to comfort me I honestly just need to come to terms with it now.

Well, I guess I already have come to terms with it. It's just that, man, I really lost months worth of working in an instant. The top comment here from vacax pretty much echoes what I was thinking. The psychology that these scams exploit is wild. Like, inputting money for no reason, clicking to make money, lucky data, VIP levels. All of it is completely bonkers and makes no sense. Yet somehow it works. Yeah, I think the thing about a scam like this, no offense, OP, is that it relies on, how should I put this, people who are on the left side of the bell curve.

That was r slash scams. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new right of podcast episodes every single day.