Official GW Scams Thread (no posting names)

I've never been scammed before...I am normally 2 shy do deal with anyone else in tearms of Tradeing/Running..

We had a scammer in our guild once tho...He did the Trade window trick with Sigels....We listend to him talk about it on vent...Sold a Family Crest (Quest item) as a Guild Hall Sigel (for like 2k) to some one and laughed about it....We kicked him in the next 5 mins and had a vent/Fourms ban

I know my guiild is small...only been on the Obs mode once and no one probley has heard of us but it's Irritating to get some one in your guild runing the name and rep you build it....Grrrrr!

Sorry, I didn't bother to read all 25 pages and I don't know if this has been suggested before but a possible solution (or rather to make scammers more conspicuos). At the moment when you start trading the other player's trade window is blanked out and you get quite vague messages saying "1 item is being offered". Would it be utterly impossible programmingwise to keep the bar showing what exactly is removed and what is being added (preferably some graphic effect here ie. grayscale to show trade being modified) or more accurate desciptions on what is happening (with a short log added perhaps)? If these measures were taken you could only blame yourself if you got scammed and overall it would make game more enjoyable.

I saw somebody spamming Ascalon a few days ago recruting people into a "Scammers Guild."

Unfortunately, I don't remember if it was exactly on April 1 or not, which would be a big factor in assessing the context ...

Hi there, I need to admit I have never get scammed yet in this game (besides buy somethings more expensiver then they real should worth), the trick t do not get scammed is very simple.

In moment you go start a trade session you make your offer, other player make their offer, Guild Wars has already a anti-scam option the "Accept" button, so all you need so is: wait for other player make his offer, and if you see EVERYTHING is correct (make sure is 60 Plat and not 60g for exemple) ONLY then you press Accept

Now case he press Modify and change it?, no problem Guild Wars automaticly cancel your "Accept" button so you will need to Accept again , so before you Accept you ALWAYS verify everything is correct, it might take you extra 5-10 seconds to verify you offering the right items and receiving the right stuff also, but this way you never get scammed.

I mean in TRADE scams, in Run or other Services types exist bigger risk of scam but always exist 1 solution for prevent them.

Just remember the: ALWAYS verify everything before press Accept, I know, when you selling some item and some one offer you an huge offer we have tendence to press Accept right way before he change his mind, but this cases most times are scams instead he offer 100k will offer 100g, so just make full sure everything is correct before press Accept, and you never get this scam types


And extra attention in ITEMS Scams, the biggest Scams I saw so far was a seller selling an item, but instead he show 2 items you say "I just want that one" so he press modify REMOVE both and add 1 crappy item with same design as the one you wanted so you don't notice and accept the scaming deal

For exemple: "WTS: Malinon Shield and Grognar Sword" you talk to him when go start trade session he show you both (but you jut wanted the shield) so he say "ahh ok then" he remove both and add a crap Shield of the Wing (same skin as Malinon) and as you see is the SAME skin and you press Accept, well congratulations you got scamemd and probably he added you to his ignore list.


I just hope, this small reply might help some people to not get scamemd so often anymore, I know that prevent scamming is nearly impossible, but if you take always close attention to what you buying/sell before press the Accept you can prevent lot of scams


Bye

I also haven't read all 25 pages, but my 2 cents is as follows:

Scamming succeeds because the scammer typically makes an offer that is too good to pass up (too good to be true in other words). For example, item scams like switching sapphires for the "Heart of Ice" and then advertising the Hearts of Ice as sapphires for a drastically lowered price. People see it and say "holy damn, I gotta get that sapphire before anyone else does". Three seconds later, you're mashing the Accept button, paranoid of those other players you know are just trying to beat you to the deal. Scammers prey on anxiousness, so don't fall for it.

On another note, the irony of how scamming succeeds hasn't escaped me. If you see someone (a scammer) selling ecto for like 4.5K and you think of him as a noob and try to scalp the ecto off of him for that price, only to find out that you've been sold a mursaat token...well, the fact is, you *were* trying to cheat him, weren't you? As such, I can't feel a lot of sympathy for people who get scammed this way.

Just remember: caveat emptor.

-Jessyi

You gotta be seriously stoned to mistake an ecto for a mursaat token.

Oh well it was time for me to be victim of scamming I guess ...
I was looking for Drago's (Sundering) Flatbow in Droknar's ED1 and then I was whispered by this poopie (I just really like to hang him right now)...

Well he said that he will sell Drago's Flatbow to me for 20k. I was little suspicious by then and thought that he thinks Vampiric one.

So I opened trade window with him and placed 20k to the slot and he really put Drago's Flatbow (Sundering) in his slot. He pushed accept and I looked about 30s that he wasn't scamming. Then I pushed accept as well. After that I thought "oh nice that some people sell things little bit lower prices than usual". I looked to my inventory and saw non-max WHITE req11. Composite Bow in the place where Drago's Flatbow should have been. There wasn't switch in-between or I really am woodeye.

So first thing that I did after that was scroll up and took as much screenies as possible and PMMED him to give me the real bow or my money back Or Else I would send the screenies to Support. Well he apologized to me and said that 'ok plese no send I give bow bak' (he wasn't that good of a english speaker or was having brain problems).

Well he asked me to give the crappy non-max comp bow first to him and AFTER that he will give me the Drago's. A_____A yeah... I was taking screenshots whole time and to make his scamming situation even better I actually agreed and gave the bow to him. After that he put me to ignore and went offline.

So I really hope something is done to the possibility that scammer can trade you crappy items instead of the actual ones and you can't notice the switch by normal eye. It must be some macro program that switches it or fools the gamecode or something. I'm not an expert on these but nor am I stupid.

I am sending the screenies right now and hope that the guy doesn't get a chance to scam anyone else anymore.

Call me a fool if you want.

lol, I was in an even worse situation:

In ascalon, I was looking for a non-vamp Drago as well, and I actually got one! upon closer inspection however... It was customized >.<

and that really hacked me off.

IGNORE: ******

I then noticed that the guy it was customized to was different from the guy that sold it to me...

Or so I thought.

Later, I PMed the guy, and said something along the lines of "I'm sorry to bother you, but it seems that I was scammed into buying a customized Drago's Flatbow that seems to belong to you [NB: I was fully aware that this person might've scammed the poor soul that scammed me, but I had no other choice in the matter] would you like it back for a fee?"

... no reply... apparently wasn't offline either.

So I tryed adding this guy to my friends list. Then...

"The person you are trying to add is already on your friends list as *****"

and I thought, wtf??

turns out it was the guy I blocked, so I miserably ran down to the Merchant, and sold it for 36g ='(

Sometimes I wonder that what kind of satisfaction do scammers get from Playing a fun & exciting game like Guild Wars by trying to make other people feel stupid & sad.

Guess it's nature's law that there has to be lot of snakes in the paradise.

Yes I have to admit that yesterday i was scammed for the very first time
I assume it has to do with the fact that I was trading quite late (03:00am) but I should be more careful anyway...
So what happened:
I wanted to buy "Bortak's Claw" so i made an offer to a guy advertising that he sells. He opened trade window, he offered the claw (i checked it) and then i offered the money (30k + 4 ectos).
Then he requested more money (+6ectos) and i refused and closed the window. And heres starts the "acting"....
He started following me, he was begging for the money, he was saying he likes my armor..bla bla bla and opened again the trade window. I made the same initial offer but I forgot to check the Claw for a second time...the result?
I bought a nice Villnar's Claw that looks exactly the same....
The conclusion is that since Bortak's items are very popular, every1 should be careful with this kind of scam...
Finally, i have to admit that what irritates me is not the money I lost ( i have 2mil+) but the feeling I was cheated... i wanna --- this guy

I used to think like that until I fell for a scam earlier this week. It seems that there is a trade exploit that scammers are using now that lets the number of items display correctly in the trade window but when you hit accept, you get the wrong amount. I was buying shards in ToA for 4k, a guy said he had two so i opened the trade window. He submitted his 2 shards and i submitted my 8k, but then he hit the modify/submit button repeatedly a couple times. i made sure to check, and yes it still displayed as 2 shards but when i accepted it said i traded him 8 platinum for an obsidian shard.
I only have a screenshot of the message after the trade and not the trade window because i was not expecting a scam. Because i don't have sufficient evidence in the form of a screenshot, I don't think Anet will take action but at least I can let other be aware of how they are doing it now.
Scammers are targeting items like ectos, shards and runes now. That same night, someone was buying ectos for 7.5k. Naturally lots of people jumped to sell, and then came the chat complaints that xxxxx xxxx xxx is a scammer, don't buy.

All i can advise is that if you're trading with someone and they hit Modify repeatedly, hit Cancel and tell them to make the trade clean.

a guy earlier today attempted to scam me during a run to droknars forge

heres what happened:

We started the run to droks as runs do, we were all chatting and having a laff while he was running,
He died a few times, but id been with worse runners that have made it so i stayed on,( there were only 2 of us left at this point )
pretty soon he had made it to snake dance, we payed him the 1.5k he asked for with no trouble, he said ok lets go!
about 5+ minutes into the snake dance area, he ran into a group of trolls in a cave, and stopped dead. and surley enough died, then left.
now some people would think that, OK hes obviously had connection/pc problems, however i added him to my friends list so i could either get a repeat run or get my omney back and to my surprise he had not had problems but switched characters.
so all i can say is if you are getting a run to places like droks make sure the person is trustworthy, have alook around at people, ask to see if there are any repitable runners/ running guilds.
as a few are scammers
i asked for my 1.5k back and he then added me to his ignore list. which immediatly gave him away

luckily my brother playes GW also and he was online too, so i got my brother to PM him, and this is the conversation that came:
HIM: what 1.5k? ive got no idea what you are on about
ME: you know damn well what 1.5k, the 1.5k i just gave you for a run to droks
HIM: but i havent been online for almost a week, my account got hacked and ive only just got it back
-----lol this is where i cought him out:-----
ME: But then why did u add my character to your ignore list rather than telling me?
HIM: Im serious ive only just come online my account was hacked
ME: yeah likley story! well i either get my money back or ill report u for scamming
HIM: im serious ive only got 1.7k in total.
ME: well either i get payed back or ill report you,
HIM: OK FINE ILL PAY YOU YOUR MONEY BACK
-----"he made another mistake here too so i know he was lying"-----
HIM: ok ill meet you at beacons perch dit1 in a sec
-----he then opened a trade windo with my brothers character ( i was in the middle of being run to droks at the time ) and offered only 1.2k-----
ME: i payed you 1.5k not 1.2k
HIM: but this is all i have...
ME: a second ago you said u had 1.7k
-----there was a pause of about half a minute-----
ME: well???
HIM:...........ok ill get it.
HIM: ok im sorry can we still be friends?

lmao i just left at that point, i know its stupid to make a big deal over 1.5k but if he has been doing that to alot of people he could be getting alot of money. and i dont know if the 2nd person on this run was as fortunate as me to have gotten his money back.
so always check a runner out b4 joing him/her. ask around, and try to get to know some repitable runners that way u can always play it safe


AND ALSO::::

this happened to my bor yesterday, luckily he didnt fall for it,
he was trying to sell a Green item he had gotten from the Tombs not sure which, and a guy chirped up, ill let you be an officer in my guild if u give me that green item....................................
this is obviously a scam/trick, as soon as hed given the item hed be kicked out of the guild simple as. so again the onyl thign players can do is watch out for lil things ,like this and be careful

These people are scum. If they can resort so such cheap tricks online, I'll hate to meet them in real life.

where do I report?

My brother was scammed in LA when I was standing next to him.
A guy agreed to sell his Zodiac Hammer Req9 15^50 for 100K after few negotiations. That guy then said he would give some extra stuff to my brother and it's when my brother got tricked. The guy added some stuff and replaced the hammer with another crappy Zodiac hammer. My brother had been always careful when trading but it was late and tiring for him. Hit accept and got a 400g hammer.

We now added him to friend list so that everytime we see him in town, we can warn others.That's the only thing we think we can do.

Is there anyway to find out which guild he belongs to and report him to his guild leader? As with Arnet I dont think they will do anything as my brother could not get the screenshot of the trade window. The chat log did display a gold Zodiac Hammer was traded but wihout detailed stats.

SS ur trade & chat log is basic anti-scam measure

I got scammed once cause of a run - but it ended up being quite funny. I was at Beacons Perch with my 3rd (I think) character and was having difficulty doing one of the missions (I attempted it many times but always died at the end) so I decided I wanted to be ran to Droks to get the better armour and then continue with the game.

Weirdly (well, usually) there was no runners for a while. Then after a while some people started advertising. I think I remember two were advertising at once. One of which was along the lines of 'will run 2 snakes dance 2k' etc, another one was a guy who typed in well punctuated english and seemed to mean business.

All but 1 person paid money, stating that he wasn't gonna pay until he got there. Next thing we know, after 10 seconds of the guy running, he left. Needless to say, people were pretty angry.

We all went back to Beacons Perch and the guy who had just scammed us was advertising again!. This is where the funny bit came in. He must have scammed several others because after each call he made, there was always 4+ responses from people like "insertnamehere is a scammer" "insertnamehere, when do you plan giving me my 1.5k back?" "insertnamehere get out of beacons perch" and after several minutes of people calling him a scammer etc, he left.

http://www.guildwars.com/support/

May already have been mentioned, but upon skimming through the many pages of dirty deeds i didnt spot it so i'll mention it.

Its a really crap scam, but you'd be suprised at the amount of people who were close to falling for it.

A month or so ago in Droks one kid was trying to sell 'Tasca's Backpack' a 'rare item' which upon opening rewards the player with a random selection of 5 golds. He also had a little shite cronie of his spamming to buy such an item for a crazy amount of money.
It didnt take long for many new players to start asking 'wow, whats the tasca'a backpack', 'how much' etc. Of course it was my duty as an honest GW player to spill the beans on this crappy scheme in public chat. But the amount of pm's i received from ppl asking if the item was genuine is testament to how gullible some ppl are. (Also the amount of ppl who must have known what was going on but chose to keep quiet dosent bode well for the general public's moral fibre)

Just watch out for groups of idiots ganging together to convince you a piece of crap worthless quest item is worth alot

can you please give me a link that is more specific?

Well... I rlly don't c a way u can get scammed by someone without it being ur own personal fault.
Scamming i've seen is so obvious and i find it quite amusing when someone tries to scam me Especially when i tell him that he has to work better on his skills...
Cause in the trade chat u always have to accept and if u don't check if everything is the same as u both agreed on then it's simply ur own fault.

Well after being scammed 1 time u'll probably look better nxt time u trade with someone. Running is an entirely different case though and mostly thrust based since u have no 100% guarantee.

Well, in a perfect world, you'd be right, but obviously this not being a perfect world, IT'S SAD HOW ANET ENCOURAGES SCAMMERS. I myself got scammed and I've been playing a year now. I know to always check the window before accepting, I've caught players putting up money in the gold column, not the platinum column before, etc... But I was conversing with my wife on what materials and amber she needed for her 15K Cantha armor. I was in ToA selling off her Ecto's and Shards and getting /msg's from those saying they'd buy so many at the 7K I was offering. Most wanted to buy 10 at a time for 70K, so I was used to seeing 70 in the window.

This one guy said he wanted 20, 10 at a time. So I find him and I tell others while I'm trading with him I still have some left and to wait. I put up 10 ectos and he puts up 85K. Me being the nice guy I am, I tell him it's too much. After a minute I see 70 up there and so I accept. Only looking at my gold I see I have 70g and not 70K. I ask him about it and he says I'm scamming him and won't pay me. He proceeds to show me the ecto's and such he has scammed others (I found at least one other that he scammed), bragging about how Anet doesn't do anything about it. About how they won't look at screen shots because there might be viruses in them, etc....

I know I'm partially to blame, but if you have screen shots of them agreeing to the price (photoshop has nothing to do with this, they can go back into the logs), and they even brag about it, something should be done, otherwise you're supporting scamming and saying it's a perfectly legit way of making money.

Still basic mistake that can even happen to the best.
Scamming shouldn't be encouraged but i think another problem is u don't rlly see what AnET does about the scammers. U'll see some post about that some got blocked etc etc but there are soooo many scammers that go free and keep doing it.
Scammers should go buy money or ecto's online instead of messing the game up for players who truly like it. (but then again online buying is also not allowed)

Just watch out for scammers, it's sad but i they will always be there unless there is some sort of anti scam system.

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...tr/gw011-1.jpg

While trying to get a PC on the Rotwing Recurve Bow...

Lol seen that stuff coming up lately... I wonder how anyone could believe them

Sorry but what could be more specific than the support section?
Just click on your region on the right frame, register an account and submit your report.... There's a nice Faq about how to correctly report ingame scams there.
If you spend 2 minutes reading the website you should have no problems.

Well I got scammed once by the oldest trick in the book. By someone who had a number of characters all with the same word in it, so he was easily recognized. I sold my amulet of the mists for 35g in stead of 35k to him, because I clicked the accept button without really checking what he offered. Of course I reported the guy with screenshots and date and time. I asked Anet what they will do about it.
They replied that they wont say what they do with scammers and wether he has been a known scammer or not. Anyway, he was still on my friendlist, but was ignoring me for a while. After a few weeks he got back online, not ignoring me anymore. But this time his new character didnt have the unique word in it anymore. I talked to this guy for some minutes and apperently he just bought the account that morning. Apperently the character got too 'hot' for the scammer and he sold it. I guess theres nothing Anet can do about scammers, but they just wont tell they cant either.

MAYBE its a suggestion to get rid of the platinum bars and just have a decimal point there or somthing? I mean they dont have any actual use in the game, except for scammers!

I dont see the point in killing it, since you wont take their service again anyway....

Hi, I got scammed on ironmines of moldune. I was in a team going for infuse and mission. Then 4 ppl leaves and we almost decide too quit. But 1 ranger offered 10k too everyone left in team if we manage too cap barrage for him. So Me monk 2 warriors and 1 ranger manages, with alot of luck i might add, too take out Markis and he get his barrage, then he gets killed. Me and warriors attack rest of enemies and we make it. When we arrive att THK, Ranger leaves and add us too ignore. I havent made a trade with human players since then. Only use trade window for stuff i want too give away, rest goes too merchant. Even if i only get 200g for something thats worth ALOT more. Atleast he wont try too Scam me.

I have thou managed too find out how too report now. And i made an report about a ranger beeing scammer off his green bow on Arborstone. And a few days later she whispered me that the thief came and returned it too her. Now weither it was his own concience or GW staff that put som pressure, I assume the last. It worked too report. That time anyway.

Have fun and Good Luck on your Gameing
Merlin Munk

lol I did the same think, i sold 2 pieces of my Aeromancer armor. My mouth dropped and I decided to sell the rest since I was too lazy to attempt buying them again.

lol, I just realized how old this thread is.

yep, its been going for over a year, not really been going but someone probably ressuected it.

So far in my half-year GW career, I've only seen one scam, the old gold-for-platinum trick. It first happened when I was trying to sell a perfect Bow String of Fortitude for 30k in Droks. Someone offered that amount for it; I was so happy at finally selling the thing that I didn't notice I'd gotten 30g for it. He didn't ignore me, but when I contacted him later, he claimed to have no idea what I was talking about and said something about his account being hacked. So, 30k down the drain; I was crushed.

Then, recently, while I was selling some Ectos in ToA, it happened again. Someone offered 8k each for them (not unrealistically high these days) and pulled the same trick, scamming me out of 12 Ectos (that's 96k... I'd say I take the cake for biggest sucker). This guy didn't log off immediately after the scam, and actually told me the account wasn't his. There was nothing I could do, but thanks to smart trading, I had the money back by the end of the day, so I wasn't nearly as pissed as the first time.

I've seen the scam many times after this, but never fallen for it; I can almost always tell who will be a scammer before opening the trade window and can prepare. (Luckily, Ectos and Shards have unique skins, so it's hard to get scammed when you're buying them) My insight on avoiding the common gold-for-platinum scam is this: watch anyone who offers to buy things for an unusually high price! If it seems too good to be true, it's probably a scam! And always, always, ALWAYS triple-check everything in the trade window before hitting accept! By following this, you can avoid every scam!

Also, never buy CD-Keys online. 99.9% of them are scams.

Not exactly true...

I lost 50k to a guy who said he was selling an account. Luckily I have his e-mail =P. Since then ive made 300k so i dont really care anymore.

Wow, well it's hard NOT to run into people trying to scam. I've seen almost all of them spending a lot of my time in the "trading" districts.

Now, there's even the scam for the Un-Opened Birthday Present. Instead of the present, the guy presents a winter gift. Well, I see all of the scams...and I've only been scammed once for a Drok's Run, but that was wayy back. I looked at the guy trying to scam people with his winter gifts...and realized he was wearing 15k Kurzick armor. I asked him if his winter gift scam got him his armor. He replied, "Sure did. ."

Before a trade, I always spend at least 5 seconds to go through all the items. The plat, the item, the stats...everything. READ THE ITEM THAT YOU'RE BUYING! Mursaat tokens, winter gifts, etc...all look the same from what you're trying to get, but they never say the same thing.

As for runs, if you're running...I usually like to pull up at a portal and ask them to pay up, and add my name in case i lag out or something. If you're getting ran, add the guy to your buddy list, and talk to him in a whisper...if he's set offline or you're being ignored...watch out And remember to NEVER pay up front for a run.

And finally...CD keys. Don't buy 'em online!

That's just my two cents, but hey, through it, I have never been successfully scammed again.

a guildie got scammed whilst buying this guy's account (ok ok i know it's against the rule.... but still....)

he lost 30 k i think...

i was attempted to scam once, and i was still LOL about it...
at yak's bend, i saw this dude's selling a purple (note) fiery dragon sword ... since a good guildie friend just accidentally sold hers, i decided to buy one for her... so i pm'ed him i am interested ... he showed me the sword i was like O.o

it's a blue fiery dragon sword, with no mod, but dyed purple!
i was ROFL after wards... but yeh, that was fun...

yeah hes right
lost 75k that way and a shiro
+
accidently sold a mini jungle troll for 2k but that wasent a scam i just clicked accept accidently ....

_________________________-
new here
my first post :P

Just today i was in underworld doing a 50/50 farm with a 55 (i for one am i necro man ) i was dropped an ecto, when i realized my friends were knocking at the door. i told the 55 i had to go, he called me a scammer so i let him have the ecto and he was to split 3.5 or w/e with me. i was foolish enough to actually drop the ecto , then i was trying to get any money at all out of the 55 (since i had to pay for some of his screw-ups)(sb recharge wasnt done when we hit battle... such in the like) he wouldnt even give me a thing saying "next ecto fr1" whatever that meant. so my friends got impatient and i told him to drop some money or the ecto. of course he didnt and i left with jack-crap . i was pretty bummed out about it.

LESSON HERE: don't drop things on the ground, open a trading session (wish i would have ) this way if the person does not the desired items or money you get to keep your item.

i probably sound pretty dumb now but i guess it's to learn so... hope it helps someone and good luck in game!
~sam