Someone just attempted to scam me. Well, in a sense, he did - and I thought I'd give you all a heads up on it (and hope that it ultimately reaches Nintendo , perhaps than can create a patch to stop it from working). Here's what happened:
My apologies for the wall of text, but I thought I'd give people a fair warning.
I hope I didn't give any ill-meaning people ideas - unfortunately, I don't think there's much you can do when this happens to you. Any community input on how to handle this kind of scam would be good, I think..
- I was visiting an Island using Club Tortimer (I prefer to use that as the items you can buy are different each time I enter, and cutting down trees doesn't have the lasting effect), just catching some beetles.
- Slowly but steadily I filled up my boxes when this dude called Alex joined (on a Dutch Island, he was wearing a tophat and had a golden rose in his mouth, forgot his village name). He cut down the trees in the middle and popped out the flowers.
- At first, he started running around and attempt to catch the same bugs I was attempting to catch. I didn't feel like leaving, because it has happened before, and usually the other person leaves after a while (in hindsight, I wish I did leave, but eh).
- After a while of annoying each other, he decided to pull this trick on me (and this is where his scam starts):
he started a tour, but didn't let the ship depart. - As someone on the island can't leave when a tour is supposed to depart, I was trapped. I thought not much of it, only an ill-spirited joke or something. I decided to catch some more beetles with better sell value.
- When my box was stuffed with beetles valued 8,000+, I decided to ask him if he could go on tour so I could leave.
- "99K", I was told - he wanted me to pay him that amount of bells before I could leave.
- I could've paid him the money, but as I couldn't be too sure if he'd actually let me go (nor did I want to support his scam, I'd rather take the ~300K loss) so I decided I'd play the waiting game - I told him I'd head off to bed (it was around 1:30 - 2:00 AM) and put my system on the table.
- He then threatened he'd turn off the internet if I wouldn't pay up - which would cause me to lose all the beetles I had caught. When I declined, he gave me a deadline (He'd turn off his internet at 2:00 AM).
- At 2:30 AM, he finally did. I lost my beetles - and a lot of time.
My apologies for the wall of text, but I thought I'd give people a fair warning.
I hope I didn't give any ill-meaning people ideas - unfortunately, I don't think there's much you can do when this happens to you. Any community input on how to handle this kind of scam would be good, I think..
