SF News Saturday Links: Ukrainian President Appears to Be Ambushed In Oval Office, Russian Reporter Removed For Live-Streaming Trump and Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy end discussions in a heated clash; a crypto trader dies by suicide after losing his last $500 in a crypto scam; and one vindictive person has been painting their own red curbs and leaving official-looking notes on their neighbors' cars.
SF News Beware: Those ‘Unpaid Parking Invoice’ Tickets Texts Are a Complete Scam, Everybody An untold number of San Franciscans have received a text message claiming they owe money for unpaid parking tickets, but this is a pretty poorly executed scam that appears to have its origins outside the US.
Business & Tech Shocker: California Leads the Nation in Cryptocurrency Fraud, According to FBI More than 20% of all cryptocurrency fraud happened right here in California last year, and the FBI San Francisco Field Office was kept busy, dealing with a staggering $260 million in crypto scams in 2023 alone.
SF News San Rafael Couple Nearly Scammed Out of $15,000 by AI Fake of Their Son’s Voice We are in era where AI can recreate someone’s voice, and scammers are taking notice, with one San Rafael couple almost paying $15,000 to con artists who’d accurately mimicked their son’s voice in a panicked phone call.
SF News Feds Haul Canadian/Lebanese Man in From Greece to SF Over $10 Million Yellow Pages Scam An alleged con artist who’d escaped to Greece is accused of making $10 million pretending his company was the Yellow Pages, and billing businesses for "unpaid invoices" that never actually existed.
SF News Scammers Are Spoofing SF Sheriff’s Phone Number, Demanding Bogus Fines Be Paid Don't take a call if your caller ID identifies the caller as “SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY,” and don’t pay the $5,000-$10,000 fine they’re demanding for some non-existent arrest, as it’s the latest scam hitting San Francisco.
SF News Creep Impersonating SFPD Calls Residents, Claims Sexting Investigation The Department of Emergency Management is warning San Francisco residents of a person (or persons) claiming to be an officer with the SFPD calling and texting unsuspecting members of the public and telling
SF News SF Woman Arrested For Alleged Online Fundraising Scam To Treat Fake Cancer A woman once described by the SF Chronicle as an "accidental entrepreneur" is now cooling her heels in San Francisco County Jail, and faces accusations of raking in thousands of online funding bucks
SF News Video: Fake Nuns And Monks Plague Union Square As far as scams go, this one is admittedly on the lowball side. But in a city filled with newcomers to urban life, I'll bet it's a lucrative one: people costumed as monks,
SF News The 'Renaming McCovey Cove' Thing Is A Hoax; Shill-y Creators Inspire Hate [Updated] The claim that naming rights of McCovey Cove have been sold is a hoax and completely false.— #OctoberTogether (@SFGiants) October 24, 2014 SFist's inbox was flooded this noontime with panicked emails from folks
SF News Family Radio Employees Don't Believe In Saturday's Rapture East Bay false prophet Harold Camping, who claims that the rapture will occur on 5/21, has an organization, Family Radio, that has bilked listeners out of $80 million in contributions between 2005
SF News 4 San Bruno Fire Swindlers Arrested In a failed effort to get "free food and other aid," four people were arrested on Tuesday after allegedly posing as San Bruno explosion victims. SF Chronicle reports: "The four submitted driver's license
SF News Today in SFPD PR: The Brazen Embezzlers SFPD PR is so cute, we're going to make this a regular thing. Today's case involves Maria Lourdes B. Dionisio, a payroll clerk from Pacifica, and Hannah Yau, a financial analyst from Fremont,
SF News How to Stop the Auto Warranty Calls Have you been receiving daily calls from a fembot telling you about your auto warranty with a fembot? Say, like, three of them a day? Even though you don't own a vehicle? Want
SF News People Who Pay to Win Webby Awards Honored With Webby Awards on Tuesday Next to promises of penile enlargements and bank accounts of Nubian royalty, the Webby Awards are one of the best scams on the interwebs these days. The Webby Awards, which are beyond a
SF News Groovy, Odd Scam Hitting the Elderly Okay, we're not exactly sure how this works, but it's...bizarre. Seems that a trio of scammers are preying upon the elderly Chinese American community in SF (no, not Ed Jew). What's interesting
SF News Assholes Want to Clean Your Carpet Update: Oh damn! The video's not working. It's a compilation of all the various calls we've gotten. We'll try re-uploading it when we get home from work. If you're like everyone else on
misc Week Around the -Ists There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the
SF News Day Around the Bay -- The very attractive Yusuf Bey IV, Your Black Muslim Bakery chief and sudden media darling, now faces real-estate scam charges. Gulp again, dude. [Chron] -- Blue Angels still allowed to soar; Daly
misc Week in -Ist Phillyist is concerned that the war on Trans fats could affect it's beloved cheese steak sandwiches, something for which we should all be concerned. They also seem to be concerned about which subterranean
Arts & Entertainment It's An Honor Just To Be Nominated However, it was not to be, as we just recieved notification that we were nominated again this year! (This is the part where we'd link to the award information on the BAPC site,
SF News Adventures In Babysitting We must admit we're kind of fascinated, in the bad way, by people who steal babies and pretend the babies are theirs. It intrigues the same part of our brain that reads stories
SF News Having Your Fraud, And Profiting Too So are the people behind the J.T. Leroy hoax all irritated that James Frey has gotten the bulk of the publicity -- and subsequent sales boost -- in the "Authors who misrepresent
Arts & Entertainment Interview: Rachael Sbuttoni Hey, what's with the new cool SFist banner and block ads you can see all over the -ist network? Well, after an intense, breakneck reader contest, we had our winner, with Rachael Sbuttoni's
