SF Restaurants, Food & Drink Shady Restaurateur Who Briefly Took Over Castro Restaurant Space Arrested In TX Over Alleged Wedding Fraud Scheme An alleged serial grifter who briefly opened a restaurant in SF's Castro neighborhood back in 2019 is back in the news for crimes elsewhere, and the whole story with this guy is very, very crazy.
SF News Saturday Links: Nurses, Parents Protest Kaiser’s Pause on Trans Youth Surgical Care The Safeway strike deadline has been extended; ICE detained all the adults at SF immigration court without children on Friday; and Kaiser staff rallied in SF on Friday over the company's recent pause on gender-affirming care for youth.
Business & Tech Silicon Valley Startups Duped by Developer Who Faked Resume, Worked 4 Jobs Simultaneously A Mumbai-based engineer who excelled in interviews reportedly held multiple Silicon Valley startup jobs at once, often disappearing after landing offers of up to $200K. Soham Parekh impressed on paper, but founders say most of his resume was fake.
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 Avoid Being Scammed By Fake FasTrak Texts Telling You to Pay Penalties Bay Area drivers should know that a scam has been going around involving fake websites posing as the FasTrak toll system trying to extract payments from people.
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 Politics Some Joker Is Advertising an SF ‘Doom Loop Walking Tour’ For $30 a Ticket In what seems an elaborate troll job, but managed to get published and promoted on Eventbrite, someone’s offering a chance to “view the open-air drug markets” at Civic Center for $30, which I’m pretty sure you can do for free.
SF News Two Convicted of Posing as San Bruno Fire Victims Speaking of recent San Bruno fire news, 42-year-old Lisa Justin and 44-year-old Sonya Smith were convicted on Tuesday of trying to pass themselves off as victims in an effort to get relief aid.