I think it is impossible to keep up with the ability of crooks to invent new and improve on old scams. Not BDSM specific scams, but I thought i would share some info.

My professional career is in the financial services industry and years ago I attended a 2 day educational seminar on financial scams. I consider myself reasonably well informed on cyber fraud but I was blown away when it was demonstrated that with just a little bit of information how easy, and quickly, a financial institutions website could be cloned and then sent in a link via mass email just hoping that an actual customer of that institution would open the link, visit the cloned site and unintentionally give away their sign in credentials. Bank account to be emptied shortly thereafter.

One of the more popular scams right now is to send an email informing the recipient that a charge will be made shortly to their credit card to pay for a subscription service, a popular one is supposedly from the Geek Squad. The message says if you do not want the charge processed please call a toll free number. Unsuspecting individuals will call to avoid a charge they did not authorize for a service they may not even have. Once on the phone, there is a good chance they will give away banking and/or credit card info. For example, scam artist says that "I am so sorry, the charge has already been processed. Please give me you credit card number and I will reverse the charge immediately."

Sad to say, that early in my career, I met with a family that claimed to have recently come into a significant sum of money and needed investment advice. You probably guessed it, they had been informed that they had inherited several million dollars from a relative they had never heard of who lived in Africa. They had already paid several thousands of dollars in processing and legal fees and were assured the millions would be transferred to them any day now. I had the unenviable job of explaining to them that they were scam victims. Sad to say, that in addition to the money they had already lost, they had also put down payments on 3 new cars that they intended to buy when their inheritance finally arrived. I was able to help them get those deposits back.

These were not stupid people, just blue collar hard working folks who wanted desperately to believe that this inheritance was real and would change their lives. The worst part for me was seeing how ashamed they were that they fell for it. Sad to say, that scam still works today.