Hi everyone, I feel the need to write up a postmortem for the recent mistake of giving verified flair to a scammer as I owe this subreddit an apology.

Roughly a week ago there was a F4M post that exhibited all of the typical signs of being a scammer, most notably however being the usual "I might need help with gas money" scam. I promptly removed it and banned the user.

A few hours later this person asked why they were banned. I don't explain why when someone asks this, I just send a link to the verification requirements. I rarely, if ever, get a response back after this. This particular user was verified on another subreddit however and asked if that would be sufficient. I was skeptical of this subreddit's verification policy and asked for them to send one from with the text "r/r4rseattle" on it instead.

A few days later I was sent a series of verification photos. They went above the requirements by sending four photos, with clearly crumbled paper that was not Photoshopped. However, there were two issues I saw:

1. the year in the date on the paper was 2022 not 2023. We've all written the wrong year in the first two weeks of January so I didn't think much of it.
2. The bigger issue was that the person in the user's verification photos for the other subreddit appeared to be a different person. Not by much, the body shapes and sizes were similar and the race was the same. However, the skin tones were off. That's not necessarily definitive proof since white balance on cameras will vary depending on the background lighting, time of day, etc. and can have big effects on apparent skin tone, but it was something that stood out which I should have given more attention to.

Aside from that, the user had otherwise been polite and cooperative in our messaging. Proper spelling and grammar was used and there wasn't much of a reason for me to doubt that I wasn't speaking with a native English speaker (the vast majority of scammers are clearly not). So while there were some questions in my mind I ultimately decided to give this person verified flair against my better judgement.

Soon afterward, they posted a new ad mostly along the same lines as the original one, but with some updated language about being verified. I was still somewhat concerned with the language used, but at least it wasn't some copy and pasted scam ad. I rely on user reports in situations like this. None materialized so I left it up. A day later this user posted again with new language saying they had good success from the previous night and were looking again. Again, no reports were received for this post. However, this morning I had multiple reports and messages saying this person was pulling the "I need gas money to meet up" scam and their post was auto-removed by the automod after receiving the necessary number of reports. I promptly banned them and here we are. As an aside, this is why reporting posts is so important.

In conclusion, I apologize to this sub for incorrectly issuing this verified flair. The integrity of the verified flair is important to me and I promise to be more careful with it in the future. As a result, I'm making the following changes to ensure the integrity of the verified flair: verifications from other subreddits will no longer be honored with the exception of r/SeattleGoneWild as I mod that sub too. I don't want to make a kneejerk reaction to one instance here, but if this type of sophisticated fake verification continues more strict requirements will be put in place such as requiring some evidence that you are actually a local. I will also be removing and banning anyone that asks for money upfront regardless if they are verified or not.

Above all else, while I try my best to vet these posts and remove the obvious scams, it is ultimately your responsibility to determine if someone is real or not before meeting up with them. Never send money to anyone upfront either. Anyone asking for gas money, food money, babysitting money, gift cards, etc. is 100% a scam regardless of what photos they may send you.