This is a bit of a mini-rant about how annoying scammers are and also an FYI about more evolved tactics of theirs that I've been seeing.

A few days ago, this was posted to r4rseattle: https://i.imgur.com/7n82xMH.png

It was an obvious scam post: terrible grammar, overtly sexual language about being "DTF" and looking for a hookup, creating a sense of urgency by wanting to meet immediately, and no description of what type of person "she" is looking for. As usual, I removed it and banned the poster immediately.

Less than five minutes later this person sent a modmail message asking about the ban. This is interesting because 95% of the time scammers don't bother to argue about bans. They just move on to the next subreddit to spam.

Usually when someone sends a modmail message about a ban it means that I may have gotten it wrong about the user being a scammer because scammers generally don't want to waste their time trying to convince someone who already thinks they are a scammer that they are not; it's not a good use of their time and time is money to these people. It's not common that I get this wrong, but my spidey senses aren't perfect and occasionally I mistakenly ban a real person. No problem though, I ask for a verification photo from them and if they send it they're unbanned and I apologize.

This person, however, pressed the issue trying to argue with me instead presumably so I would unban them: https://i.imgur.com/mVcKz5z.png.

That was it I assumed since there was no reply but then the next morning I get this verification photo from the user: https://i.imgur.com/6axkNcA.jpg.

Note: I debated posting the above image for a while even though it's fake because the verification photo guidelines for this sub clearly state that these images will not be shared in any form. This remains the policy and I'm only posting a redacted version here because I believe it's in the interest of the larger subreddit to know about fake verification photos. Thus, I've blurred the person in this photo because of that and because even if it's a stolen photo, it's still a real person somewhere in the world.

Clearly, this is a fake verification image for a few reasons:

• Most telling: The date format is D/M/Y instead of M/D/Y. Someone actually in the US would use the latter.
• The "handwriting" is a joke and looks like it was drawn in Photoshop with a mouse.
• The shadows at the bottom of the piece of paper are clearly a drop shadow effect.
• There's very little chance of someone taking a verification photo with their ass out like that. Photos like this are intended to make you believe there's a sexy woman ready to have sex with you so you'll ignore your better judgement.
• Lastly, it's a low quality, small resolution image. For whatever reason, scammers tend to send these low resolution images. My guess is that it makes it harder to reverse image search, but I'm really not sure why. There's also a one pixel white stripe on the left side of the image that makes it look like it was a screenshot or cropped from something, who knows.

I responded back telling this user that the verification was a terrible fake and to get lost. That was the end of it in this case.

Tonight, however, there was another scam post that I removed. Again, this person tried to argue about the ban except I wasn't around to see the message initially. By the time I saw it an hour later this person had already magically teleported to LA for a hookup instead.

So, takeaways:

1. Scammers are the goddamn worst. It's bad enough they post their crap on reddit but now they feel the need to argue about bans with mods and go so far as to create fake verification photos.
2. Be aware that even if you ask for a verification photo yourself inspect it carefully. These people are not beyond making fake ones.

That's all... have a great weekend everyone.