Disclaimer: I by no means seek to slander Apple industries in anyway, simply just wanted to vent something out. 

Two days before I turn nineteen, I find myself sitting here and writing up a very melancholy post. First of all, a great big THANK YOU, to the dear lowlife who decided to prey on a unsuspecting student like me, thus scamming about $1000 of hard-earned cash from my bank account (albeit partially my own stupidity). Clearly, earning one's own living through  moral means is simply not an exciting enough chase. 

So, the story starts like this: I've been unenthusiastically taking on a lot more shifts at work so I can save up more money and having received my pay check today, I was obviously feeling very happy and satisfied with myself - even if university study isn't going nearly as well. Thus, having finished my shift today I was on my way home when I got a LINE (chatting app) message from one of my friends. 

Now, before I launch into a tirade about all this, I admit that I am a gigantic if somewhat naive idiot and probably could have avoided all this trouble had I been more street-smart; but, regrets will be regrets. Anyway, so the content of the message was basically asking me if I could pop by into the nearest place to buy four itunes cards worth about '10000 points' for her. Naturally, I assumed it was my friend herself talking, not a scammer but how was I to know? 

So, I went in to buy some and got confused since iTunes cards are sold by value, not by the amount of 'points', which I then explained to who I thought was my friend. This scammer on the other end of the line obviously realised how clueless I was and asked me to buy four of the iTunes cards worth about $100 each. It all sounds very fishy from how I'm describing it, but lets just say this scammer was rather intelligent and slowly coaxed me into purchasing it and sending them the PIN code to activate these cards.  

To make it even worse, after I finished doing all this, I was finally on my way home before the scammer then messaged me AGAIN, asking if I could buy SIX more of these $100 iTunes gift cards. By then, I started to feel really uncertain - I've never really blown so much money in one go and it seemed so unlike my friend to ask such a huge favour without much explanation, but I ran back to buy some anyway, since they said it was an 'emergency' (yeah, more like just in a rush to take all my money). As if taking one thousand dollars from me wasn't enough, they decided to ask for TEN MORE, after I was just about to get on the bus. 

Now can you believe I actually ran back AGAIN to try buy more? Yes, you are all probably shaking your heads in disbelief, but that's what I did. Stupid stupid penny. Thank goodness there is a certain limit on my card as to how much I can spend per day and it was declined. Thank you ANZ, for saving me from losing another $1000. I cannot believe my stupidity, how I could've have fallen for it. I did try to call my friend, but they coincidentally were otherwise occupied and unable to pick up. I messaged instead, asking them to pick up and they (the scammer, not my friend) also replied saying they were busy. What good luck I have. Anyway, the story is rather long, but basically they were trying to convince me to ask my mum to buy some more of the cards for them, since I wasn't able to do it myself. 

I ended up calling my mum asking, sincere as I was to help out, only to be yelled at by my mum for my stupidity. By then, it started to dawn on me that this was perhaps all a scam, I found out that my mum also received the same message from my mum. Anyway, to cut the very lengthy story short, I was able to contact my friend and realised that I really was scammed, words cannot describe how devastated and empty I feel. My dad took up the phone and started pretending that I was still keen to help out, meanwhile I came up with the idea to try 'redeem' my itunes gift cards before the scammer could. To my surprise, I was able to activated about five of these cards before I think the scammer realised what I was doing.... so thats at least $500 dollars back (although in my iTunes account, which I still cannot convert back into the cash I lost). 

I suppose I should feel grateful that I was able to redeem so much back, but I don't know.... I just feel as though all my efforts of working went down the drain and that I sacrificed all that time and effort for nothing, when it could've been avoided had I simply taken more care. Anyhow, at least we managed to troll the scammer for a while by feigning interest and then scaring them. I pretended I bought a few more cards and sent them the pins of cards I had already redeemed, to which they replied....well you can see for yourself. 

The only satisfaction I have right now is that we managed to scare the scammer enough to close down the account, who knows, they may have even went to the trouble of 'escaping' from where they were. But yes, really a great big thank you for making my birthday week absolutely amazing, losing all that money and all. I now possess a deep deep hate for scammers of any kind, and my sympathies to any past or potential victims like me.