So there’s been a recent gas scam that I first noticed last year when a Hispanic guy pretended to be a representative of a gas company and showed up at my door. I went through the spiel with him, realized it was a scam then closed the door on him. However the same gas scam showed up at Sam’s club a few month later, where they were doing the exact same thing but now in an actual store with barrier to entry. They disappeared after a few months (probably because Sam’s got complained at enough/ blamed for letting them in) and then they popped up at multiple other stores and disappeared. Now the exact same scam showed up with a chick pitching a tent outside a store complex with a sign saying “Free Gifts” and a smaller sign “if you bring your gas bill”.
This has been the most prescient for just an in person scam, but we have been bombarded post Covid with scam phone calls, scam texts from India pretending to be a toll road, on and on. Am I going crazy or have we officially gone full India in this country where scams don’t get cracked down on anymore?
While foreign criminals being scammers is one part of it, it's also an indicator of a bubble, and inability for people to be hired for reliable low wage work. The interconnectivity of the world means that 3rd world scams are showing up, due to their own economic problems too.
Overall, the American Consumer is the most parasitized creature on the planet. It's a wonder that anyone in the world makes anything else considering how much of our own wealth is being stolen from us.