So... scammers tried to get him to give $12,000 dollars to the person coming to his house. He figured out it was a scam, and rather than calling the police to come deal with the scammer, he shot the person six times? What the ever loving fuck is with people?
I mean, tbf, if he’d called the police they’d probably have shot the person 6 times. Maybe he just felt like cutting out the middle man?
She was black.
Yup. I’m totally sure that had nothing to do with this guy’s response to her coming to his door.
Holy shit that picture is insane and so fucking sad. It's been a min since I read something so startlingly depressing that was completely unrelated to the authoritarian regime we're living under, but that picture says a thousand words.
Endemic violence is completely related to the fascist regime. It’s one of the reasons why the US is such fertile ground for fascism
The guy is an absolute psycho for shooting someone 6 times because he thinks she is trying to scam him.
This is exactly the kind of psychos that welcome a fascist regime.
May he live long and suffer through the rest of his life.
Just seeing the fear and worry on her face and whole body language is heartbreaking, while the old psycho is in absolute zero danger, but plays prosecutor, judge and executioner and kills her in cold blood.
It’s not completely unrelated, why the fuck is a 61 year old (the victim) out driving Uber?
I use rideshare constantly and in my experience most uber/lyft drivers are either immigrants, people between jobs, or retirees looking to make extra money/socialize.
Plus 61 is still younger than retirement age. Maybe they tapped out of a different career or wanted something a little simpler before going for a full retirement. Maybe they were a cabbie and prefers uber as they has more control over their schedule.
Hmm, I noticed a pattern between those groups: All vulnerable and desperate for work
I spend time in central Florida every year (Orlando/Kissimmee). Many of the ride share drivers I come across are retiree, often also immigrants, looking to socialize. Last guy I rode with was originally from Nicaragua, in his seventies, got his citizenship in the 1980's, and just does ride share for two hours three times per week, simply to chat with the passengers. Slowest ride from the airport ever given that he never went past 45mph, but the chat was pleasant.
Misleading headline. As written, it sounds like someone shot their taxi driver for mistakenly thinking they gave them the wrong change. In reality it was an uber parcel courier who was shot while unwittingly acting as a money mule for a phone extortion scammer.
Usually these scams involve money mules who are in some way complicit, in the "ask no questions and look the other way" sense, and who receive a cut of the money they launder. But this time it was a bona fide courier from a courier service (the article mentions Uber working with police to identify the user account that placed the delivery order) - a case of literally shooting the messenger.
So the old man did not wrongly think he was being scammed, he was literally being threatened and robbed for $12k, just not by the uber courier. The headline is clickbait for not making that clear. The courier was not being scammed, just performing a routine paid delivery that happens to be for a criminal.
Whatever happened to "Don't shoot the messenger".
That's why you don't start shooting around because of money. Leave shooting for life-endangering situations.
When money is just as important if not more than life in your society or civilization it’s easy to blur the lines between human life and money. Look at all the oil wars under the premise of some bullshit like capitalism based freedom which is basically modern day slavery. People literally died to make Dick Cheney rich.
At the moment there is 14 comments on this thread, and not single one is questioning why the old timer had a gun.
American gun culture is just wild.
He probably bought it
It's not relevant, everybody's got a gun.
Canadian chiming in here. Many of our old timers also have guns, they are just responsible enough to not shoot uber drivers. The question is not why did he have a gun but why did he use it in this manner.
Probably mostly because it's a question we already know the answers too.
This article does not give me enough information. Idk if I have the time or procrastinating allowance to go down this rabbit hole but I really want to read the full court transcripts.
Yeah it wasn't super clear from the story except to say they both were being scammed.
She just thought she was there to pick up a package
He thought she was there to steal $12K from him.
Not sure if it was supposed to be a "prank" but shit is fucking awful, and whoever set it up is somehow still out there free to go about their life like they didn't ruin countless others
As far as I'm aware, it was a scammer that wanted a money mule (someone to pick up a package of money from someone they'd tricked, and deliver it to the scammer or a place where the scammer could then have someone launder it), but they didn't want to go through the process of actually hiring any kind of person, so they used the Uber Courier service, where any old Uber driver can pick up a package and deliver it to another location/person.
As far as that woman was concerned, someone had probably just left behind a package and needed it delivered to a friend's house or something. No prank necessary.
Anyone have an idea of what the scam was and how it was supposed to work? Ride share drivers and customers should be aware of it.
From the article, this doesn't sound like a scam specific to Uber/Ride shares.
What we know:
There are a lot of ways to scam people over the phone: tech-support/refund scams, Scams where legal action is threatened unless you pay (ex: IRS scams), emergency money requests from friends in trouble (ransom scams, bond scams, etc), pig butchering scams (a.k.a romance scams or when you get that random text from someone pretending to reach out to the wrong number), employment scams.
Since we know that the man fell for a bond scam, it's likely that the Uber driver was scammed into working as a money laundering mule for the real scammers. It's very likely that the Uber driver had fallen for one of the other scams and then she was told to pick up packages where she could earn some of "her" money back. She would get more as long as she only took a certain amount and forwarded on the rest. Either that, or she was scammed into working for a "company" where "clients" send in packages of money, and she transfers it to different accounts as well as a little to her own.
Edit: formatting
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