Oh the money I could make if I didn’t have morals. It turns out some people really are that dumb.

  • John Amann told NBC News he bought $2,200 worth of Trump Bucks and other items over the past year only to discover they were worthless when he tried to cash them in at his local bank.

    Oh man I want video of him trying to cash them in at a real bank so bad.

  • He bought $2,200 worth of Trump Bucks and other items over the past year only to discover they were worthless when he tried to cash them in at his local bank

    “Now I’m questioning whether he is aware of this,” Amann said of Trump.

    “Antifa sold me fake Trump bucks!!!”

  • This whole story is full of hilarious bits, and there’s far too many good quotes for me to post them all, but from another angle it’s just sad that these people are so far gone from reality that they can be taken advantage of like this. You really think Walmart is going to give you a 10000% guaranteed ROI after a year of holding some funny money? That doesn’t set off any alarm bells? Why would Trump give you 100x your money before he’s even re-elected in 2024? What could he have done to bring about such economic inflation prosperity in a single year?

    • I think to a large extent it’s a case of cognitive dissonance.

      Loads of these people have defended Trump for years, supported him despite his obvious lies and grifts and so you kinda have to believe that whatever else he comes up with is also true. If you believe all his previous falsehoods, why not the next?

      To admit he’s full of shit means your whole belief system has to change. Trump supporters have lost friends, alienated family, spent their money on him… It’s much easier to keep believing in him than it is to admit you’ve been wrong all this time, cause that would mean having to admit you’ve been taken for a fool this whole time AND it means all your efforts and sacrifices have been for nothing.

  •  livus   ( @livus@kbin.social ) 
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    The video ends with a slide advertising a free app that promises to “make your favorite celebrity say anything."

    This is like Nigerian Prince. It’s deliberately set up to only attract people whose level of cognitive ability makes them vulnerable.

    • There are multiple people falling prey to Nigerian/Philippines romance scams, thinking a celebrity/influencer/hot person is using an alt account to contact them because they fell in love with them at first sight.

      They give thousands of dollars, millions even. They take out loans, sell their houses, lose all their inheritance, all because they think they are special, when in truth they are just lonely enough to believe the lies that make them think their life has any meaning at all.

      The way these scams operate and how Trump manipulates people is virtually the same. It’s impressive what loneliness and egocentrism do to us and how vulnerable we can be to the most obvious lies.

  • 🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    In the recesses of the internet where some of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters stoke conspiracies and plot his return to the White House, suspected con artists have been mining their disappointment over the last presidential election for gold.

    Additionally, NBC News has found at least a dozen people like Amann who say they invested thousands of dollars after watching the pitches on Telegram and other websites that strongly suggested that Trump himself was endorsing these products.

    The Federal Trade Commission, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from NBC News, confirmed it has received one fraud complaint against Patriots Dynasty that was filed in January.

    Since 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election, internet hucksters have been selling pro-Trump products like coins, checks and cards and marketing them as novelty items.

    About six months ago, the grandmother said, she gathered up the Trump Bucks and commemorative coins she had purchased and drove 60 miles east to the nearest Bank of America branch she could find in Pensacola, Florida.

    A Florida woman who lives north of Tampa, and who also asked not to be identified by name because she fears internet harassment, said her 77-year-old mother-in-law was also fooled into investing tens of thousands of dollars in Trump Bucks.


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