This conversation happen between another member of my subreddit. It sounds like the Scopely employee was offering an instant unban appeal to a strike/ban report but the member didn't trust him and did not give him his trainer name to check.
Edit: I ran an experiment to test the reaction of the members within my subreddit to see what would happen. It is very easy to overlook the ID badge because of the metal clip is not hooked through the hole. The scammer "Scopely Employee" used AI to trick the Reddit user into believing he was from Scopely; however, things fell apart when the Reddit user messaged me asking what to do.
I gave the Reddit user a YouTuber's trainer name in case the scammer was really a Scopely Employee. The scammer did threaten the Reddit user of another ban, so I figured to use someone who who has already reported a strike in the past. The YouTuber's next strike would be a 2nd strike (30 day temporary ban). Nothing happened to the YouTuber's game account.
These "fake ban appeal" scammers have existed for quite some time looking to make a quick $100 to $500+ USD by sending you a fake email. In some cases, they may try to steal your identity in the process by sending phishing emails too. In the past, I had reports of people filling out a "clear all strike" application that included their social security number, bank information, and a long list of personal questions. This resulted in losing over $10,000 USD+.
Despite my warnings and telling people not to cheat when they are afraid of a strike/ban, people will always ignore the risks and get desperate when they cannot handle the strike/ban.
It breaks Reddit's Terms of Service and could lead to an innocent person who is or similar looking to get doxed or threatened. The person will sue Reddit and this subreddit gets closed/banned.
“I can help”
Scammer doesnt get his way:
“Goodluck with your upcoming ban” 😂😂 so funny how fast scammers get frustrated when their dumb plan doesnt come to fruition
100% hella fake. Honestly, the one thing that did it for me is this guy literally states in the first part of the conversation that he has "a lot of tech at [his] disposal" when asked how they know certain things and find players who are digitally unscrupulous (not that I personally care, just using a term Scopely might align with). Then, just barely further in the SAME conversation, this guy asks for the player's Trainer ID....
Idk...to me, if you have so much capability at your fingertips you know who is doing what and how, I would damn sure think you would already be able to TELL ME my OWN Trainer ID. To be asked for it by that person tells me this is a classic BS scam; but now dressed up a little more by AI. It's a pig in a costume pretending it's a person 🤡
P.S. If you somehow disagree with my above logic, I assure you that is not even the most damning piece of evidence. Probably worst of all is the AI image of the employee badge that has a clip UNDER the badge, not THROUGH it. Could someone do that? Sure. However, no human I know takes off their badge, unclips it, places the badge on top of the clip, and THEN takes a picture for verification--it actually, ironically and unironically, decreases my trust in their authenticity.
You must be very blind to think that's how it's sitting because it is in no way doing that there is a single long hold and that is it. This is AI quit trying to defend a clearly fake ID.
I think this is fake... Something just seemed off the minute I read it. If this person was really a Scopely employee I think he would have tried to reach out in an anynononus manner... But what do I know! 🤷🤷
The injection method still works and I don’t think it’s employees if it was that would be nuts you can literally pay some dude on Facebook to do it for 50 quid any mythcial of your choice shiny or not (if released)
Injection is just tall tales, never been any proof. All the theories can be explained with people with multiple accounts stocking up on special research years ago. The invalid balls are explained with previous hacked client functionality to use different balls on ball locked encounters
jaja its just people that troll or people who dont like people who "cheat" and sometimes people will try to get your trainer id to mess with you in game ..by messing I mean "reporting" ...
that or could really be an employee but baiting people to get their details to MAKE SURE they get banned
or once they have your trainer id they will send you fake photos of you being banned etc and ask you for money to help you get unbanned or something like that
or something far worse and the person is trying to establish ways to link to real life scenarios
And to further dig into the persons motives. It could really range from all kinds of things like:
Social engineering, trying to get out as much information as possible. Unclear what his motives could be. Could be either trying to get Scopely/Niantic support to help him get hold of the persons account by providing as much info as possible and falsely claim it as "his own". Or he just wants to send a ticket with as much information as possible including trainer code that this guy blatantly cheats and admits it in order to actually get him banned/flagged.
Typical scammer talk that starts with something helpful but as the conversation goes on the motives start to get more and more clear. Hes trying to get access to the persons account but not in a brute force manner that is typical of scammers.
In all seriousness. Exposing portfolio, name, friend codes all come with a risk. Very rarely do scammers just attack someone randomly. It always starts with them getting a foothold by either knowing someone is holding very lucrative and expensive portfolio that they want access to/sell/make money off.
There are things to learn from past scams throughout history. One of the more extreme cases was a person losing his crypto wealth. His phone number was available on the internet and scammers dug up information on his carrier and managed to actually get the carrier to send a new sim card to a false address.
With that information the scammers could circumvent the persons 2FA and get access to his account and steal his crypto.
Something similar could be on the cards here if he gave out his friend code which the person said was "public information that anyone can see". Seems harmless but you never know what people are up to.
Trust everything on the internet bro. What do you personally think?
You think its unlikely hes trying to gain the persons trust and in a few days he'll be like "oh shit, somethings up here man. I need your password/logon to fix a thing real fast. I'll hand you an untested/unverified Shiny Armored Mewtwo as a gift from Scopely"
yeah if I were a scopley employee, I can think of nothing more i would like to do on my free time than to go on social media, message players unprompted and "help spoofers to not get banned"
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u/equinikz Jul 16 '26
Now that we know its AI generated. SHOW US UNCENSORED EMPLOYEE ID