Scammers are people who want to get your items or even your account for free. Most of them are very clever and will try to bait you into giving them personal information to access your account or will try to get you to trade them for free items.

First of all,there are many kinds of scammers,also there will come more with time with new methods and tactics,let's see the mostly common ones!

They were more frequent some months ago,now that they found out that it doesn't work really good they changed with more efficient methods.

-Like all scammers,they probably won't look for you unless you have a high valued item in your inventory (usually if you have a TF2 unusual [20$+])

-They will talk to you like gentlemen and experienced traders,of course they will try to look very interested in your items and will try to make you think that they don't care about value and they prefer how items look

-They will make to you a very strange offer,like they're going to pay 3x of your item's value.

Here's where the scam starts:

-They will ask for you steam trade link

-After that they will introduce you to the site (most commonly Opskins or TF2 related trading sites)

-They will tell you that they want you to deposit your items in there because "in this way it can be traded in that site"

-They will send to you a fake bot asking for your items,of course it won't offer items

-If you confirm the trade with the bot your items are lost,the scammer will probably block you and run away with the money


-The best thing to do is making them waste their time by asking questions about how the site works,they will try to avoid it and will eventually block you

-Like most of the scammers,they will try to skip the trade with you if they find out that you know what's going on

-Don't give them your trade link,they might give it to other scammers and end up in a never ending scammers's friend requests

-If they start talking about sites or stuff like that ask why they don't want to trade you normally (This might bring them to try another method so watch out if you're going to do this)

Very similar to site scammers,they will try to make you sponsor their site causing more users to get in contact with the scam.This scamming method died a lot of time ago but it seems to be coming back,watch out!

-Like all scammers,they probably won't look for you unless you have a high valued item in your inventory (usually if you have a TF2 unusual [20$+])
They will look for you even if you have 2-10$ valued inventory, tons of friends or if you have access to announce something in any group with some members

-They will talk to you like gentlemen and experienced traders but this time they'll make you think that by sponsoring their site you'll get free items.Don't worry,you won't oof

-They will make to you a very strange offer,they will convince you that they can make anybody win in their roulette site by making you choose the guy who will win the spin (it's fake)

Here's where the scam starts:

-They will tell you that they can make you win the spin,so they will show you that the prize is a lot of high valued items

-Even if they said it was free,now they want you to pay to enter the game

-I don't know what happens next but if you paid them the scam is done and they can run with your money


-These guys won't initially look interested in your items but that's what they're actually looking for

-If they start talking about paying to get stuff in their site then you know what's about to go on

-Follow the same procedure for when you spot one any scammer

These guys are using a new method,it's very efficient recently so read this one carefully



-They will make you think that you won a donation by them,usually 200$

-They show some screens to make you think "they're not fraud"

-They will ask for your account name I never tried to tell them a hilarius account name but that must be fun

-They will tell you they're trying to pay you via PayPal or other ways


-They will tell you that for the payment they will need your verification code,they will also send you a screen about a page where it's written that it's needed

-If you give them the code they can change your password,confirm trades and this means they can have both your account and items at the same time,also you can't have it back if they want


-Probably the funniest way is to block them when they say you won a donation,but there might be a chance they were serious about it so use it at your own risk lmao

-Don't give them your verification code,or if you want to be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ give them a fake one just to see them rage and justify yourself by saying them "sorry,I'm really slow and I suck at this"

-Follow the same procedure for when you spot a scammer

This one is on a scale of 1/10 rare 10/10 so treat this specie with respect lol,thanks to "my friend" that tried to scam me with it


-They will say that you have games that they don't have so they will ask for you to add them like there were your parents on family permission option Wtf why should you even need it?


-If you set them as your parents they now have your account,they might ask for money to have it back or cannot do it at all


-Make them waste their time,if they talk about having parent permission on your account act like they never did

-Follow the same procedure for when you spot a scammer

This boi will tell you that he thinks your items might be scammed,this can easily be related to the next kind of scammer but it's not 100% sure they will follow that strategy


-They will tell you they want to have your items for high prices (they will act like the first kind of scammer in the list)

-They will tell you that they want to make sure your items aren't hacked or cloned because they risk ban and I really wish I had one just to put it in their inventory


-They will ask you to give your items to a bot which "will verify the item origins"

-If you did so you can say goodbye to your items


-Act like you should against a site scammer

-Follow same procedure for all scammers after you avoided the scam

This one is probably the worst because on a scale of 1/100 that one is this kind of scammer.It will waste a lot of time and they will persist if you leave the trade (at least this is what happened to me)


-They act in the same way of the previous type of scammer


-Like the previous one but instead of a bot he'll call a "steam admin" Which actually is a bot aswell but it will talk with a lot of pre-made messages

-He'll put you in group chat with the bot and he'll act like he gave the items to the "steam admin" and then he'll make it result like his items got verifyed

-If you give the items to the "steam admin" then you got scammed


-Pay respect for the time the scammer put into making that bot thingie

-Make the scammer lose his time

-Remove both of them from friendlist,if you leave the bot in your friendlist he might flame you for doing that

-Follow same procedure for all scammers after avoiding the scam

These ones deserve to be bound on a block of lead and thrown in the deepest waters of the Earth. They're dumb and they really deserve the worst day of their lifes


-Same as the item verifiers but they'll say that to verify the item they'll need you to give your items to a your trusted friend and then get it back for the trade.

-They will tell you to add their main account as friend to continue the trade.They will tell you to talk with the new one,they'll go offline with the account with which you talked and they'll transform it into a fake clone of your friend's laughts in Italian

-They ask you to give the items to your friend (hoping he's currently offline) and then they'll go online with the fake account (which is hilarious because if they're not in your country they can't know wtf you're saying lmao)


-They'll act like they were the said friend with the fake account and then will try to get the items,if you're dumb enough you may also think you got betrayed by your best friend but you're not that dumb right?

-If you fell in it *slow claps* then you lost your items


-Well I met this kind of scammer only one time and this was the funniest s**t of my life because the said friend was my cousin and after I found out the scammer didn't know italian I told my cousin to go online and I made group chat with me,my cousin and this a**hole. That was funny as hell!

-Just spit on his face at this point,to get scammed by these guys you must be the unluckiest man on Earth

Couldn't find a better way to name them,they add you and tell you that you have a pending ban (may also show fake proof of it) they will tell you the reason of the ban is duplicated items and will also tell you that in 2 hours you will get banned so you have to do something fast. Welp,instead they're lying,the Steam admin is a fake account and they'll get free loot from you.

-How to counter them

Like all scammers,you'll notice the reason they're here because they'll start talking about items. Just don't believe them when they do so.

When someone adds you saying so,he's 99% a scammer




How to counter them:


Keep them busy while you extract their ID and start to spam in his comment section that he's a scammer. This will cause him a huge damage.

Well,you have many things that you could do to improve Steam's community.
I highly recommend to extract the scammer's ID with this site:
https://steamid.io/
After you've done that report his account for scamming,try to leave a comment on his profile adverting users to don't trade with him if you can by also specifying how he tried to scam you.
Now join Megio's Scammer Witchhunt and go in there:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/scamwitchhunt/discussions/0/1741090847743465619/
paste the steamID in the comment section and specify how he tried to scam you (possibly say if he's using one of these methods or a new one)


Why?
Because this group (which I own) is made to report scammers,give tips about how to counter them and bring justice in a community where staying quiet isn't allowed. If Steam doesn't take them away,we will.

I hope my guide was useful,obviously I will keep it updated,good luck trader!

If someone starts threating you because they send you some pictures looking like this one:










Don't fall in it,that's their objective. If they had your account,there would be no reason in threatening you.Do whatever you want but don't panic,it's all lies.