I got scammed need help please!

[Tarnished]

Got scammed for more than 2500$. I write today because I’m desperate and don’t know how to get help, yesterday while playing sons of forest I started receiving messages threw the steam chat of someone posing as a steam GM telling my that my account needed a reboot and was under investigation because of a purchase I had made in the steam market. My first reaction was to block and ban the user that was contacting me BUT HE WAS STILL ABLE TO CONTACT ME after this (this made me trust that it was a GM account) on top of this my profile had been altered whit a text saying that my account was to be rebooted and my profile picture was changed. (This was the second thing that made me trust this person was a GM that had the power to change my profile and text me after I had blocked him). He told me that I had 5 minutes before the reboot happened and I would lose all items but to avoid losing them I could transfer them a friend I was playing with at the moment. He even told me he could speed things up for me and made a trade offer between my and my friend. It looked fully legit like my friends account (that’s what freaked me out even more). So my been all innocent and stupid when ahead and went for it. The person kept texting and told me that he was working on sending my items back and that the reboot was sucefull. BUT HE STILL WANTED MORE. He told me I needed to buy An item threw a 3rd site to verify my identity, he even game me my last 4 digits of my debit card and asked me to use it to verify it was me. At this point I had already fall in he’s web completely and folllowed to but a 276$ worth item and once I transfer the item to my account he took it all. I lost all of my items for a total worth of more than 2,500$ came to find out steam doesn’t give you any help once this has happened. I’m desperate, depressed and feel so stupid I have been saving this items for 20 years + and never felled for a scam but the fact my account was altered without me doing anything and him been able to text after I blocked him and him knowing my info made me trusted PLEASE I AM BEGGING SOMEONE HELP ME give me a light.

[Ogami]

You account has been hijacked.

Do ALL the following:

1. Scan for malware https://www.malwarebytes.com/
2. Deauthorize all other devices https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
3. Change passwords from a clean computer
4. Generate new backup codes for your Mobile App https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
5. Revoke the API key https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey (there should be nothing in the APIKEY)

And in the future dont click on suspicious links your friends send you or log into third party trading sites with your Steam credentials, the two most common ways to get infected.


Also your items are gone, Steam does not restore items that leave an account for whatever reason. Learn from it for the future even if it was a expensive lesson.

[Tarnished]

so there is really nothing I can do at all even with evidence of me been scammed is just a thing?

[Ogami]

Tarnished původně napsal:

so there is really nothing I can do at all even with evidence of me been scammed is just a thing?

Sadly no, Steam had a strict " no items returned, no matter what" policy for years now.
They did restore items in the past but of course users just abused the feature and did not care to secure their accounts correctly because Steam would give them back their stuff anyway.
At some point Steam had enough and since then they will not give back any items that got stolen,scammed, wrongfully traded or having left the account under any circumstances.

You can read up on it here:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/3B6E-B322-2400-8D24

But yeah, the fact is your items are gone and you wont get them back.

[Tarnished]

please steam help

[SpunkyJones]

Tarnished původně napsal:

please steam help

Follow the directions in the first reply in the first reply to secure your account. At some point you gave away your credentials.

[Tarnished]

i already did the steps to secure the account but my items are still gone, they should be able to do soemthing if you can show proof this guy posed as a steam employe and was able to edit my account

[Beardface31]

Tarnished původně napsal:

i already did the steps to secure the account but my items are still gone, they should be able to do soemthing if you can show proof this guy posed as a steam employe and was able to edit my account

Then that is all that can be done.

[Wolf Knight]

Tarnished původně napsal:

i already did the steps to secure the account but my items are still gone, they should be able to do soemthing if you can show proof this guy posed as a steam employe and was able to edit my account

can they return the items, yes. are they going to return the items, NO. again, people abused the restoration policy. and when something gets abused enough, it gets taken away. steam has made it clear that you are the one responsible for the security of your account. they are not guessing your account log in, you are somehow giving it away.

either the computer you use has a keylogger or other malware that is letting them see whats being entered on steam, or the account is logging into 3rd party sites.

again, all the scammer did was the same stuff you can do or anyone else can do if they log into your account. a steam employee is not going to talk to you using anything other then the ticket system. they dont chat, use discord, leave messages on your profile, etc.

this style of scam has been going on for many years.

get your security sorted out, figure out where/how you gave them access. if you dont get that locked down, they will get access again.

[Tarnished]

Yall right imma just give up literally got scammed for more than 2500$ guess all that's left is copium and venting still its crazy there is nothing that can be done even with proof of it. I used face it to play csgo and csgo backpack aswell as dotalounge so i guess one of those sites got me good. I should have known better

[Teksura]

Scan for malware https://www.malwarebytes.com/
Deauthorize all other devices https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
Change passwords from a clean computer
Generate new backup codes https://store.steampowered.com/twofactor/manage
Revoke the API key https://steamcommunity.com/dev/apikey
Stop using shady third party trade sites or clicking suspicious links.


Do each of the steps.



What happened is your account became compromised, most likely through a third party site. This well known scam then requires you to authorize the trade giving your items away after you allow them access to your account through either malware, or giving away your details through a phishing fake login page or other trick used by those shady third party sites.

The way it does this is after it gains access to your account, a bot waits until you send out a trade offer, and then using the access you gave to them, their bot cancels the trade, changes a bot account to match the name and profile picture of the person you wanted to trade with, and then sends a trade giving your stuff away for free.

The scam depends on you ignoring all the warnings, such as "this user is not on your friends list", "this user has a similar name to someone on your friends list", their items missing from the offer, the big "you will receive nothing" text, the fact that they have the wrong level, wrong "has been on Steam since" date (usually obviously too recent to make sense), and a few other obvious warnings. It only works if you're not even looking at what you're doing. Sadly, an awful lot of people don't care enough to verify the trade is what they are expecting, so this scam continues to work.

Valve will not return items you gifted away to the scammer as a result of ignoring all the warnings. https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9958-MJDG-3003