The Crystal Mug Scam

By now most of us are tuned in to the idea that online "life" is full of scams and frauds.

We know not to immediately provide compromising information; we don't "call this number" to avoid back taxes or dispute a pending charge; we can be reasonably sure the "prince" doesn't have a huge bank account to share and that an old friend from high school doesn't need gift cards from us to get out of jail in a foreign country. 

We've covered many scams in this column, and while the same general principles hold, there are always new possibilities when it comes to tricks.

AI will probably be the most challenging arena until and unless a means to spot fakes immediately comes to light. We believe our eyes and ears. In the early days of Photoshop - or any photo manipulation program - we learned how to spot an image that had be altered, mainly because it took too much time and skill to make it believable. We learned pretty quickly that when a background bent with the adjustment of the size and shape of the body in the foreground, it was clearly someone trying to look thinner or more robust. If we saw a scandalous image of a famous figure doing something hard to believe, we doubted it without further proof. Sounds and voices can still be challenging, but even audio can be examined carefully for whether it matches a full pattern.

But now AI generated images and sounds are quite believable - and even the "voice over" readings generated by programs are beginning to sound somewhat natural.

So when something as simple as a product offer that just looks like a nice purchase comes along, we're not really primed to be wary.

The situation is simple: it's Christmas - prime gift-giving season. Scrolling through options at a popular e-tail outlet, an image of a bright and shiny gift item shows up, the price is right, it's ordered. The bad news: it's going to be late. More bad news: later still, but a delivery date is promised. Delayed again, but "out for delivery." You get the idea. 

The buyer visits the website to get an update and - "Page cannot be found." What? The tracking information is still active, and eventually a delivery is made. But the seller's information is still not available on the outlet. When the item is finally delivered - and it is - it's junk!

The scam is known as "The Crystal Mug Scam," and it's famous. As the site malwaretips.com shares, "The mineral crystal coffee mug scam typically begins with enticing advertisements on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. The vivid product photos depict agate, quartz or geode mugs with mesmerizing natural designs. The mugs appear handcrafted and completely unique."

And the game isn't that there is no product. It's that the product is junk, and by the time the buyer realizes that the $30-$50 purchase is a fake, the seller's online shop or merchandise has vanished, and even the Etailer offers little help.

In the old days, a street vendor offered you a Rolex watch on the street in New York at an amazing price. If you hadn't just arrived from the country twenty minutes ago, you probably knew it wasn't real, but if it looked good enough you might have spent the money and gotten what you paid for. 

In this case, you might not have guessed as the outlet seemed real, and the pictures highly convincing. So it's probably time to start shopping around online, and by reporting a fake when you encounter one, help the next person avoid it.