These days, it seems all but impossible to go through a single week without at least one person trying to scam us. Whether they’re pretending to be a service we use every day to phish our passwords out of us, trying to trick us into sharing our credit card numbers, or even making us pay to work for them, there seems to be no end to the tricks these grifters can pull.
But at the same time, we can sometimes play ourselves and make it easy for an opportunist to take advantage of us. And we can sometimes see this in posts where people showed off their credit card’s cool design or forgot to edit out the code on their gift cards only to realize their mistake when it was already too late.
But as one man recently made clear, a similar problem can arise when people try to flex their big wins in a lottery or other game of chance online.
Be advised that the video featured in this article contains extremely explicit language
On April 2, a man in Australia named Brad Higgins uploaded a video to TikTok sharing a “rookie mistake” a friend had recently made.
Apparently, this person had just finished a lucky night that saw him win $690 while betting. But in his rush to brag to Higgins, he had left the barcode visible in the photo he sent him.
As Higgins put it, “That’s a rule one rookie mistake when sending your bet slip to your mates.”
So as a means of illustrating his point and pranking his friend, he demonstrated how easy it is to use that barcode even if you don’t have the ticket.
Sure enough, after he went to one of the betting company’s machines, he was able to print a voucher that he could then redeem for all $690.
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Although we never see the friend’s reaction, he said earlier in the video that he would call him as soon as he did this.
Before long, Higgins showed us the cash he received and taunted his friend for his carelessness.
As he put it, “If I wasn’t his friend, I could have robbed that [expletive].”
However, he assured his viewers that since the two are good friends, he planned to give him back all the money when they meet up to watch soccer together.
But while one commenter remarked that Higgins is saying only his friends are safe around him, others were just stunned by how easily so much money can be stolen from them.
As one user said , “Tab and so on need to change their system so that can’t happen and people need to learn not to overshare.”
And when another person said their friend lost $25,000 after making a similar mistake, Higgins replied saying, “Yeh I’ve heard of times up to 80k happening to people. Hopefully people see this video and not do it.”
