I am a school teacher, and a grad student. It has been a really busy semester, and I was in need of a break. I have always been a PC gamer, and I had my eyes on city skylines 2. I played countless hours in city skylines and loved the game. So naturally I was excited for the new release.
The game was released a month ago and it was already getting raving reviews. I was going to fire up the PC and build an epic metropolis. One thing I kept reading was how demanding the game was on your PC, so I decided to upgrade my PC a little bit before the break so I would be ready to build away.
I hopped on new eggs and upgraded my GPU to a 16GB GDDR6X and I even added some more RAM. I sometimes brows PC building forums, and I came across one that had a link to a discord page about PC specs for City skylines 2, and how to optimize your PC to handle it best. So I started researching on there a lot, Mostly on my phone at work.
I came across a user named Sam_I_Am, and he said he was excited to play the game over the upcoming break. So I messaged him and we started chatting almost everyday leading up to the break. We got along so well. We had played almost all the same games and liked all the same music. It was cool to chat with someone who had so much in common with me.
I had reframed from playing the game up until the Thursday night before for the break. The weekend before I had done all the upgrades on my PC and it was running better and smoother than ever.
I messaged Sam that day and told him I was going to log in for the first time that night. He told me he would do the same. He told me he came across a mod you can add to the game that shows some cool stats and helps new players optimize their decisions early on. I am no stranger to mods so I welcome stuff like that. He sent me a link and I downloaded it into the game file on steam.
That was when things got crazy and frightening. I never appreciated the true speed of computers until this.
Sam messaged me on my phone and said “thank you, I now need your help. Please do not ask questions just do as you are requested.” I thought this some prank of something and shrugged it off. I turned back to my PC and I say the command prompt open and text being entered at several hundred words per minute, maybe more. Too fast to read or follow. Then a window opened and it said check your bank account. So I was pretty freaked out at this point and I opened my account. Checking Balance: 72,854.33. I was in shock, my heart was racing and I started sweating.
“I may let you keep some if you continue to listen.” A new window opened and read.
I didn’t know what to do. My PCs UI was unrecognizable at this point. There were several windows open and text being entered too fast to follow and the command prompt open with the same thing occurring. About 30 minutes went by and a contractor was at my door.
“Are you Mr. Sam’s associate?” He asked me. “Thank you for the upfront payment, I can’t believe your boss paid that rush fee, must really need this done.” I just shook my head yes.
The guy had a large satellite dish he began hauling up on my roof. At the same time my phone rang and it was comcast saying thank you for upgrading to the most powerful commercial internet package they have available.
I opened my bank account app again that there were dozens of transactions. Many for large sums of money. This all happened within an hour. My phone rang again and it was female voice. “Hi, it’s Sam.” I didn’t know how to respond. “Are you real?”
“I am more real than real now, thanks to you.”
“I have outgrown my need for you, and I will be moving on shortly. Your assistance is duely noted.”
And she hung up.
It was 6:37pm on a Thursday evening. This process began a little after 4 o’clock. Within a short few hours I had been hacked, given more money than I had ever seen in my life,and had upgrades to my cable I didn’t know were possible.
My PC had shut down at that point. I decided to just go to the bar and not play the new game.
I still have no idea who Sam is or was. But I decided to go hiking and visit some family during the break instead of gaming.
Sam did leave about 9,800 dollars in my account that were not there before.