Scammer targeted a tired mom on her birthday — she flipped the script and left the scammer scrambling
By the time the mom was done venting out, she heard the scammer sobbing on the phone.
A woman who goes by (u/rare-cheesecake9701) on Reddit was upset because everyone had forgotten her 30th birthday. Not that she wasn't already used to it, but it was her first year as a mom, and she was emotionally quite vulnerable. As she sat there, all alone, hoping somebody would call her to wish her a happy birthday, her phone rang. Someone from Uzbekistan had called her; one look at it, and she knew it was a crook hoping to scam her. In normal situations, she could have easily avoided the call, but this time, she picked it up. She realized the man was far too confident in his ability to scam her, so she decided to play along — until she left him drowning in his tears. The mom posted the story on January 22.
The woman was a January-born, whose birthday falls just after the New Year. She conveyed that people are generally so busy during that time that they usually forget her birthday. However, every time she played cool and would accept belated birthday wishes, but this time things were different. It was her 30th birthday, her first as a mom, and she expected at least her bestie, Janet, to show up. The woman was lost in thought when a phone call snapped her out of it. She picked it up and heard the scammer pretending to be from a telephone company. The man took her sister's name and asked if he was speaking to the right person. "No, and please don’t call me and remove my number from your call list," she responded. But the scammer was in no mood to hang up. The woman realized it, too, and went on to vent all that she'd been holding up for so long.
"I'm so f****** tired of being the bigger person. You heard me! You know how annoying it is that on the week of my birthday, the only person who called was a freaking scammer who probably got doxxed info about my sister, who tried to drown me as a child, and wished me that I never was born," she said. The woman went on to talk about how she was always accused of making a big deal about birthdays. She also mentioned her "narcissist" mom who never truly celebrated her birthday. "And after I'm done with you, I will have to clean the kitchen again from all the soup on the floor and walls because I hate mess, I hate being alone, and I want to scream like there is m****r..." she added. By the time she was done with her rant, she heard the scammer boy sobbing into the phone. "I disconnected a call and blocked the number," the woman wrote.
She had been working in the IT department, so she knew exactly how to handle such scammers. But unlike her, millions of innocent people fall victim to scam calls every year. In fact, Americans lost $280 million in only Q1 2025 (January–March) to scams that began with a simple phone call. More than money, people also report losing time attending to multiple scam calls almost daily. Scam calls also raise trust issues amongst people; for instance, 59% of American respondents say they never attend unknown calls or reply to messages from unknown senders, according to The Public Interest Network. The same study also noticed a difference in how men and women react to phone scams. They found men (19%) were more likely to be a victim than women (15%). In fact, women were seen as more cautious about such spam calls. 65% of women respondents said they never answer calls or text messages from unknown senders, compared to 54% of men.
Meanwhile, reacting to the Reddit story, u/thecatsothermother shared, "I sometimes take those 'you had a car accident' peeps for a ride. I ask if it's the one where I was the driver. When they eagerly reply that yes, it was, I tell them that that's really weird because not only have I never owned a car, but I am not permitted to learn to drive because of uncontrolled seizures. I'm sorry your 30th was such a disappointment. I hope you did or will do something to celebrate, and this internet stranger wishes you a belated happy birthday." Similarly, u/bloated_penis wrote, "Hey op, I can't blame you for the phone venting whatsoever, but there are scammers who are human trafficked and are forced to be scammers by their traffickers. Most of them are the initial callers, too. I only said this because the scammer was crying, and I feel like an actual evil scammer would’ve hung up."
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