Anybody else used to make money illegally before getting into pharmacy? (Mikey stories)

[WVUPharm2007]

I did. I had a nice hustle going back when I was a younger teen.

See, I was lucky enough to have a cable descrambler. What, children, is that? Well, back in the day, they used to send ALL of the channels to you. The good ones were scrambled up so that you couldn't see them. Only if your cable box had an authorization code would it descramble the channel. Well, this thing would override all of that and let you see everything for free. This video explains it.


So, obviously, I wanted one.

Mowed lawns all summer for one of them. They used to just freely sell them online in the early internet days on sketch websites with impunity. And back then I was in Junior High (this was like '96-97.) I got free HBO, free PPVs, free everything. Including a little channel called The Spice Channel. If you don't know what that is, Google it. NSWF, but Google it when you get off of work.

So I'm showing this to one of my friends. He's like "woah, HBO! OMFG, you can watch all the WWF pay-per-views!" And then we get to The Spice Channel. He was speechless. Simply amazed. The first and only words out of his mouth were. "Dude...can you...like...record this for me?"

So we went to Revco (now CVS) and he bought a blank tape. And I recorded two hours of it for him.

And thus my pornography pirating business had begun.

And I had the best pirate video business going. You see, back then children, you couldn't just go on the internet and easily find pornography like today. Most people didn't have internet to begin with. And those that did only had dialup. The thought of downloading an entire porno wasn't even a thing anybody could conceptualize. They were only sold at adult book stores and at the weird back room at the video rental store. So if you were a young lad, there was only one way to see such a thing. You parents accidently leave it around and you find it.

And that's how it was. Until I came up with the most ingenious plot I've likely ever devised in my lifetime.

The day after I showed my friend my new cable descrambler, I was in Big Lots. Back then, they had this deep discount VHS bin where they sold ****ty movies nobody wanted. Then it hit me. Dude. I should buy these...record porno over it...and sell it to the kids at school. And they were selling copies of this kids movie called The Buttercream Gang (which, yes, sounds like the name of a porno) for the rock bottom price of $1.99 brand new. I bought like 5 of them. I used these because if their parents found the tape, they just thought it was some kids' movie. My tapes had built in camouflage. I went and recorded over them with late night Cinemax and Spice Channel shows. I had my boy I recorded the earlier video for vouch for me. I sold those suckers at lunch for $20 a piece within 10 minutes.

So, yeah, I sold them all. Then I went back, bought more copies. Sold more. Next thing I knew, there were like 2 dozen dudes coming to me for the hook up. For whatever reason, literally every Indian dude in the school was a loyal, loyal customer. In fact, one of these dudes would be looking at the TV Guide and would be paying me extra me to record specific pornos. He'd be like "Channel 98, 2AM, Thursday Night. ." And for this dude, I had to get different videos cassette tapes at Big Lots, because he can't have like 10 copies of The Buttercream Gang on his shelf. So it would be whatever the cheapest thing at Big Lots was. Just random *****. Like the 1993 PGA Golf Highlights was one I remember buying for him.

I made hella money off of that.

Then everyone got high speed internet access in '98 and killed my business. So then when high school came around, I got a CD burner and started burning custom CD compilations for people. Which was awesome until Napster ruined that, too.

But yeah, that was my criminal enterprise.

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[mentos]

There two kids were the first to get a CD burner and sold pirated CDs for $10/each. Minimum wage was like $5.25 or $6 at the time, so they made a killing. I don't think they even made custom mixes, just straight copies of existing albums. Napster also killed this.

Everyone played online poker during the poker craze in 2004-2005. Hundreds of sites like Party Poker had $300-1000 sign up bonuses which required you to play 300 or so hands. It was easy to play 4 tables at once, 25 cent/50 cent big blinds so it was low risk. I bought a new laptop and my first car from doing this.

There was also some pyramid scheme website where if you watched 10 ads per day, you'd get like $1500/week in your Neteller account then you could easily transfer to your bank account. Somehow a ton of college kids did this and actually kept the money, and none of our bank accounts were hacked. Neteller shut down the pyramid scheme website after a few weeks.

 

[RxPreceptor]

Can’t say I’ve ever partaken in illegal activities to make money, even in childhood/adolescence

Slowly but surely the law has been catching up with the chaos of the early internet era. Piracy was easy simple enough a few decades ago but is something I’d never partake in as an adult. Plenty of piracy rampant/common in the late 90s and early 2000s. Tech college I went to - pretty much everyone partook in some form or another of piracy (no market for it as piracy was simple, simple stuff everyone was capable of)

 

[owlegrad]

I’ve done some jobs for cash that might not have been properly reported but otherwise were legal.

I was scammed once. The idea was to get paid to have a decal/advertisement on your car. They sent me a check that I was to deposit in my personal account and use the funds to pay for the decal to be put on the car. I did deposit the check but then I was supposed to pay the decal people in advance and that set off an alarm in my head. I googled it and quickly realized it was a scam. Thankfully I never sent the money out of my account and the bank was kind enough to wave of the bounced check fee when I explained my stupidity.

 

[RxPreceptor]

I’ve done some jobs for cash that might not have been properly reported but otherwise were legal.

I was scammed once. The idea was to get paid to have a decal/advertisement on your car. They sent me a check that I was to deposit in my personal account and use the funds to pay for the decal to be put on the car. I did deposit the check but then I was supposed to pay the decal people in advance and that set off an alarm in my head. I googled it and quickly realized it was a scam. Thankfully I never sent the money out of my account and the bank was kind enough to wave of the bounced check fee when I explained my stupidity.

https://www.youtube.com/c/PleasantGreen

Binge watched this guy’s content…it’s so addicting watching the nonsensical and convoluted schemes scammers attempt to steal information

 

[BenJammin]

Ah this brings back some fun memories. I used to scam two things when I was younger: payphones and vending machines. My parents never let me have a cell phone until I was a junior in high school so if I ever needed to call them to get picked up or let em know I was coming home late I'd have to use a payphone. Every time I'd put money in the machine a tone would play into the phone to let it know I could make a call or continue a call. Well I found out that Radio Shack sold these devices called tone dialers that would play those tones into the receiver so you could trick the phone into thinking you just put money into it. Bam! Free calls

I grew up at the very beginning of the conveyer belt vending machine era. This is when you'd pick an item, conveyer belt would move up to grab it, and then feed it into this opening slot.

I quickly discovered that if you put your hand up on the door to prevent the drink from coming into the green slot, the machine thought you picked a bin that was empty. Instead of giving your money back, you got to pick again. Just like that you got 2 or 3 drinks for the price of 1.

 

[DH1987]

I unsuccessfully tried to sell bootleg music CDs when I was in high school...

 

[Coati]

I did. I had a nice hustle going back when I was a younger teen.

See, I was lucky enough to have a cable descrambler. What, children, is that? Well, back in the day, they used to send ALL of the channels to you. The good ones were scrambled up so that you couldn't see them. Only if your cable box had an authorization code would it descramble the channel. Well, this thing would override all of that and let you see everything for free. This video explains it.


So, obviously, I wanted one.

Mowed lawns all summer for one of them. They used to just freely sell them online in the early internet days on sketch websites with impunity. And back then I was in Junior High (this was like '96-97.) I got free HBO, free PPVs, free everything. Including a little channel called The Spice Channel. If you don't know what that is, Google it. NSWF, but Google it when you get off of work.

So I'm showing this to one of my friends. He's like "woah, HBO! OMFG, you can watch all the WWF pay-per-views!" And then we get to The Spice Channel. He was speechless. Simply amazed. The first and only words out of his mouth were. "Dude...can you...like...record this for me?"

So we went to Revco (now CVS) and he bought a blank tape. And I recorded two hours of it for him.

And thus my pornography pirating business had begun.

And I had the best pirate video business going. You see, back then children, you couldn't just go on the internet and easily find pornography like today. Most people didn't have internet to begin with. And those that did only had dialup. The thought of downloading an entire porno wasn't even a thing anybody could conceptualize. They were only sold at adult book stores and at the weird back room at the video rental store. So if you were a young lad, there was only one way to see such a thing. You parents accidently leave it around and you find it.

And that's how it was. Until I came up with the most ingenious plot I've likely ever devised in my lifetime.

The day after I showed my friend my new cable descrambler, I was in Big Lots. Back then, they had this deep discount VHS bin where they sold ****ty movies nobody wanted. Then it hit me. Dude. I should buy these...record porno over it...and sell it to the kids at school. And they were selling copies of this kids movie called The Buttercream Gang (which, yes, sounds like the name of a porno) for the rock bottom price of $1.99 brand new. I bought like 5 of them. I used these because if their parents found the tape, they just thought it was some kids' movie. My tapes had built in camouflage. I went and recorded over them with late night Cinemax and Spice Channel shows. I had my boy I recorded the earlier video for vouch for me. I sold those suckers at lunch for $20 a piece within 10 minutes.

So, yeah, I sold them all. Then I went back, bought more copies. Sold more. Next thing I knew, there were like 2 dozen dudes coming to me for the hook up. For whatever reason, literally every Indian dude in the school was a loyal, loyal customer. In fact, one of these dudes would be looking at the TV Guide and would be paying me extra me to record specific pornos. He'd be like "Channel 98, 2AM, Thursday Night. ." And for this dude, I had to get different videos cassette tapes at Big Lots, because he can't have like 10 copies of The Buttercream Gang on his shelf. So it would be whatever the cheapest thing at Big Lots was. Just random *****. Like the 1993 PGA Golf Highlights was one I remember buying for him.

I made hella money off of that.

Then everyone got high speed internet access in '98 and killed my business. So then when high school came around, I got a CD burner and started burning custom CD compilations for people. Which was awesome until Napster ruined that, too.

But yeah, that was my criminal enterprise.

This is legendary lol

 

[mentos]

Ah this brings back some fun memories. I used to scam two things when I was younger: payphones and vending machines. My parents never let me have a cell phone until I was a junior in high school so if I ever needed to call them to get picked up or let em know I was coming home late I'd have to use a payphone. Every time I'd put money in the machine a tone would play into the phone to let it know I could make a call or continue a call. Well I found out that Radio Shack sold these devices called tone dialers that would play those tones into the receiver so you could trick the phone into thinking you just put money into it. Bam! Free calls

I grew up at the very beginning of the conveyer belt vending machine era. This is when you'd pick an item, conveyer belt would move up to grab it, and then feed it into this opening slot.
View attachment 359241

I quickly discovered that if you put your hand up on the door to prevent the drink from coming into the green slot, the machine thought you picked a bin that was empty. Instead of giving your money back, you got to pick again. Just like that you got 2 or 3 drinks for the price of 1.

Sometimes if you kick the old school vending machines while dispensing, an extra soda would come out.

 

[Dred Pirate]

My buddies and I used to bet on sports. Our usual bookie moved away and a rich trust fund kid in college took that as an opportunity to slide into his place. My friend was a compute science major and had a website for school projects, but he basically wrote simple code (this was late 90's so the internet wasn't very fancy) that and posted it has a fake site with spreads that were altered just enough to give us an advantage, but not enough to look overly suspicious. We then would print that out and show him when placing our bets. Worked for a couple of months until he started to insist on looking up the spreads online at the time we placed our bet

 

[Sparda29]

I did. I had a nice hustle going back when I was a younger teen.

See, I was lucky enough to have a cable descrambler. What, children, is that? Well, back in the day, they used to send ALL of the channels to you. The good ones were scrambled up so that you couldn't see them. Only if your cable box had an authorization code would it descramble the channel. Well, this thing would override all of that and let you see everything for free. This video explains it.


So, obviously, I wanted one.

Mowed lawns all summer for one of them. They used to just freely sell them online in the early internet days on sketch websites with impunity. And back then I was in Junior High (this was like '96-97.) I got free HBO, free PPVs, free everything. Including a little channel called The Spice Channel. If you don't know what that is, Google it. NSWF, but Google it when you get off of work.

So I'm showing this to one of my friends. He's like "woah, HBO! OMFG, you can watch all the WWF pay-per-views!" And then we get to The Spice Channel. He was speechless. Simply amazed. The first and only words out of his mouth were. "Dude...can you...like...record this for me?"

So we went to Revco (now CVS) and he bought a blank tape. And I recorded two hours of it for him.

And thus my pornography pirating business had begun.

And I had the best pirate video business going. You see, back then children, you couldn't just go on the internet and easily find pornography like today. Most people didn't have internet to begin with. And those that did only had dialup. The thought of downloading an entire porno wasn't even a thing anybody could conceptualize. They were only sold at adult book stores and at the weird back room at the video rental store. So if you were a young lad, there was only one way to see such a thing. You parents accidently leave it around and you find it.

And that's how it was. Until I came up with the most ingenious plot I've likely ever devised in my lifetime.

The day after I showed my friend my new cable descrambler, I was in Big Lots. Back then, they had this deep discount VHS bin where they sold ****ty movies nobody wanted. Then it hit me. Dude. I should buy these...record porno over it...and sell it to the kids at school. And they were selling copies of this kids movie called The Buttercream Gang (which, yes, sounds like the name of a porno) for the rock bottom price of $1.99 brand new. I bought like 5 of them. I used these because if their parents found the tape, they just thought it was some kids' movie. My tapes had built in camouflage. I went and recorded over them with late night Cinemax and Spice Channel shows. I had my boy I recorded the earlier video for vouch for me. I sold those suckers at lunch for $20 a piece within 10 minutes.

So, yeah, I sold them all. Then I went back, bought more copies. Sold more. Next thing I knew, there were like 2 dozen dudes coming to me for the hook up. For whatever reason, literally every Indian dude in the school was a loyal, loyal customer. In fact, one of these dudes would be looking at the TV Guide and would be paying me extra me to record specific pornos. He'd be like "Channel 98, 2AM, Thursday Night. ." And for this dude, I had to get different videos cassette tapes at Big Lots, because he can't have like 10 copies of The Buttercream Gang on his shelf. So it would be whatever the cheapest thing at Big Lots was. Just random *****. Like the 1993 PGA Golf Highlights was one I remember buying for him.

I made hella money off of that.

Then everyone got high speed internet access in '98 and killed my business. So then when high school came around, I got a CD burner and started burning custom CD compilations for people. Which was awesome until Napster ruined that, too.

But yeah, that was my criminal enterprise.

WTF 1998? I didn't get high speed internet access at home till 2001. I would have to go to a internet cafe to play Starcraft or Counterstrike.

Speaking of, that was my bootleg business in junior high, copies of Starcraft, Counterstrike with keycode generators.

 

[mentos]

WTF 1998? I didn't get high speed internet access at home till 2001. I would have to go to a internet cafe to play Starcraft or Counterstrike.

Speaking of, that was my bootleg business in junior high, copies of Starcraft, Counterstrike with keycode generators.

Those were the days. I must have bought Brood War ten times in my life cause I kept losing my key code. Once I got a CD burner, my 4-5 friends were all using mine. I once wrote down the key code from a used game at Electronics Boutique.

 

[DagS132]

About 10 years ago there were apps that would just run ads all day and you would get pennies for each ad that ran. So if you had 10+ cell phones dedicated to running these apps all day, every day, you could make some nice change. Not illegal but I feel like nobody knew about this.

 

[mentos]

About 10 years ago there were apps that would just run ads all day and you would get pennies for each ad that ran. So if you had 10+ cell phones dedicated to running these apps all day, every day, you could make some nice change. Not illegal but I feel like nobody knew about this.

10+ smart phones ten years ago? You rich!

 

[BenJammin]

WTF 1998? I didn't get high speed internet access at home till 2001. I would have to go to a internet cafe to play Starcraft or Counterstrike.

Speaking of, that was my bootleg business in junior high, copies of Starcraft, Counterstrike with keycode generators.

My parents still have the dial up connection we had when I was growing up. I never discovered high speed internet or online gaming until I got to college. Those Christmas mornings when you woke up to destroy newbs on call of duty? Never got to experience it. Oh the joys of growing up in the country

 

[PharmtoCS]

Not quite illegal but manufactured spending for travel points and miles was far more lucrative back in the day. The golden age was about 10 years ago.

 

[Dred Pirate]

Not quite illegal but manufactured spending for travel points and miles was far more lucrative back in the day. The golden age was about 10 years ago.

ya - for my honeymoon to tahiti I stayed at the Hilton- I opened 15 citi Hilton credit cards and got 50k points for each one over a year - paid for my hotel stay

 

[Coati]

My parents still have the dial up connection we had when I was growing up. I never discovered high speed internet or online gaming until I got to college. Those Christmas mornings when you woke up to destroy newbs on call of duty? Never got to experience it. Oh the joys of growing up in the country

Sorry you never got to PWN N00BZ, good times..