Scam With Your Friends Turns Crypto Fraud Into a Race Against a Market Crash
Scam With Your Friends Update 0.1.73 has overhauled four scams, with Bitcoin and Meme Coin fraud now involving investment rounds where players must cash out before a randomly timed market crash wipes out their earnings. The maximum stated payout is $700, and even a collapsing market can leave something worth collecting, provided you haven't already lost the caller or been caught.
The October 17 update also rebuilds the lottery scam, adds confirmation requirements to Police Impersonation and Investment Scam, and introduces several speech recognition and multiplayer fixes.
Considering the game launched just two days earlier, that's quite a substantial overhaul. Apparently, convincing strangers to make terrible financial decisions wasn't sufficiently challenging. Now the criminals get to make a few themselves.
Thinking of joining this financially questionable call centre? Before you submit your criminal CV, see how Scam With Your Friends launched with nearly 29,000 players and a few technical disasters. Apparently, even fraud needs working equipment.
The crypto scams now come with their own financial disasters
Bitcoin and Meme Coin scams have become investment rounds. Once you've persuaded a caller to invest, the value can increase until the market eventually crashes. Your job is to decide when to collect the money.
Naturally, the temptation is to keep going. The investment is growing, the caller is cooperating and there's potentially $700 on the table. Why settle for $300 when another few moments might earn considerably more? Because the entire thing could collapse while you're congratulating yourself on becoming the next financial genius.
According to the developers, crashes occur at random times. Players can reassure callers and persuade them to remain invested, but that doesn't prevent the market from crashing. You can influence the person on the other end of the telephone. The market, unfortunately, hasn't got a headset.
And I rather love that distinction. You've spent your time convincing some poor AI bastard that you're a trustworthy financial professional, presumably with the confidence of a man selling a second-hand BMW with 40,000 suspiciously undocumented kilometres. The caller believes you, the money is flowing and everything is magnificent. Then the investment starts collapsing and suddenly you're the idiot desperately hoping the numbers recover.
You've successfully committed fraud, only to discover that your fraudulent investment is financially disastrous for you as well.
A crash doesn't necessarily make the investment instantly worthless, either. The developers say players can still recover its remaining value during the collapse. Losing the caller, getting caught or waiting too long, however, can eliminate unpaid earnings entirely.
Whether a statistically superior cash-out strategy exists remains unknown. Without confirmed crash probabilities or proper testing, anyone confidently telling you when to withdraw is essentially giving financial advice while blindfolded in a casino.
Still, it's a genuinely promising change. Greed now has a mechanical consequence rather than merely being the reason everybody turned up for work.
Before crypto crashes and lottery jackpots, the big question was whether you could actually talk someone into getting scammed. Read our original Scam With Your Friends preview, where criminal persuasion becomes an actual job and even fraud has performance targets.
The lottery can now reward you with absolutely bugger all
The revised Lottery Prize scam takes a different approach to extracting money from strangers. Players must obtain a lottery ticket and confirmation code before revealing a three-number result that determines the payout.
Four outcomes are listed: $0, $200, $500 and $1,000. The jackpot has a stated 5% probability, although the developers haven't provided probabilities for the other results, making a reliable average payout impossible to calculate.
What interests me is the contrast with cryptocurrency fraud. The investment system lets you decide when to withdraw. The lottery determines your reward through its result, after you've completed the required steps.
Which means you can apparently go through the trouble of running an entire fraudulent lottery operation, obtain the necessary information, reveal the ticket and discover you've earned precisely nothing.
Imagine setting up a criminal enterprise, developing a convincing sales pitch and getting somebody to cooperate, only for the accounts department to announce that your commission is $0 and a firm handshake. At that point, you might genuinely be better off applying for an honest job. At least McDonald's gives you a uniform.
Organised fraud now requires proper paperwork
Police Impersonation and Investment Scam have received smaller but important changes. Police Impersonation now requires a fine-payment confirmation number, while Investment Scam requires an invoice number. The latter's payout also corresponds to the amount agreed with the caller.
Apparently, even organised fraud cannot escape administrative procedures. You're impersonating the police to extract money from somebody, yet the operation cannot proceed without the appropriate confirmation number. Somewhere in this fictional criminal enterprise, there must be a compliance officer absolutely furious that fraudulent payments aren't being documented properly.
One scam has also disappeared. Password Recovery has been removed from the app store and scam selection. There's currently no confirmed indication of whether it will return.
The update also attempts to fix the actual telephone
All these wonderful criminal schemes become considerably less impressive when the person you're scamming cannot understand a bloody word you're saying.
Update 0.1.73 includes automatic microphone levelling, speech recognition improvements, compatibility workarounds for certain Windows processors, authentication fixes, greater caller variety and multiplayer reliability improvements. Several crashes have also been addressed.
These changes target problems raised around launch, particularly unreliable communication and multiplayer functionality. In a game built around talking to AI callers, malfunctioning speech recognition is rather fundamental. It's the equivalent of releasing a racing game where the steering wheel occasionally connects to somebody else's refrigerator.
Whether these fixes work consistently still needs post-patch testing. The developers have documented the changes, but patch notes aren't proof that every affected player can finally hold a conversation.
The investment overhaul remains the standout addition. It introduces an actual risk-management decision after the deception succeeds. You can convince somebody else to make a terrible financial decision, only to immediately make an even worse one yourself.
Had enough of losing money while stealing somebody else's? Explore CRIMENET's 24 Best Crime Games of 2026. Bank robberies, criminal empires and professional assassination. Some careers have better prospects than telephone fraud.
Scam With Your Friends Update 0.1.73 FAQ
How do Bitcoin and Meme Coin scams work now?
Both scams now use investment rounds. Convince a caller to invest, watch the value increase and decide when to cash out before a randomly timed market crash. The maximum stated payout is $700.
Can you still cash out after the market crashes?
Yes. You can recover whatever value remains during a crash, but waiting too long, losing the caller or getting caught can wipe out your unpaid earnings.
What is the best time to cash out?
There's no verified optimal strategy yet. Crashes happen at random times, and the developers haven't disclosed their probability distribution. Greed might pay off, or it might leave you staring at $0 like a disappointed crypto influencer.
What are the lottery payouts and jackpot odds?
The possible payouts are $0, $200, $500 and $1,000. The $1,000 jackpot has a 5% chance. The probabilities of the other outcomes haven't been confirmed.
Was Password Recovery removed?
Yes. Update 0.1.73 removed Password Recovery from the app store and scam selection. There's no confirmed return date.
Does Update 0.1.73 fix speech recognition and multiplayer?
The patch includes speech recognition improvements, microphone levelling, authentication fixes, multiplayer reliability changes and crash fixes. Whether these completely resolve the reported issues still needs player testing.
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