The email came in through my own website.
It was a Sunday night. I was in the shack, the Flex panadapter glowing, a couple of regulars chewing the rag on 145.390. My phone buzzed with the kind of notification I usually like: someone had filled out the contact form on N2LQH.com.
Maybe a newcomer with a question. Maybe someone I’d worked on 6 meters.
I opened it.
“Do you have Apple Cash or Cash App for Venmo????”
Four question marks. No hello. No call sign.
I knew exactly who it was. I had told him no by text a few hours earlier. I had ignored his Venmo friend request an hour before that. Now he had gone to my website, found the form, and typed the same question again.
And the reason he knew where to find me? He’d been listening to the same repeater I was talking on right then.
Nine Hours Earlier: “Hi”
It started at 12:42 that afternoon with one word from a local 856 number: “Hi.”
You know the type. “Hi.” “How are you?” “Are we still on for lunch?” It’s bait to get you talking. I usually delete and block. This time I just let it sit.
At 4:33, another “Hi.”
At 5:45, the hook:
“Hi i listen to you on my ham radio on the frequency 145.390”
That one landed. I’m on that repeater three or four nights a week around 10 p.m. This wasn’t a random frequency. He knew my spot.
The Baofeng on the Couch
“Are you a ham?” I asked.
No license, he said. He could listen but couldn’t talk. Then a photo: a Baofeng UV-5R lying on a couch cushion. “This is what I have.”
I’ll admit it. I got a little excited. Every one of us started somewhere, and a lot of us started exactly like that, ears glued to a cheap radio, wishing we could key up. So I did what any of us would. I told him to get licensed. Local clubs run classes. Study online. Watch YouTube.
“I don’t have enough money.”
I told him the test is cheap. Exams run $0 to $15, and the FCC adds $35 for a new license (ARRL, HamStart). Less than a tank of gas.
The Screenshots
That’s when he stopped talking about radio.
He sent screenshots. Apple Cash: $0.04. Cash App: $2.36. “I got Apple Cash Cash app and Venmo.”
The light went on. There was no future ham on the other end. There was a hand out.
“Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not a banker.”
I put the phone down. Then Venmo emailed me. He had found me there too.
I laughed and deleted it. About an hour later came the contact form. At 9:45, the same line by text. Twice. I blocked the number.
Repeater. Cell phone. Payment apps. Venmo. My website. All in one day, all from a guy who started out as a silent listener on a machine I talk on every week.
The Sixth Chair
The scam itself was clumsy. I lost nothing. What kept me up was how easy I was to find.
Picture the repeater at 10 p.m. Five friends, five voices. It feels like a kitchen table. But there’s no door on that kitchen. Anyone with a $25 handheld can pull up a chair, and they never have to say a word.
We even introduce ourselves on a schedule. FCC rules require our call sign at the end of a contact and every ten minutes during it (47 CFR 97.119). One search of that call in the FCC’s database returns a name and mailing address, something the FCC has acknowledged raises privacy and safety concerns (FCC 15-40). Phone and email aren’t listed (ARRL), but with a name and a town, the rest is a few clicks away.
For me, it’s barely a click. Same email since 1992. Websites, businesses, decades of breadcrumbs. Nobody hacked me. He just followed the trail I left.
A Confession About AI
I used an AI assistant to help shape this story. I handed it my screenshots, my timeline and my notes.
Then I looked at what I’d uploaded. Phone numbers. An email address. A full name. Payment-app balances. The AI didn’t need most of it.
An AI chat window feels as private as the shack at 10 p.m. It isn’t necessarily. Depending on the service and your settings, what you type may be kept or used to train future models. So treat it like a repeater:
- Don’t type in anything you wouldn’t say on the air: FRN, passwords, account numbers, home address, family schedules.
- Crop and redact screenshots before you upload them. I blacked out the names, numbers and email in every image here.
- Strip location data from photos.
- Other people’s information isn’t yours to hand over.
And the flip side: the same tools that help me write can help a scammer turn a call sign into a full profile in minutes instead of an evening.
What I’d Tell Any Ham
- Assume a stranger is listening. Because one is.
- Watch what you say on the air. Addresses, phone numbers, family details and “we’re gone for two weeks” can wait.
- Look yourself up. Start with only your call sign and see how far you get.
- Use a P.O. box on your license. The FCC needs a valid mailing address, not your home (FCC 15-40).
- Watch for the turn to money. Friendly is fine. Apple Cash, Cash App, Venmo or gift cards is your cue to leave.
- Familiar isn’t the same as trusted. Knowing your repeater and your call only proves someone listened.
- Don’t reward persistence. Block, keep the screenshots, move on.
- Redact before you feed the AI.
Back on 145.390
I still get on that repeater most nights. I still want every kid with a Baofeng to get licensed, and I’ll still be the first one to tell them how.
But when I key up now, I picture one more chair at the table. Most nights it’s a future ham, and I hope they call in.
Some nights, it’s someone asking about Apple Cash.
73 de N2LQH · Terry Rossi · South Jersey
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