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German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

bbc.com

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Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#41

Post by John23832 »

cosmodisk wrote: post #22
paulgb wrote: post #5

> Sebastian double-checked the verification logo next to Elon Musk's name, and then tried to decide whether to send five or 10 Bitcoin. This is a vulnerability in Twitter's verification policy that Twitter refuses to fix. Originally, verification was supposed to mean "this person is who they say they are". But once an account is verified, you can change the name/profile picture to someone else. So hackers get access…

This won't solve it because a lot of scams rely on victim's greed,as was the case for the German in this story. This is no different from a scam I saw a few years ago,where some German tourist kept pouring money on a three cup game despite his wife's attempts to stop it. It took him less than 5 minutes to leave nearly €500. It's always the same: you think you are about to get something for nothing. I very much doubt…

The article says that he checked for a check to verify that it was Elon running the account.

Sure, greed motivates people, but in this case greed would not have motivated him to continue if he saw that the account was not verified and not Elon’s. If anything the check provided him with the confidence to continue more than anything else.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#42

Post by pwinnski »

I believe that he's "normally not the biggest idiot in the whole world," but that's a belief I'm holding despite the available evidence.

1. Why would anyone give away free bitcoin in large amounts? Seriously, why? That should already have been an end to this.

2. If the screenshot is representative, it is clearly "@JoshyMcB" tweeting, not @elonmusk. It should take much more than an icon and a not-quite-matching display name to suggest it's the same person, and a tweet from @JoshyMcB[0] later the same day makes it clear he was hacked. There are more differences than similarities in that screenshot.

3. He got this part right: "I was greedy that night and it made me blind."

0. https://twitter.com/JoshyMcB/status/1363724497375825927

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#43

Post by kristofferR »

cyral wrote: post #34
hamiltonians wrote: post #2

Assuming you have a defective moral compass, is there any reason to not run this scam. Easiest $ ever. Twitter nor law enforcement can do anything. The same guys doing it over and over. You can run this scam and make an easy $50-200k with some twitter posts and then use the $ to pay off the mortgage or student loans, or take a cruise, buy a luxury car or whatever. no one would know if you mix the coins before cashing…

Published just today: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/03/i-was-a-teenage-... Granted this case was much more high profile though.

Pretty amazing that they only managed to net so little BTC (~20 BTC), considering the millions of people who were exposed to the scam.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#44

Post by alisonkisk »

viraptor wrote: post #24

> The 42-year-old says he first invested $40,000 in Bitcoin in 2017, and quickly made his money back as the value of the coins rose on the open market. He cashed out and got his initial money back, but then watched excitedly over the years as the 10 coins grew to be worth nearly 500,000 euros. Fortunately this sounds like he didn't lose anything, just never realised extra gains. I know it's slightly nitpicking, but l…

Right. This guy was happy when the unregulated Wild West made him a fortune for doing no work, but started crying for regulation when he was on the bad side of a trade.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#45

Post by cosmodisk »

bb123 wrote: post #10

This is a terrible scam, but I am astonished by the frivolity with which people would move life-changing amounts of money into something with absolutely no due diligence. When I took on a financial advisor I verified their identity with the govt regulator, verified their written bank details over the phone, and then verified those details with my bank before I even considered sending a single penny. Even then I sent…

Some years ago there used to be this very popular scam in my country: you get a call from an alleged police officer,who explains that your daughter/son/cousin/whatever made a huge car accident and is about to go to jail unless it's 'resolved' with some money. So many people got swindled for absurd amounts of money. However one case stuck most in my memory: the police got called by a woman who was about to fall for such scam. Fast forward to the end and the journalist asks to tell what happened. So she gets a call from someone, saying her son is arrested for drink driving and causing an accident. He needs money for this to go away. The woman goes to the neighbor to borough the money and the neighbor seeing her in distress,asks for more details. Finally she tells the woman: you haven't got a son...

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#46

Post by celticninja »

tirpen wrote: post #31

Wow, It's sure is a nice feature that Bitcoin doesn't have any way to dispute charges and that it's mostly anonymous. This article is yet another amazing illustration of why that's definitely two features you want from something that's intended to be used as a currency.

cash is used as currency and would meet the criteria you listed.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#47

Post by GFischer »

hamiltonians wrote: post #2

Assuming you have a defective moral compass, is there any reason to not run this scam. Easiest $ ever. Twitter nor law enforcement can do anything. The same guys doing it over and over. You can run this scam and make an easy $50-200k with some twitter posts and then use the $ to pay off the mortgage or student loans, or take a cruise, buy a luxury car or whatever. no one would know if you mix the coins before cashing…

Well, the people in the article (Whale Alert, the ones that gave BBC the article) absolutely traced the bitcoins that were cashed out, but as you mentioned, law enforcement did nothing.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#48

Post by Grustaf »

_jal wrote: post #39
Grustaf wrote: post #26

How can someone be smart enough to earn that kind of money, but stupid enough to fall for this hilariously obvious scam?

The first part of this assumes having money is some sort of proxy measure for intelligence. It is not.

It definitely is. The correlation between money and intelligence is very high.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#49

Post by WA »

viraptor wrote: post #24

> The 42-year-old says he first invested $40,000 in Bitcoin in 2017, and quickly made his money back as the value of the coins rose on the open market. He cashed out and got his initial money back, but then watched excitedly over the years as the 10 coins grew to be worth nearly 500,000 euros. Fortunately this sounds like he didn't lose anything, just never realised extra gains. I know it's slightly nitpicking, but l…

No. This is a common way to think about it, but it's wrong imho. Because that money is real and it buys you real stuff. If you have that money one day and it is gone the next, you effectively lost that money. It doesn't matter where it came from.

Think about it: You inherit $500k. You lose it through a scam or a bet or gambling. Do you think it doesn't matter? I mean, you didn't earn that money yourself, right?

There are no paper losses and no "unrealized gains". It's your money and if it's gone, it's gone. Doesn't matter how you earned it.

Re: German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam

#50

Post by arethuza »

_jal wrote: post #39
Grustaf wrote: post #26

How can someone be smart enough to earn that kind of money, but stupid enough to fall for this hilariously obvious scam?

The first part of this assumes having money is some sort of proxy measure for intelligence. It is not.

There is also an assumption that if you are "intelligent" then you are intelligent at everything - this has not being my experience of knowing some really smart people. In fact, I actually that to do something really stupid requires a high degree of intelligence - largely down to sheer hubris.
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