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The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

straitstimes.com

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Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#31

Post by zerocrates »

robotnikman wrote: post #13
lbotos wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KitKat in the USA is run by Hershey. KitKat globally is run by Nestle. That's one reason why. The second is that in Japan Kit Kat sounds like "good luck" which is why they became popular, and two, why we see such regional variation. (I have 4 Japanese flavors in my NYC fridge right now -- Sweet Potato, Adult Sweetness, Wheat, and Caramel Pudding (which you bake!)

I just ended up ordering some myself after finding out about these lol. Another perk I've found about treats from overseas is they use actual sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

For chocolate bars and stuff like KitKats I can't think that I've hardly ever seen them use HFCS instead of sugar. Maybe in ones with a more liquid component. Like, I'm pretty sure even the lowly standard Hershey bar uses sugar.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#32

Post by tristor »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #27

This reads like there is an opportunity for a YC company to create an authenticated freight dispatching service. Sort of "uber for freight" where you sign up owner/operators and connect them with freight loads that need to move from one place to another. If the company does the vetting and works with an insurance company to cover liabilities both ways (o/o is at fault, shipper is at fault) it seems they could capture…

Unless I'm missing something, this already exists. This is basically what the entire LTL freight market is based around. Am I missing something?

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#33

Post by oh_sigh »

This sounds like a scam run by the storage companies. Otherwise it is hard to understand what motivation "Tristan" had to drop the product off there instead of just, say, abandoning it on the side of the road. I can imagine a scammer getting upset that their load was a bunch of candy and not laptops or something else of high value, but why take it to a storage unit after accepting the load?

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#34

Post by carabiner »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #27

This reads like there is an opportunity for a YC company to create an authenticated freight dispatching service. Sort of "uber for freight" where you sign up owner/operators and connect them with freight loads that need to move from one place to another. If the company does the vetting and works with an insurance company to cover liabilities both ways (o/o is at fault, shipper is at fault) it seems they could capture…

https://www.uberfreight.com/ https://convoy.com/

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#35

Post by matsemann »

lawlessone wrote: post #16

>Seemingly on cue, Tristan followed up. “Time for some coming clean,” he confessed. “I’m actually a scammer and the owner of HCH doesn’t have anything to do with this.” That's on odd admission from the scammer, when they could have said nothing,

To me it almost sounds like the scam is to get the goods into a storage facility they own and extort the owner of the goods for a high storage fee to get it released. And also rack up the fees by denying any claim of actual ownership for some period. Aka the scammer wants the victim to know where the goods are.

So almost like a shady towing company taking a car.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#36

Post by lynguist »

This was exciting storytelling! It felt like reading a fast-paced almost AI-generated turn-by-turn absurdist short novel. Something like Gogol’s Nose.

I couldn’t predict any of the sentences in this story, it was a really surprising and captivating read. Every new paragraph had a new twist.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#37

Post by hiddencost »

oh_sigh wrote: post #33

This sounds like a scam run by the storage companies. Otherwise it is hard to understand what motivation "Tristan" had to drop the product off there instead of just, say, abandoning it on the side of the road. I can imagine a scammer getting upset that their load was a bunch of candy and not laptops or something else of high value, but why take it to a storage unit after accepting the load?

Sometimes if you can get someone on the hook you can keep extracting money from them. "You need to pay us for storage." "Oh sorry we forgot to mention, you need to pay the customs agent." "We need to cover our gas expenses."

So they may have actually dumped the goods but seeing if they could get any more out of the mark.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#39

Post by zoky »

lawlessone wrote: post #16

>Seemingly on cue, Tristan followed up. “Time for some coming clean,” he confessed. “I’m actually a scammer and the owner of HCH doesn’t have anything to do with this.” That's on odd admission from the scammer, when they could have said nothing,

Especially when they hadn’t even made any money on the scam, according to the article. What’s the angle here?

It’s a bit far-fetched I suppose, but the only possible explanation I can see for all of this is that this is an attempted (but bungled) insurance fraud scheme on the part of Bokksu. Especially given the conclusion of the article, where it turns out that a Bokksu subsidiary was in charge of handing off the shipment to the supposed trucking company. I wonder if there were actually Kit Kats in the shipment at all…

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#40

Post by oh_sigh »

hiddencost wrote: post #37
oh_sigh wrote: post #33

This sounds like a scam run by the storage companies. Otherwise it is hard to understand what motivation "Tristan" had to drop the product off there instead of just, say, abandoning it on the side of the road. I can imagine a scammer getting upset that their load was a bunch of candy and not laptops or something else of high value, but why take it to a storage unit after accepting the load?

Sometimes if you can get someone on the hook you can keep extracting money from them. "You need to pay us for storage." "Oh sorry we forgot to mention, you need to pay the customs agent." "We need to cover our gas expenses." So they may have actually dumped the goods but seeing if they could get any more out of the mark.

But Tristan never got paid anything, and came right out and told the person he was a scammer before telling him exactly where to find his freight and never tried to extract any money from the victim.

So either he's a scammer with a heart of gold and didn't want a bunch of chocolate to go to waste, or he's in on it somehow with the storage facilities.

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