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The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

straitstimes.com

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Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#61

Post by quickthrower2 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #40
hiddencost wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He paid $2000 but doesn’t seem enough to make the scam worthwhile. Maybe the “happy path” is a multimillion cargo and a disinterest conglomerate that will just claim on insurance. Having a low value cargo and a very interested one man band is not worth the risk of getting caught.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#62

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

zoky wrote: post #39
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 sh…

Easy to find out since half are still at the warehouse....

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#63

Post by notpushkin »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #38
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #23

[dupe] of a NYT article More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38195889

The NYT article measures distances in miles but this one uses kilometers. Otherwise they seem identical?

Wonder if it's legitimate syndication or they just decided to YOLO copypaste the article.

On the upside though, it's not paywalled!

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#64

Post by ralferoo »

twic wrote: post #9
busterarm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's two different companies. KitKat around the world is Nestle. KitKat in the US is under license to Hershey. Licensing is expensive.

It's Nestle in the UK, and they don't sell the Japanese bonus snacks here either.

If you go to the Japan Centre in London you can find various flavours of Japanese Kitkats.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#65

Post by SECProto »

reactordev wrote: post #28
SECProto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sugar instead of HFCS, cocoa butter instead of palm oil. There's definitely better quality in some markets and products than others

except they use palm oil in the caramel pudding recipe. >"Ingredients: Chocolate (Sugar, Lactose, Vegetable Oil(palm)whole milk powder, cocoa butter), wheat flour, vegetable oil, lactose, sugar, caramel powder (skim milk, concentrated milk), yeast extract, cocoa powder, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, emulsifier(lethal, sucrose fatty acid ester, glycerin fatty acid ester), sodium bicarbonate, flavor, yea…

Yes, I wasn't referring specifically to japanese kitkats - I don't know what's in them, been a couple years. But the use of palm oil has become pretty pervasive and (maybe it's placebo effect) the flavour has declined.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#66

Post by robotnikman »

electriclove wrote: post #26
robotnikman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where did you order from?

Just search Japanese kitkat and you will find a bunch of online seller, and they are found on Amazon as well. I ordered from here:

https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/WpsnCaNDw...

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#67

Post by Animats »

This shows up the difference between a freight forwarder and a freight broker.[1] A freight broker is just a matchmaker who takes a cut. A US freight forwarder is stuck with end to end responsibility for the shipment.

[1] https://www.penskelogistics.com/solutions/freight-brokerage/...

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#68

Post by busyant »

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,

> That's on odd admission from the scammer, when they could have said nothing,

Whenever I read stuff like this, I end up feeling like I'm not imaginative enough to scam people.

Also, this isn't the same thing, but ... years ago, when Craigslist was running strong, I responded to a CL post to purchase a used laptop. The CL post was really well done, quite detailed (I remember it had photos and talked about how it was in tip-top shape except for the screen having a dead pixel in the lower left).

But the price was juuuuust a little too good to be true. I eventually emailed the guy and said something like, "This feels like a scam."

To my surprise, he came clean and asked me not to report it to CL!!!

Humanity often confuses me.

Re: The hijacking of rare Japanese KitKats

#69

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

mike_d wrote: post #48
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!)

> Adult Sweetness I'm sorry, what?

It's the best one. Probably the best mass-market dark chocolate product out there.
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