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My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

bentasker.co.uk

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Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#111

Post by chatmasta »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #110
throwme0827349 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about that region, or whether they were trying to create a breakfast that would sound classy but credible to a Westerner. However, I can say from first hand experience that home cooked Russian breakfasts in Vladivostok were mind bending. As an American, when I eat breakfast but it's a small and simple affair. A cup of oatmeal and some coffee, maybe eggs if I feel ambitious. The Russians I stayed with mad…

It's probably more that most Americans typically have very little for breakfast. Around here, cornbread and sausage gravy, coffee (milk or tea for my teenager) is a not-uncommon Saturday breakfast. I think I made a variety of muffins last weekend. Or home-made corned beef hash with scrambled eggs, etc. You get the idea. OTOH, during the week it's probably something simple like a sausage patty on a toasted English muf…

I’m okay with a heavy breakfast. It’s the mixture of Caesar salad, omelette and coffee that doesn’t sit well with me. I’ll take some cold romaine lettuce with my eggs, or some hot spinach, but something about Caesar salad - maybe the dressing? - feels distinctly “lunch or dinner only” to me.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#112

Post by notpushkin »

voidUpdate wrote: post #15
lnsru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern lawyers use preproduced text blocks for their letters. I would like to believe, that scammers do the same. Probably they even have figured out what phrases are the most effective for good engagement.

Their early emails are often boilerplate, but once you get them out of their opening book, they have to write their own emails. I've often seen in advance fee scams, after the first few emails, there's a sudden decrease in the quality of the text, that's how you know they're writing their own emails

The article might have been updated, but it addresses your point now. This particular scam used emails consisting of one persinalized paragraph + a few slightly randomized paragraphs straight from the playbook.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#113

Post by pavel_lishin »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #100
pavel_lishin wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that show has been over for nearly 5 years, but it might still be a good idea to spoiler this reveal for folks who haven't gotten around to it so you don't lose 3 points.

Freezes; looks around Hackernews ... Wait a minute... THIS is The Bad Place!!! Seriously though, I was super-embarrassed a year or two ago, when I received a phone call and quickly became convinced that some scammer had a hold of me. I began questioning the poor lady on the phone and she gamely answered all my questions: location, company, including spelling her name and pronouncing it entirely differently. Many answ…

I wouldn't be embarrassed. I'd be embarrassed on their behalf, maybe, for half-assing it so badly.

I don't owe anybody who calls me out of the blue my time, especially when their shit isn't together. My mom answers the phone and actually talks to these people, and politely says "no thank you", whereas I don't even pick up the phone for certain area codes, and certainly don't engage in conversation if it's clear it's some bullshit I do not care about.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#114

Post by thaumasiotes »

kgeist wrote: post #86

Yoshkar-Ola, Russia is mentioned there. I'm from Yoshkar-Ola. This kind of scam business exists here at least since the early 2000s. We were once called the capital of such scam business in Russia. I didn't know it's still a thing. One of my acquaintances worked there in around 2005-2007. It was mostly students renting an appartment, rows of PCs. He left right before they were raided by police. Some British individua…

I recently encountered a YouTube video talking about a related industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYup8chgkwM

It seems to be a similar idea, but with the scamming hidden in less-obviously-illegal places.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#115

Post by Zak »

guappa wrote: post #19
danielvf wrote: post #11

One warning, this scam, with it's fast timeline and request for funds to be sent to the girlfriend is a classic, but modern scams can be quite different than this. "pig butchering" scams can run for months of contact with no requests for money, and then instead of asking for money, the user "invests" into what appear initialy to be profitable investments alongside the scammer.

I think at this point pig butchering is so famous that if you fall for it you'd fall for any scam.

This thread is the first I've heard of it. I had to look it up.

The scammer convinces the mark to put money into fake investments and escalates until the mark runs of of money or gets spooked, then disappears. It's often made more persuasive by engaging in a fake romance.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#116

Post by derefr »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #60
fmajid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people doing the pig butchering are themselves trafficked and working in horrendous slavery conditions in Cambodia: https://theconversation.com/pig-butchering-fraud-the-link-be... https://restofworld.org/2022/cambodias-scam-mills/

I stopped trying to mess with them and string them along after I heard about this.

I send them messages written in Khmer asking if they need help. (Most of the victims are not themselves Cambodian and cannot read this. But the messages are not for them; they're to spook their captors.)

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#118

Post by xp84 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #63
EvanAnderson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped trying to mess with them and string them along after I heard about this.

I used to be somewhat mean to telemarketers, until I learned that some of them are prison laborers - getting paid pennies per hour to work in a prison call center. That already feels morally un-great, and messing with them further no longer felt like something I could justify.

It's odd to me that people feel worse about unpleasant things happening specifically to convicted felons than to the general public.

If you were being mean to a random jerk, and then he pointed out "By the way, I roughed up my wife last night" would you feel more bad about being mean? But you'd feel worse if it turned out he was doing time for that same crime?

Note: I know that there could be people truly wrongfully convicted included in the set of all prisoners, but I certainly don't think that's common enough that they should be treated better than the average person.

Second note: I also am not saying being a felon means one should be punished forever or anything. Just that, yeah, prison isn't meant to be fun, and being expected to work while doing time is not cruel punishment. It's what most people do outside of prison. Anyone who doesn't accept those terms, I fully support them clicking "Decline" by not commiting crimes.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#119

Post by thaumasiotes »

Aspos wrote: post #87

Kazakh names are typically unique planet-wide. There is a very, very low chance of there being another person with the same name. Chances of finding another person with the same name and the same year of birth are practically zero. Edit: Seems like this particular combination is not unique after all. Found quite a few people of the same name. Perhaps they chose a victim which can't be found trivially.

> Kazakh names are typically unique planet-wide.

Really? What kind of structure do their names have? I think even cultures that used full-sentence names tended to have some conventional ones.

And certain name ideas are very common cross-culturally, as witness Bogdan / Nathaniel / Theodore (and older Diodorus / Apollodorus / Herodotus / etc) / Dieudonné / Atallah...

Going to something I know better, Chinese names can be unique, and I know someone who tells me her father specifically attempted to ensure that nobody shared her name, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that being unique is the typical case. Some names (小丽, 国强) have an attractive meaning and are used with identical spelling by large numbers of people; other names (Xīnyuè, Sījiā) show a lot of spelling variation while always being pronounced identically.

Re: My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster

#120

Post by H8crilA »

kgeist wrote: post #86

Yoshkar-Ola, Russia is mentioned there. I'm from Yoshkar-Ola. This kind of scam business exists here at least since the early 2000s. We were once called the capital of such scam business in Russia. I didn't know it's still a thing. One of my acquaintances worked there in around 2005-2007. It was mostly students renting an appartment, rows of PCs. He left right before they were raided by police. Some British individua…

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