[flagged]
Are you talking about ex-presidents? Trump isn't even receiving a salary: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpomete...
[flagged]
Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
71–80 of 102 posts
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#72Somewhat related, Western Australia's newest billionaire, Laurence Escalante, got rich by running a sweepstakes betting company that operates only in the US. https://www.afr.com/companies/games-and-wagering/escalante-r... The company does not operate its games in Australia, where that kind of gambling is illegal (or rather, there are far more rules before people can enter the draw). Are Americans just easy marks?
For scale, this is a good comparison. His company had net earnings close to the totals by guided scams. These are smartphone-based slot machine games; for some reason called “sweepstakes”.
When an addicted person talks about that, they have the same reservations and shame as a scammed person.
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#73A perspective: redistribution finds it's ways. People with roughly equal wealth would not scam each other's at this level
There are tons of scammers with more money than their victims, they don't stop scamming.
Exactly.
For an easy example of this, look at religious con artists masquerading as faith healers or "health and wealth" preachers and whatnot. They flaunt their affluence while profiting off of the backs of the poor.
Once scammers and other criminals get a taste, they're not going to stop just because they've got more money than their victims.
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#74It would be so easy to stop scammers if international transactions were insured and reversible. Governments just don't care at all about stopping scammers.
But a lot of scams don’t require this. The international transaction side isn’t with the victim, it’s with a completely different person happily sending cash over.
Say you run a gift card scam.
Victim buys $100 in gift cards and provides you codes.
You sell the $100 gift cards on a marketplace for $75.
A completely unrelated person buys the gift cards for $75 from you.
That unrelated person is satisfied, they got $100 for $75. They got a deal. You got $75 from a happy customer.
The loser is the person spending $100 in gift cards.
Other scams require you send money to a domestic “mule”, who then sends the money along not realizing it.
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#75[dead]
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#76My elderly mother has been scammed twice (that I know of). She fell for one of those "Your computer has been hacked" popup windows a few years ago. Which led to her buying a "protection" service that installed malware on her machine. Every couple of months she'd have an "issue" and have to shell out more money to fix it. She's been using computers since the 80's (Apple ][e) but still is utterly clueless on how to ope…
At least now they can ask ChatGPT if an idea makes sense.
Get them their fish oil, fish, eggs, and B vitamins.
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
And rich and uneducated.
Western societies have higher social trust which enabled them to outcompete the rest of the world. Business moves at the speed of trust. Now that western society has increasing contact with the low trust world it is regressing to the mean.
The regression is not due to “contact with the low trust world.” Globalism isn’t new. The call is coming from inside the house.
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#78We’re not talking about all the AI trash people sell for $100/year for what is little more than a system prompt in front of an LLM, are we?!
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#79I am always confused how someone will fall for the scammer with such poor knowledge of your native language. If you look at the reports from the scams it is always so obvious that they are scams just by looking at the way sentences are structured or the way they speak. I would expect that easier targets for such scammers would be people who don’t use English as their primary language. Not someone living in US. It is…
All scams are not created equal.
Here's an article by Cory Doctorow, a great example of an intelligent, tech-savvy person, detailing how he got scammed.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swi...
Re: Scammers Steal $1T a Year – Mostly from Americans
#80We need a federal police in charge of tracking down and stamping out scams. They attack our elderly, and otherwise vulnerable. They steal money from the people who can least afford it and fund various violent, illegal and nefarious organizations.