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U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#21

Post by silisili »

Auracle wrote: post #10
duxup wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me so mad. I know a friend who told me about a loved one getting scammed. Dude meets some girl from a foreign country online. Next thing you know he thinks she got him into some great cryptocurrency, and nothing anyone can tell him will make him realize he is getting scammed. Sad stuff.

It happened to my father. I told him he was getting scammed. My mom (divorced) told him. So did my sister. It didn’t matter. He lost all of his savings - 300k+. I wish I had taken his phone away, changed his passwords, etc. My mom didn’t want me to take drastic action because she was concerned that if he knew how much I knew he wouldn’t keep telling her things. It doesn’t matter once they’ve lost everything, of cours…

Sorry to hear that. Makes me angry just reading it, I can't imagine how it makes you feel.

I've mentioned before here wondering if there is a name for this phenomenon, it's similar to sunk cost fallacy, but more emotionally charged. Like, the thought of having been scammed makes you put on blinders and keep going hoping you weren't. It doesn't make a ton of sense to me, but it happens all the time, to people of all ages.

This guy was only 53 and fell for the same traps, rather famously -

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/21/cryptocurrency-shan-hanes-pi...

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#22

Post by strogonoff »

duxup wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me so mad. I know a friend who told me about a loved one getting scammed. Dude meets some girl from a foreign country online. Next thing you know he thinks she got him into some great cryptocurrency, and nothing anyone can tell him will make him realize he is getting scammed. Sad stuff.

Pig butchering gets additionally horrible when you consider the other side. People who actually handle the chatting are kept in inhuman conditions and physically cannot leave. Laundered profits go to criminal bosses at the top (corrupting various local governments, given they constitute a significant percentage of their economies at this point).

See Number Go Up by Zeke Faux for a glimpse into that (and how cryptocurrency, in particular stablecoins, in particular Tether, facilitate it). True, much of book is largely about the weird cryptobro culture and FTX collapse, but research into pig butchering and personal travel to scam compounds was the most visceral part for me.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#23

Post by toomuchtodo »

Auracle wrote: post #10
duxup wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me so mad. I know a friend who told me about a loved one getting scammed. Dude meets some girl from a foreign country online. Next thing you know he thinks she got him into some great cryptocurrency, and nothing anyone can tell him will make him realize he is getting scammed. Sad stuff.

It happened to my father. I told him he was getting scammed. My mom (divorced) told him. So did my sister. It didn’t matter. He lost all of his savings - 300k+. I wish I had taken his phone away, changed his passwords, etc. My mom didn’t want me to take drastic action because she was concerned that if he knew how much I knew he wouldn’t keep telling her things. It doesn’t matter once they’ve lost everything, of cours…

One should not hesitate to attempt to obtain a conservatorship if they can when this happens. It’s the only thing that will stop someone from losing it all. Unfortunately, if a court deems them mentally fit, there’s nothing to stop them.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#24

Post by hamandcheese »

strogonoff wrote: post #22
duxup wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me so mad. I know a friend who told me about a loved one getting scammed. Dude meets some girl from a foreign country online. Next thing you know he thinks she got him into some great cryptocurrency, and nothing anyone can tell him will make him realize he is getting scammed. Sad stuff.

Pig butchering gets additionally horrible when you consider the other side. People who actually handle the chatting are kept in inhuman conditions and physically cannot leave. Laundered profits go to criminal bosses at the top (corrupting various local governments, given they constitute a significant percentage of their economies at this point). See Number Go Up by Zeke Faux for a glimpse into that (and how cryptocur…

> People who actually handle the chatting are kept in inhuman conditions and physically cannot leave.

I think there might be a word for this.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#25

Post by naet »

Cryptocurrency enables a big part of this. Not saying that there weren't any wire scams before crypto, but crypto has made it much easier for average people to make anonymous international money transfers that can't be reversed.

Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or to use them for various forms of crime. Someone will probably tell me about some theoretical situation where it is a positive force, but I still think those are by far the two most common daily uses.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#26

Post by whimsicalism »

naet wrote: post #25

Cryptocurrency enables a big part of this. Not saying that there weren't any wire scams before crypto, but crypto has made it much easier for average people to make anonymous international money transfers that can't be reversed. Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or to use them for various forms of crime. Someone will probably tell…

i bet heavily using crypto against AI progress on coding to hedge my career

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#27

Post by whimsicalism »

strogonoff wrote: post #22
duxup wrote: post #2

This stuff makes me so mad. I know a friend who told me about a loved one getting scammed. Dude meets some girl from a foreign country online. Next thing you know he thinks she got him into some great cryptocurrency, and nothing anyone can tell him will make him realize he is getting scammed. Sad stuff.

Pig butchering gets additionally horrible when you consider the other side. People who actually handle the chatting are kept in inhuman conditions and physically cannot leave. Laundered profits go to criminal bosses at the top (corrupting various local governments, given they constitute a significant percentage of their economies at this point). See Number Go Up by Zeke Faux for a glimpse into that (and how cryptocur…

i think the degree to which this is fully true is overstated from when i've looked into it. a lot of it is not the best working environments, but people are still scamming people for pay and are largely not forced to do so.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#29

Post by JKCalhoun »

abletonlive wrote: post #16
Auracle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happened to my father. I told him he was getting scammed. My mom (divorced) told him. So did my sister. It didn’t matter. He lost all of his savings - 300k+. I wish I had taken his phone away, changed his passwords, etc. My mom didn’t want me to take drastic action because she was concerned that if he knew how much I knew he wouldn’t keep telling her things. It doesn’t matter once they’ve lost everything, of cours…

I experienced the same thing in my family. It sucks. I still haven't fully forgiven them (the supposed victim). As much as I agree it's partially mental decline, it's hard for me to imagine it's not at least also partially a character flaw that would get you into this situation

I, tiptoeing here, kind of agree. Am I missing something or do these scams operate on a person's greed?

To be sure, I invest in order to see a return. That's greed, I guess? Or maybe not?

I think having (unrealistic) expectations of doubling your money in anything shorter than ... about a decade ... should be sending up red flags for anyone. "Make money fast" should fire the same neurons as "Put it all on zero and spin".

I had a friend who began to believe he had written code that could play the stock market and rake in the cash on trades (he was testing it on historical data and doing very well). The best way I could try to reel him in was to simply suggest that if it were so easy, everyone would be doing it.

Same goes for any get rich scheme.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#30

Post by strogonoff »

whimsicalism wrote: post #27
strogonoff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pig butchering gets additionally horrible when you consider the other side. People who actually handle the chatting are kept in inhuman conditions and physically cannot leave. Laundered profits go to criminal bosses at the top (corrupting various local governments, given they constitute a significant percentage of their economies at this point). See Number Go Up by Zeke Faux for a glimpse into that (and how cryptocur…

i think the degree to which this is fully true is overstated from when i've looked into it. a lot of it is not the best working environments, but people are still scamming people for pay and are largely not forced to do so.

The difference here is that Zeke wrote a book chok full of sources (a significant chunk of the book in the end is basically pages of references), while you so far supplied none.

While I don’t know anyone personally, a local semi-famous person was abducted in Thailand and sent to one of these compounds (except in Myanmar). He was rescued by a combined rescue mission of his country’s and Thai governments. This made big news a few months back, and resulted in a drastic reduction in Asian tourist travel to Thailand (which itself doesn’t run these compounds, but is a big destination for tourism), so much so that Thai government was (maybe still is) in panic mode because of it.

Remember how Thailand tried to enact measures even technically abroad, like cutting off electricity and Internet connections (and how these compounds are controversially using Starlink now)? This was all posted on this site in the year leading up to today, and the reason for it is that pig butchering related abductions driven by crime nearby states made it unsafe for most Asian-looking people to travel to Thailand. Does it create an impression of voluntary labour in your mind?

Perhaps in near term LLMs will allow them to reduce headcount so much that the bosses become willing to pay and less inclined to keep them captive, but so far claims that it’s all mostly voluntary labour just don’t compute with available evidence.

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