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

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

#51

Post by porridgeraisin »

tbrownaw wrote: post #48
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…

> 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 When you don't agree with the laws that are being broken in a particular case.

So if 57% in a country agree with a law, the remaining 43% should be allowed to circumvent that law through these means?

Of course, the opposite argument is "what about north korea", but it's a package deal is my point.

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

#52

Post by anovikov »

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…

Reason of most scams is the absurd level of trust existing in Western countries.

When i first saw Upwork where hours were paid by the tracker in a guaranteed manner and people SIGNED for it, i knew West was doomed. I still find it hard to believe people can be that easy to dupe.

Level of trust in the Western societies needs to be radically reduced through government propaganda, church and other channels. The world has become global. Westerners are now a small minority in an ocean of people where the manner of relationship that will be seen as sociopathic in the West, is the everyday norm and always have been. If they won't adapt, they will cease to exist. The cozy world where one could trust another because they all shared fear of God and had a reputation to lose, is gone.

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

#53

Post by homebrewer »

os2warpman wrote: post #47
alexey-salmin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you see international money transfers outside of the government control as a positive or negative force largely depends on how much you trust your government. How much it should limit things for your own safety? I suspect that for majority of the earth population the trust level is rather low, even though in some countries it could be different.

If I had to throw out a number describing how many more times I trust the FDIC than I trust some cryptobro, the first thing that comes to mind is "ten billion". And my trust in the current administration is rather low.

Well, they're pretty comparable in many parts of the world (and I despise cryptocurrency, btw). Despite what you might think, the current US administration is far from the worst compared to what some of us live under. Americans simply lack a proper "zero point" to be able to properly gauge this.

I place exactly zero trust in what our administration says, because they've lied about the country's economic situation and what they're planning to do about it four times during my lifetime, and several more times during our parents' lifetimes. Our savings were cut in half (or more) several times because of this, and so much of it was lost, the total amount of time wasted working for effectively free is in the decades now.

There's really no reliable way of saving money long-term here, unless you scrounge enough to buy real estate or something else that is unlikely to be devalued to 30% of its original value with a stroke of a pen.

I can imagine why some people would resort to cryptocurrency and extracting money out of the country asap.

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

#54

Post by dantillberg »

whimsicalism wrote: post #26
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

How is crypto relevant to betting?

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

#55

Post by petesergeant »

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…

My mother is exceptionally vigilant, which is great, but her partner ... I've never met anyone who gets targeted so much, or who needs it spelling out to him so much that he doesn't really have $2m in a crypto wallet somewhere he forgot about that a helpful person can send him. I think it's a fixed personality trait. If they split up, and doesn't have her watching him like a hawk, I worry he's toast.

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

#56

Post by Waterluvian »

anovikov wrote: post #52
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…

Reason of most scams is the absurd level of trust existing in Western countries. When i first saw Upwork where hours were paid by the tracker in a guaranteed manner and people SIGNED for it, i knew West was doomed. I still find it hard to believe people can be that easy to dupe. Level of trust in the Western societies needs to be radically reduced through government propaganda, church and other channels. The world ha…

A high trust society is actually a good trait, not a bad one. It’s rather easy, lazy even, for a culture to devolve into a low trust minima. That’s basically the default state that people have endeavoured to evolve out of.

I think it’s also the kind of thing that can easily overwhelm anxious minds. The kind where “what if it’s a scam?” leads them to never taking a risk, donating to a cause, doing someone a favour.

Not that there isn’t a fight to be fought here. But waving the surrender flag on fostering a trusting society is a very weak move.

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

#57

Post by Auracle »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #45
Auracle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad isn't a gambler. He invested in the stock market, but never anything like options. I've never known him to buy a lottery ticket. He's not greedy. He is, however, pretty trusting. It took them months to get to the point where he was putting money in. I think he (naively) just trusted them. I wish he would have trusted us instead.

> I think he (naively) just trusted them. I wish he would have trusted us instead. Probably he trusted people who spent more time talking to him. I don't mean it as an way to blame anyone, I just think it's the way the trust mechanism is wired into the human brain, and this is why these scams work so well. Ironically this mirrors the parent's frustration of "I wish my kid trusted me and not his dumb-ass friends".

No, you're absolutely right. I had the same thought afterwards - but also, we're both introverted and definitely not phone-talkers. I don't really blame myself on that front.

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

#58

Post by kalaksi »

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…

The banks here have said that if you get scammed and money has been transferred (no cryptocurrency involved), there's nothing they can do. It was a bit surprising to hear since you only hear cryptocurrency transactions being irreversible.

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

#59

Post by School-Cotton »

mmooss wrote: post #4

Don't fall into the trap: Government penalizing private parties without due process can be appealing when it's a private party you don't like, but even those people deserve due process - that's the point, everyone does. Also it's arbitrary, unchecked power that is used for corrupt purposes, and by supporting it in a situation where you like to see it, you are legitimizing that power in every case. Edit: It's tough to…

[flagged]

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

#60

Post by stevenwoo »

They still used AWS servers in the USA to avoid some blocking. Baader Meinhof but just heard this episode https://www.npr.org/2025/05/23/1253043749/pig-butchering-sca... where they tracked down organization in Cambodia that specialized in targeting USA and China citizens for pig butchering and explained the mechanism of the scam using Tether cryptocurrency.
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