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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

#81

Post by lan321 »

anovikov wrote: post #61
Waterluvian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. No…

[flagged]

As a reasonably successful immigrant from Eastern Europe, mostly not true in my experience. You do have some people, ahem roma/gypsies ahem, that abuse the hell out of social benefits for example, getting them from multiple countries at the same time, etc, but for normal people, the reason they succeed is the fresh start and being an outsider in my opinion.

For older immigrants it's an opportunity for a fresh start that kicks them out of the daily monotony and puts them in the sink or swim of early adult life again.

For younger immigrants, we're mostly the top X% of talent coming from mostly well off families. Couple that with needing to be at least better than the average to compensate for your immigrant background and we either do very well, or go back to where we came from... After all with the experience of being mediocre in the west you can go back and sell yourself as a top achiever with experience in the country where the company headquarters/clients are.

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

#82

Post by mola »

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…

Classic Russian thinking that the only motivating force is fear. No wonder you get stuck with homicidal tyrants ruling over you time after time.

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

#83

Post by alexey-salmin »

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.

Sure. But not everyone in the world shares the same FDIC with you.

To complicate things further, international transfers require cooperation not only between the sending and receiving states but also from states that control the transfer system. Any hiccup along the way and you may lose your money, sometimes forever (true story).

> And my trust in the current administration is rather low.

Again, I'm not sure you realize what the "low trust into the government" means for the rest of the world.

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

#84

Post by strogonoff »

strogonoff wrote: post #30
whimsicalism wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

(For the sake of completeness, I should add that Thailand’s crackdown could potentially be motivated not only by tourism revenue but also by the pressure from the government of PRC, which in turn could be motivated not only by its poorer citizens being among those kidnapped but also by its richer citizens being a target of pig butchering scams. Still, I don’t know how common the latter is—from my observations, in Western cultures people are more inclined to trust strangers compared to Chinese cultures—and in any case this does not make the well-documented kidnappings and forced labour less real.)

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

#85

Post by throwaway912312 »

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…

I hear you. Same with my dad. Found out after he gave his old phone to my mom without logging out. Tried to show him he was falling for MS-clipart certificates and bossofbigbank@gmail.com but to no avail.

After tracing 250k wired in just 6 months, we detangled my mom out of potential liability and reported him. He was put into financial stewardship (= personal finances done by an attorney). He appealed and the court ruled he seems normal, so he could also be in charge of his finances with only a monthly checkup. We still had his email access. He contacted his scammers the day after promising more money soon...

Fast forward to today, he's broke, likley evicted from his auctioned off appartment in a couple of months at age 79 and dividing his pension between wiring it to scammers and eating just enough to stay alive. Lost all his friends (many borrowed him money), doesn't see his wife or grandkids grow up. The opposite of a happy end.

If you find yourself in such a situation: - I received a lot of valueable advice from the local anonymous addiction hotline (how to react, where to seek help). Best call you can make. - In Switzerland, the KESB (govt authority for protection of elderly and children) can help you. They had a neurological assessment made and a court put him financial stewardship. It would have saved him from himself if not for his appeal. - Think ahead and have one person act as "bad guy" - everything I tried was in consensus with the whole family, but I played bad guy. Of course my dad broke with me, but he keeps sporadic contact with everyone else - his only social contacts - priceless.

I see legislation improve hereabouts - my bank (in France) now requires to watch a screen for 3 seconds and confirm you're sure to wire X to Y and you are sure Y is Y before oking a transaction. Far from enough. We infortunately won't convince our dads that they are getting scammed, but better consumer (and boomer) protection is something we can lobby and vote for.

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

#86

Post by TeMPOraL »

kalaksi wrote: post #58
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.

The difference is, crypto makes irreversibility a fundamental part of the system, making it impossible for any party to unilaterally reverse a payment without having to first take over the entire chain. With regular fiat money and banks, such reversals are perfectly possible on a technical level. The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an individual may not be able to force them to in practice, but it's still possible in a way it's not possible with crypto.

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

#87

Post by crossroadsguy »

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…

I think in a world where slitting someone’s throat for few thousand dollars (in some countries for few hundreds to just few) isn’t unheard of, I don’t know in what way people would find such scams inconceivable. I think the reason squarely is people being naive, or stupid, greedy, desperate (for love, better X times returns etc) etc - or a combination of these. And yes, they are victims, yes.

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

#88

Post by lesuorac »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #86
kalaksi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference is, crypto makes irreversibility a fundamental part of the system, making it impossible for any party to unilaterally reverse a payment without having to first take over the entire chain. With regular fiat money and banks, such reversals are perfectly possible on a technical level. The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an individual may not be able to force them to in practice, but it's still…

> The banks are usually unwilling to do them, and an individual may not be able to force them to in practice, but it's still possible in a way it's not possible with crypto.

Generally they're unwilling to do that because it involves losing money for them.

Transfers work in a multi-step process to ensure money isn't created.

You tell Bank A to transfer money to person X at Bank B.

Bank A tells an intermediary bank C to move funds from Bank A's account to Bank B's account. (This step is unnecessary if either A or B are large enough to be an intermediary)

Bank C lets Bank B know that it's gained funds

Bank B moves funds internally from Bank C to customer X.

If you want your money back and Bank C says it's already been withdrawn then somebody in A,B,C is going to take a loss. Personally I think we should have an easy way to pay in a 7d settlement or something. Who really cares if somebody sends a 7d settlement when buying a house as long as its done 7d before closing.

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

#90

Post by anovikov »

N_Lens wrote: post #78
anovikov wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Japanese people are not very religious but are very high trust and high on the development index, much higher than the Middle East in my opinion.

Japanese people believe that are the Gods themselves, if we put it into Western perspective. They are indeed the most trustworthy people i got to work with (but also extremely procedure-driven, formal, slow on decisionmaking, and painfully anal when it comes to matching even the tiny details in requirements - so i found it really hard to work with them). Although it has nothing to do with trust.
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