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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

#181

Post by guerrilla »

jimt1234 wrote: post #168
guerrilla wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With romance scams it's ego, especially with men. My neighbor needs to beleive that 25 year old blondes taking selfies on yachts are interested in him. Nothing in the universe could convince him otherwise. He would have to change so much of his personality and life to accept who he is or become who he would need to be. It's impossible. I think this is actually a question of thermodynamics at this point.

Disagree. I used to work with a guy that got scammed by a girl in Vietnam. They met online. He flew there to meet with her multiple times. He met her "family". They were even intimate. After a few months, she convinced him to invest in some sort of restaurant. He even went with her to talk to "lawyers" (in Vietnam; she never came to the US). Then she took all the money and vanished. I think it was close to six-figure…

I should have said it's often* ego. It can be either or both and other factors. I wouldn't rule it out entirely in your case though but you didn't mention the relative attractiveness of the people. I was talking about a 65 year old man, out of shape, in debt, poor skills with and understanding of women.

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

#182

Post by omarmung »

infecto wrote: post #94

The US does not do enough in this space to punish companies. It feels like such low hanging fruit too that would significantly help the elderly population. Reported to Vercel a bank phishing site weeks ago, no response still. It’s amazing how little companies care.

(I work at Vercel) Send me an email at dustin @ vercel dot com and I'll dig in here. Sorry about that.

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

#183

Post by Auracle »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #87
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 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.

Keep in mind some of us still grow up in places where we can leave our cars/homes unlocked. Obviously extending that feeling to the entire world is naive, but it's also pretty understandable for our now elderly population..

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

#184

Post by jaoane »

lesuorac wrote: post #177
jaoane wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where’s the judge in all of this?

Due process just means following pre-written law. ex. There's no judge involved when a cop shows up to a fight and arrests both people. It's the same law [1] that everybody is talking about w.r.t. Trump's Tariffs except that global trade isn't emergent while Funnull is a new actor. [1]: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-201600880/pdf/DCPD-...

They arrest people to put them in front of a judge. This is nothing like that.

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

#185

Post by abdullahkhalids »

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…

Reversing stolen crypto transactions in practice is done the same way you reverse stolen cash transactions.

You find the criminal, and the cash and give back the cash to the wronged party. With cash, the criminal can hide the cash in some random location, and nobody can say if they spent it or they lost it. With crypto, everyone knows where the money is. You just have to figure out the passwords to the wallet in some way.

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

#186

Post by FabHK »

jlarocco wrote: post #169
SkyBelow wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bank C is forced to take the loss, it'll be more careful in opening accounts for scammers to withdraw money. If Bank C is in a country that doesn't care to enforce such losses, then Bank B (or A if A is big enough) will think twice about deciding to do business with Bank B. Moving the cost of the scams onto the banks will strongly incentivize them to prevent the scams.

There's some kind of circular reasoning going on here. Banks are more careful, and that's why they don't deal with certain kinds of transactions. And that's where crypto comes in to "disrupt banks" and "democratize finance". Long term, crypto will be no different than regular currency and finance because people don't like getting ripped off and defrauded. We'll have a period of time with people pulling old scams but…

The problem is that crypto is designed to evade regulation. You can put lipstick on a pig and regulate the centralized intermediaries (which, remember, crypto aimed to disintermediate): exchanges, custodians, ETF providers, ...

The dilemma is that you can either escape those regulations by going to unhosted wallets (self-custody) and transacting on the blockchain, or you keep everything (by regulation) entirely within the regulated intermediaries, but then there's no need to waste 1% of world electricity on some slow "decentralized" database.

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

#187

Post by aziaziazi »

JTbane wrote: post #159
aziaziazi wrote: post #76

Related: Interpol urges to stop using "Pig Butchering": > INTERPOL argues that the term ‘pig butchering’ dehumanizes and shames victims of such frauds, deterring people from coming forward to seek help and provide information to the authorities. "Romance baiting" is proposed instead. https://www.interpol.int/News-and-Events/News/2024/INTERPOL-...

It's not always romance related, sometimes it's just a promise of massive crypto investment returns. "Pig butchering" is more apt as the long con is like fattening up an animal before slaughter.

I agree, meanwhile sometimes words not only describes thinks but influence those using them.

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

#188

Post by Symbiote »

LiquidSky wrote: post #180
gradschool wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone will probably tell me about some theoretical situation where it is a positive force Challenge accepted. My positive use case for cryptocurrency pertains to someone like me being over sixty and worried about being swept up into the guardianship system. With most of my assets in crypto and assuming decent opsec, they would be inaccessible to the guardian. If a judge ordered me to grant access, could I be cite…

Elder abuse is certainly a real problem, but the guardianship/conservatorship system also does address a real problem: many seniors actually do become mentally unable to manage themselves. You're worried about falsely being forced into a guardianship, but what happens if you actually do develop Alzheimer's or some other form of dementia and your family legitimately needs access to your assets to care for you? It's ea…

Before she died, my grandmother couldn't remember where she'd hidden her most valuable jewellery.

She was an excellent card player 10 years before that, probably because she could recall most/all of the playing cards in the discard pile, so I'm sure she could have remembered a Bitcoin wallet passphrase — until the last few years.

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

#189

Post by JamesBarney »

latchkey wrote: post #146
fennecfoxy wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, I think crypto is cool from a technological standpoint, but I don't think I've seen one common genuine use of BTC, etc. And before someone comes in with very specific, anecdotal examples - notice I said "common", ie not buying your indie music from a retro-Serb band that plays using the concept of instruments as instruments and from abandoned sewers; but only on Mondays. I definitely feel like the majo…

> I've seen one common genuine use of BTC One of my favorited comments/threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410

Even that technically falls under the crime umbrella (though I don't believe it is immoral or unethical). It's basically the getting around government imposed capital controls.

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

#190

Post by FabHK »

wmf wrote: post #43
JKCalhoun wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sp…

Bitcoin has done 4x in some years and 10,000x in a decade. Unfortunately that has led people to believe that crypto is magic. Classic Ponzis and such mostly don't work any more but if you add in crypto suddenly people are willing to buy in.

100%. That's why I'm so mad when influential people repeat the "crypto is the future of finance" nonsense. It is this uncritical hype that makes so many people vulnerable to crypto scams. Trump is doing it, Blackrock is doing it, it must be the best thing since sliced bread, right? No.
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