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A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

arxiv.org

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Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#101

Post by scrollbar »

K0balt wrote: post #50
guappa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this for sure? I can imagine that even then, 99% of the attempts will fail.

There are token rewards for successes and punishments, sometimes extreme, for low productivity. If a slave is seen as having no worth to the endeavour and cannot be trafficked, they will sometimes be killed as a warning to the others that productivity is expected. It’s a horrific and brutal scenario that pits victims against victims. In many ways, the targets have less to lose than the victims targeting them.

"...workers at KK Park are subjected to 17-hour workdays and are frequently spied on, tortured, and threatened with murder when attempting to flee the compound.[11][17] Passports and cell phones of workers were confiscated to prevent unmonitored communication with the outside world. The complex includes supermarkets, hospital, restaurants and hotels to form a closed community.[citation needed] Illegal organ harvesting was also reported to take place inside KK Park.[4] KK Park victims could only leave by paying a "contract termination" fee which is calculated by the inflated cost of transportation and how much money the victims earned for the scam companies."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KK_Park

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#102

Post by jerf »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #42
M95D wrote: post #20

We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject.

> We should teach/learn resisting scams in school. Far more useful than any other subject. A lot of people actually are scammers - and this is socially accepted. What is the difference between the "everyday scams" and the scams from this article is rather the scope. Thus, to make people scam-resistant, you have to make them insanely distrusting about everybody in society (or to express it more directly: make the peop…

It is not quite so terrible as to need to make everyone distrustful.

There is an old saying: "You can't scam an honest man." I think a lot of people misunderstand this; it is not that being honest somehow lets you just know when you're being scammed. Indeed the natural "surely they'd be even more vulnerable" probably has some truth to it in some sense.

What it means is that the vast bulk of scams involve convincing the mark that they are dishonestly pulling off a scam. You pay $400 and you're going to get $millions. She misidentified you as someone else but hey you're just so amazingly charismatic that she's into you anyhow, and if you just pour a few more hundreds in she's totally going to let you sleep with her. You know you never entered that lottery, but hey, if they're going to make a mistake and say you won who are you to argue, right?

Not everything fits into this; one classic that affects businesses more than individuals is Ye Olde Just Issue An Invoice And Hope They Pay It. There are also some scams around posing with varying degrees of fidelity as a specific individual you know, such as by hacking their emails and sending this out as them, although in many cases that's still just a delivery mechanism for a scam based on convincing the mark they're going to pull a scam.

A solution that will make you highly resistant to scams, though as I am saying outright, not immune, is to realize that you will not get anything for free, to refuse to participate, to be aggressively honest even if it seems to hurt you. Perhaps ironically, or perhaps counter to your intuition, in the modern world, such aggressive honesty will on the net benefit you by protecting you from these scams. The same ethics that make you give $5 back to the cashier that they gave you in extra change will save you hundreds of thousands in a pig butchering scam.

In the modern era it probably is getting more important to verify identities even of people you know, which is a new and developing angle.

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#103

Post by FabHK »

giveita wrote: post #44
jajko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cons target someone currently vulnerable This. I am a senior software dev, living in Switzerland. Few years ago there was an issue with my residence permit renewal, process that should have taken few weeks took more than a year. No way to contact that Geneva immigration office, and you can't visit them personally, emails ignored. Official phone contact is just a single phone that often rang few times and then dropp…

AML/KYC laws have done us a big favour. Otherwise that would be a bank txn they would ask for. And now buying $200 of gift cards as an actual gift is impossible (in physical space)

> AML/KYC laws have done us a big favour.

And crypto, needless to say, enables these pig butchering scams (and others). The Economist estimates the scam industry to rake in about $500 bn a year.

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#104

Post by Loughla »

foobarian wrote: post #94
alistairSH wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some form of guardianship/conservatorship is in order. Talk to a lawyer, if you haven't already (maybe that's what you mean by finances are already segregated ).

The question is, what can YOU do now to avoid risk to your own estate once you are old and start losing your mental faculties?

Build those things into your estate. My family made a trust that pays bills and what not. So your income goes to the trust and you use it to pay regular bills and groceries and what not. Anything on the "not-approved" list takes a vote of the people controlling the trust (parents and kids). That has helped us avoid some bullshit so far.

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#105

Post by stouset »

K0balt wrote: post #50
guappa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this for sure? I can imagine that even then, 99% of the attempts will fail.

There are token rewards for successes and punishments, sometimes extreme, for low productivity. If a slave is seen as having no worth to the endeavour and cannot be trafficked, they will sometimes be killed as a warning to the others that productivity is expected. It’s a horrific and brutal scenario that pits victims against victims. In many ways, the targets have less to lose than the victims targeting them.

Jesus. It had never occurred to me that the front-line people perpetrating these scams could be enslaved themselves.

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#106

Post by FabHK »

em500 wrote: post #69
karel-3d wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are using actual slaves, not "wage slaves". They kidnap people, lured for work in Thailand, and take them to Myanmar/Burma, where there is a civil war ongoing and a form of lawlessness; while there is a relatively good internet connectivity and electricity. They beat people and force them to do this. It's mostly run by Chinese. (But they scam Chinese too. It originated as scamming older single Chinese ladies, ac…

> It's mostly run by Chinese. (But they scam Chinese too. It originated as scamming older single Chinese ladies, actually.) This comment suggests that the main target would be non-Chinese, with some incidental Chinese targets/victims. I think the reality is the opposite, and that the primary targets are Chinese, with some incidental Western victims, for the simple reason that both the perpetrators and the (involutary…

No. The Chinese perpetrators might have targeted predominantly Chinese victims originally, but not for quite some time.

First, China has vigorously cracked down on crypto, and secondly, it has engaged in large scale information campaigns and PSA warning about these scams.

The people trapped in the scam centres are often English speakers, such as from the Philippines, India, Hong Kong, anglophone African countries, etc., targeting Western countries, or nationals of the target countries, e.g. Thailand or Vietnam.

The Chinese gangsters, like Russian hackers, now prefer to target foreigners.

If you want to know more, I can recommend the usual books about crypto, the podcast and article series on Scam Inc by The Economist, and Martin Purbrink’s substack.

https://asiacrimecentury.substack.com/

https://asiacrimecentury.substack.com/p/scam-inc-explaining-...

https://asiacrimecentury.substack.com/p/betting-on-chaos-the...

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#107

Post by FabHK »

guappa wrote: post #34
est wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the scammers had the best CRM software and "customer service" training. If any of the scam farm worker failed they will get physical punishment or even capital punishment...

Is this for sure? I can imagine that even then, 99% of the attempts will fail.

Sure, most attempts will fail. The cyber trafficking victims are punished if they fail to reach their quote.

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#108

Post by spwa4 »

qnleigh wrote: post #6

I got sucked into reading this paper, and it has completely changed my perception of these scams. They are incredibly thorough and realistic. Here are some quotes that drove this home for me. "The bond phase showed that scammers had tremendous patience; this phase lasted anywhere from 3 to 11 months before the scammer moved on to the next stage of the scam." "When I spoke to her on a video call, it was the same perso…

> "It seemed legitimate, there was no reason to think that it could be fake – if she could be a scammer, so could any of my actual friends."

Wow, this really makes me think. You see, I have this president that ...

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#109

Post by Hunpeter »

gramie wrote: post #99
beAbU wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The age old "hey it's me ur brother" scam.

The oldest version I heard of was in Japan in the 1990s. Scammers would call elderly people, claiming to be grandchildren, and demand money or they would be arrested/scandalized. It was called the "ore ore" (pronounced "o-ray o-ray") scam because they would typically use the word "ore" for "I", a familiar and often brusque or aggressive form of the first person singular.

This is also well known here in Hungary, there was even movie about it. It's called "unokázás"; literally: "grandchilding".

Re: A qualitative analysis of pig-butchering scams

#110

Post by FabHK »

wiether wrote: post #10

Didn't know the meaning of "pig-butchering scam", so I took it at its front value and was a bit confused.

Frankly, I am shocked by this. I don’t mean that to criticise you or others that didn’t know the term, but the quality of the discourse/media.

Pig butchering and related crypto scams are an enormous problem. Latest estimates are that the cyber scam industry revenues exceed the illegal drug trade. There are so many victims, both cyber trafficking victims promised great jobs then forced to perpetrate the scams, as well as victims handing over huge sums. Both suffer not only financial loss, but psychological damage.

Lastly, this threatens to destabilize whole countries - as the narcos screwed up Colombia and Mexico, so these scammers are screwing up the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar etc.

Again, that such a massive problem is so little known is in itself scandalous.

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