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DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

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Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#391

Post by tomjakubowski »

lawlessone wrote: post #322
stuffn wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>I personally have no sympathy for these people whether or not they're victims. You get a choice in life to stand on your morals or allow them to be eroded. If you choose to do something you know is wrong then you are no better than any other person who knowingly commits such acts. That's nice, but if someone points a weapon at me and tells me to rob people over the phone i'll probably do it.

In many US jurisdictions you'd likely be able to argue a duress defense in this case.

https://www.egattorneys.com/duress-defense

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#392

Post by lmm »

lazide wrote: post #376
lmm wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all, if someone stole $1k of gold from someone a decade ago, is giving them (now deflated) $1k USD fair, or is giving them the same physical amount (now worth) $3k in gold fairer? Even if they bought the gold because the scammer asked them too. I think that's an important difference. The fair thing is to "make them whole", to restore them to as if they'd never met the scammer. If they had a stash of gold that…

$50k USD now is != $50k USD at the time of the scam. And that isn’t even considering time value of money, but just baseline inflation!

> $50k USD now is != $50k USD at the time of the scam. And that isn’t even considering time value of money, but just baseline inflation!

Sure, and some legal regimes will apply a statutory interest rate to try to make up for that.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#393

Post by byzantinegene »

ForHackernews wrote: post #109
ValveFan6969 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The victims getting their money back would defeat the whole purpose of Bitcoin. No one knows who originally owned it. How about cash it out and trickle it down to us... or is all that just gonna magically disappear?

It's part of America's new Strategic Crypto Reserve where Uncle Sam holds bags for crypto bros.

more likely to be used as a reserve to buy up the trillion dollar national debt

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#394

Post by red369 »

newyankee wrote: post #245
gordonhart wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first experience stepping off the plane in Cambodia was being scammed by the official issuing visas. It was $20, I gave him $50, and he didn't want to give any change back. Scams were the defining part of the tourist experience there.

Haha, it reminded me 20+ years back when I was a kid travelling by train in India where the ticket dispenser did not give me 8 Rs back on a 152 Rs ticket when I paid 160, sounds small but is a big deal for poor. Tangential but that is one thing I really thank digital payments and digitization of ticket dispensing for.

My comment is going to be like a tangent to a tangent, but since it's about Bitcoin it sort of comes back to the original topic.

I agree about digital payments, but one of the things that I found disappointingly complex about Bitcoin is needing to receive change when making a payment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unspent_transaction_output).

I only made a few Bitcoin transactions because I found the whole experience did not feel like the future. That was a while ago now, and as other commentors have pointed out, it not seems obvious that the real value in Bitcoin lies elsewhere.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#395

Post by aurareturn »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #266
ctxc wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content: "Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his geni…

And we dropped more bombs on poor Laos (mostly because pilots weren't supposed to land back at base with bombs still on board) than on Japan and Germany combined... they estimate it will take about 600 years to removed all the unexploded cluster bombs and children regurly get maimed and killed by them (they look like tennis balls). The Chin, Hmong, and Lao are some of the nicest people you will ever meet, too.

Reading stuff like this and Cambodia, I truly wonder why so many Americans still hide behind "freedom" for every single atrocity their government representatives have done.

Why can't Americans (and to some extent Europeans) just come out and say, "Yea, we are often assholes and we have self interests. That's why we do these atrocities. It's not because of 'freedom'"? At least be honest.

Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean you do the right things nor does it mean you are fighting the right cause.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#396

Post by firen777 »

strogonoff wrote: post #44
rasz wrote: post #10

Wonder if Musk will be protesting, those seizures could put a dent in SpaceX earnings https://www.barrons.com/news/myanmar-scam-cities-booming-des...

It’s only technically incorrect to suggest that Musk should protest over the recent $15B scam profit seizure—it was from Cambodian scams, whereas the compounds that reportedly had to switch to Starlink due to being disconnected from the Internet are in Myanmar[0]—but yes, it’s still unclear why would Musk not shut any of it down if they have the capability (and if they don’t, then it’s another interesting controversy…

>if they have the capability

They absolutely do: https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown...

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#397

Post by grafmax »

graybeardhacker wrote: post #385
Reason077 wrote: post #62

Wow. $15 billion is an astronomical, nearly unfathomable amount of money in Cambodia. This must have been a huge operation. It's almost 1/3 of the country's entire GDP! Well done DOJ. Hopefully the victims get their money back.

Not sure if you're joking about the victims getting their money back. In case you're not, they won't. The DOJ adds seized crypto to the American crypto reserve. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr... From the webpage: " The Executive Order begins to resolve the current disjointed handling of cryptocurrencies seized through forfeiture by, and scattered across, various Federal agencies. Current…

It’s almost like one criminal organization stealing from another.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#398

Post by Saline9515 »

dunkvg wrote: post #383
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pol Pot probably was more proximally at fault.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot

You can point the fingers everywhere, you can also say the French were at fault because of the core of the Khmer Rouge group were scholarship students who were sent to France to study socialism, came back with that education and used to to establish the Khmer Rouge.

It's not exactly true, Pol Pot went to France on a scholarship to become an electrical engineer. When he came back to Cambodia, he worked as a literature teacher.

The ideological content of the Khmer Rouge is very poor overall, and is a mix between nationalism and communism aiming to "clean" the nation from western influences. Which is kind of ironic given Pol Pot's background.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#399

Post by Saline9515 »

UltraSane wrote: post #293
parthdesai wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spent significant time in Vietnam & Cambodia & Thailand. Cambodia is a sad country full of desperate people. Probably should also include which country is responsible for the current condition of the country. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1175241-once-you-ve-been-to...

I think PolPot has more responsibility for this.

Pol Pot was not alone, revolutionary movements breed on fertile grounds.

Re: DOJ seizes $15B in Bitcoin from 'pig butchering' scam based in Cambodia

#400

Post by refurb »

sangel21 wrote: post #238
nomilk wrote: post #206

Seems organised crime is taking advantage of less-policed (or lawless) regions in Cambodia and Burma. The spectre of a similar scam has resulted in lower Chinese tourism to Thailand. Basically Chinese (among other nationalities) tourists were led from the airport by fake immigration staff, put into cars and driven to Burma and forced to work 18 hour days in scam call centers. A chilling but extremely worthwhile read.…

Were? they still are. It's not even a small amount there are thousands of people at these centers.

Indeed. I spent a while in Vietnam and it was a regular occurrence of news stories about locals being rescued from all sorts of situation, not just scam centers - casinos, massage parlors.

The stories ranged from video of people running away from these places to escape, to Vietnamese police bribing people back to Vietnam who had been lured with the promise of a good job.

Cambodia really is the Wild West of this stuff.

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