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Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

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Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#51
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely coinbase was chosen simply because it's the easiest way for their victims to buy coins. There is a vulnerability with Pizza businesses in that they trust the caller is making a legit order, and don't ask for pre-payment before delivery thus leaving them open to fraud. Whoever is doing this is clearly bluffing and hoping just a handful of businesses pay the extortion and likely flooded the mail system with…

Yeah you guys are probably right, after all. If it demanded cash and suggested visiting your local Citibank Branch or Citibank In Network ATM that clearly would also be an equally random and meaningless data point, totally not trying to make Citibank look bad or anything.

If "cash" was a random form of currency that the pizza parlor had statistically never heard of and had literally no idea on how to acquire, then providing an address for a specific ATM would be pretty random and meaningless, yes. Would you expect an extortion letter to say "If you don't pay me one bitcoin, I'm gonna screw with your business. I'd tell you where you can find a bitcoin, but I don't want this extortionary attempt to slander the name of legitimate businesses who are trying to increase the adoption rate and accessibility of this exciting new crypto-currency"?

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#52

Apparently they've never worked in pizza. I could just see them sending it to my dad. First off, What's a bitcoin? Negative Online review...what's an Online review. Harrassing telephone calls...you mean a friday night? Farudulant delivery orders...10 all the way pizzas with anchovies...sure we'll make those right up and deliver them...ya right... Illegal drug sales...don't be primising illegal drugs to the delivery d…

Would you mind doing us all a favour and building a database of every pizza place like this on the planet? It sounds like my (our?) kind of place.

It's simple find the most run down looking place you can find that's over 5 years old. You know if they're still in business it's not because if the atmosphere and the service, it's because of the food. Also, as for hacking it's hard to hack an order pad and a pen.

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#53
post #22
post #10

Obviously the victim isn't the local pizzera its Coinbase. Someone just spent "not very much money" to make them look incredibly bad. Should be fairly easy to track them down, just analyze the pattern of yellow dots on the color laser print to figure out the make, model, and serial number of the printer making the extortion letters, then contact whichever of coinbase's competitors made those letters and ... Now if I…

Will be super easy as long as they had the foresight to buy the printer on a credit card and the pizzeria's police force is actually CSI. Seriously, the police are not going to analyze dots on laser printer to track down an extortion for $500, just like they don't swab for prints / DNA on a B&E. Real life is not CSI.

Printer tracking dots aren't some super high-tech CSI stuff.

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

Re: Pizzerias Receiving Extortion Letters Demanding Bitcoin

#54

Apparently they've never worked in pizza. I could just see them sending it to my dad. First off, What's a bitcoin? Negative Online review...what's an Online review. Harrassing telephone calls...you mean a friday night? Farudulant delivery orders...10 all the way pizzas with anchovies...sure we'll make those right up and deliver them...ya right... Illegal drug sales...don't be primising illegal drugs to the delivery d…

An alternate theory would be the whole thing is a submarine: a way of advertising Bitcoin to pizza owners, under the pretense of a threat.

What could make them take Bitcoin more seriously than the threat of them being harmed by it? It wouldn't be surprising if the whole thing was orchestrated by a Bitcoin startup. And its an easy trick to pull too. You stuff printed letters in a mailbox and they find their way out there. How could anyone prove who did it?

Frankly it's impressive :) After a whole day on HN nobody brought up this possibility. There's also a lesson of strategy here. When you are not making progress being direct about something, try doing its opposite.

What I'm more curious about is how they'll follow up without making it too obvious that they are advertising. How will the make the now worried pizza owner casually bump into a promising Bitcoin company that protects them from extortion and all bad Bitcoin things? Run an ad in the paper or local TV?

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