Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam • Hacker News Board

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#151

Post by jaclaz » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #145

jaclaz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there must be also a given number of "middle class" people, that are not top notch programmers, nor "entry level" or "retail". If we take these as valid data: https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-release/occupationalem... And set an arbitrary threshold at 45 US$/hour, the amount of people exceeding that are 31.1%, if we set it at 50 US$/hour they are 19.4%. If we draw another line, those that get less than 25…

I'm not an expert in California, but if I understand prop 13 correctly it is possible some of those are people who have lived in SF for many years at the same address - their house is paid off and taxes are minimal so they can afford to live on much less. If your house only costs $400/month to live in ($100 insurance, $100 taxes, $200 other utilities) minimum wage still leaves plenty left over, and presumably if you…

Maybe that would account for a part (I am also not at all an expert in California, so it is just speculation), but those cannot reasonably account for 40% of workers.

I mean, if you live in SF and have a yearly income of "only" 50-60,000 US$ working some 2000 hours at 25-30 $/hour, and you live in a house that you can rent for roughly the same amount or that you can sell for (say) a million, what actually keeps you there?

Maybe you can find somewhere else a similar job, paid in the 15-20 $/hour range, you lose 20,000 on the job but get an additional 40,000 from the rent or from interests on the capital.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#152

Post by kyuudou » Sat, Feb 08, 2020, 10:25 PM UTC

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #122

Craigslist is the Wild West; use it at your own risk. A few years ago, I answered an enticing ad for a pretty nice apartment in a good school district near Boston. The price was about half what you would expect; that was the only tell. They answered my inquiry right away and said something about being "away in Africa on mission work and need someone to sublet our place". I supposed this was somewhat plausible, but de…

Have had this same scenario play out several times myself on CL. The other most common scammy post is a roommate.com one where when you get in touch with the poster, they have you go to a roommate.com link which basically requires you to sign up for a ~20$/mo membership. I get the need for such sites but I've seen this so often I consider it a scam and wonder if, like hired shills and trolls, people get hired to post such content just to drive membership.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#153

Post by 55555 » Mon, Feb 10, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

FDSGSG wrote: post #143

AstralStorm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's enough to drain few thousands per sucker with scam this automated. It will be pushed immediately to a temporary account and forwarded in non-repayable way to the scammer, leaving bank or credit card company to take the fall and a big headache to the user.

That doesn't happen. The whole idea is utterly ridiculous, if someone could cash out credit cards like that they'd just buy the cards for dollars a piece and not waste their time on a complicated scam like this. > scam this automated haha no

You are wrong because the nature of this setup specifically allows them to ensure no card owner will be able to find out that they've been conned for several months (by only accepting renters who want to move in in several months). If you just buy card info and charge them, some of those card owners will notice right away.