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All the wallets were drained years ago and [1] says the bitcoin "are already in the government’s possession, custody and control". [1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.53...
I'm now completely confused. Wallets were drained years ago? So $15B worth of bitcoin was already transferred? From whom to whom? And then why is this entire post considered news, if the wallet is empty?
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> In theory the court should give them back the actual bitcoin, not the monetary equivalent at the time. Why? Most of them didn't care about bitcoin, they bought it solely to give to the scammer.
Because they bought Bitcoin and gave it to the scammer, and that Bitcoin is even worth more now, so that’s the ‘most fair’ recompense. 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. The ‘fair enough’ treatment would…
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 got stolen, the fair thing is to give them back that gold or the nearest equivalent. If they had a bunch of money that they sent to the scammer, the fair thing is to give them their money back; if they bought $50k in iTunes gift cards to send to the scammer we should be giving them back $50k, not 5,000,000 iTunes points. I don't see how that's any different for Bitcoin.
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" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " " Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597318 also. I…
Thank you for the feedback. I got carried away. I will follow the guidelines.
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.…
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Even if the victims get their money back it would only account for 25% or so because the price of BTC has moved so far since they lost it. (I think many victims will successfully petition for their money back)
In theory the court should give them back the actual bitcoin, not the monetary equivalent at the time. In a just world, anyway. Based on current judicial trends, they’ll probably get Coinbase coupons worth 50% of a different coin or something.
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I'm living in Thailand and been following scam centers for years now. It's 100% the scam center fallout mixed with regional politics. Cambodia is fully commited to scam centers and Thailand doesn't like that and even reached out to Xi directly for cooperation here. Not even a year later the conflict broke. Finally, cambodia is not suffering at all and if anything the current dictator has become significantly stronger…
Cambodian people are suffering, no doubt about it, but what you say about the surge in nationalism and entrenching his position is certainly true; the 'leadership' has only gotten stronger. It's surreal how Cambodians are blindly, even passionately, following the government narrative of evil rapacious Thailand invading innocent peace-loving Cambodia, when there is strong evidence showing it was Cambodia provoking the…
What is making things worse is rest of the world abandoning Cambodia which justifies scam centers profits as there no other source of income. Cambodia is right next to relatively rich Thailand but has nothing to show - its easy to see how nationalism explodes in such conditions.